Sunday 21 April 2013

Benningbrough

It's one of the most pressing of middle-class dilemas. Second in importance only to deciding on black olive or stilton grissini at Waitrose, people everywhere are asking, National Trust or English Heritage?

It doesn't matter where you live, there is always an equal split of places that you'd like to visit on a regular basis between the two, and no-one can afford both!

We've solved this problem by joining neither and then complaining about it.

So when Benningbrough Hall (National Trust) advertised a free weekend, we thought that we should go and find out what we were missing. Its only 15 minutes out of York, but we've never visited.

We had lots of fun! And not just in the adventure playground. But of course that is where we went first. Nathaniel was a bit intimidated by the number of children running around, and had his first lesson on how to be assertive when waiting for a swing (he ended up in tears, but got his swing!), but Thea identified the slide that she wanted, and was off!

Unfortunately, the slide was a bit wide and busy for her to slide by herself, but Esther stepped in to be a seat while I was supervising Nathaniel doing something perilous.

The we made the most of a display of vintage cars and Nathaniel carefully identified the distinguishing features of a line of MG Midgets.

Then we took off through the gardens:

Into the woods and found a spider:

And a house:

And Nathaniel jumped a giant ditch and made a brilliant bridge with a mammoth log on which he scaled a wall. Lots of fun. I am almost convinced that the decision needs to be National Trust (but no Rievaulx/Whitby Abbey/Helmsley Castle........).

Ian missed out, but he spent time in somewhere almost as exciting:

1 comment:

Ian said...

Terminal 5 was very exciting.....