Saturday 9th March.

What a day. Jenny’s daughter, husband and family arrived late last night to stay with us for the weekend which is lovely.

I had been out earlier in the morning as usual with Meg and Gracie for the morning walk. It was a quiet uneventful dog walk other than having Jenny’s youngest grandchild for company, the dogs love him and visa versa,  the temperature was around 8C with a very light westerly wind and it remained dry.

We returned home just before 8.00am and had breakfast. After which Jenny and family headed over to the town of Bolton in West Yorkshire, as her eldest granddaughter was singing with her school choir in a ‘Songs of Praise Choir of the year’ competition.

I along with Jenny’s daughter’s youngest son stayed at home and planned to spend the morning having a walk around the grounds at Castle Howard. No sooner had Jenny and family set off for Bolton than the skies opened and we had a tremendous rain storm, after about twenty minutes or so I was beginning to think of a contingency plan as it would not be much fun walking around in such heavy rain with a young six year old and was beginning to think of other options as to what to do.

As it happened I should not have been worried, the rain eased considerably after about an hour, and by 9.30am had all but stopped. So, it was back to plan one, I packed the car, less the dogs, they stayed at home, and we headed over to Castle Howard for the morning. By the time we arrived at around 10.30am the grey sky was lifting and patches of blue sky were forcing their way through the gloom. We headed into the Courtyard café to have a look at the nice selections of cakes. We agreed that we would walk past the Northern side of the house and down to the lakeside and the children’s play area. We stayed in around the park for about forty-five minutes before heading into the Boat house café for a coffee and cake. After the drink and refreshment we headed back outside to have a look at the ducks and swans on the great North Lake, had the weather been a little more warmer we would have sat outside and had our refreshment. We headed back into the children’s play area for the remainder of the morning. We had a great time, just the two of us, the hour and half we were there we never saw any other visitors, other than the two members of staff working in the café, I think the weather must had deterred people from coming out.

Lunchtime was approaching so we decided to head back up towards the house and castle courtyard for some brunch, unfortunately the house is still closed to the public at the moment and doesn’t open till the 30th March. We followed the path up the hill alongside the east wing of the house, coming out at the ‘time capsule’, noting that it wasn’t to be opened for another 1,963 years’ time! Looking left it was nice to see the daffodils bordering the terrace towards the ‘Temple of the Four Winds’ coming into flower, I think it will be another couple of weeks before they are all fully open. 

The sun was shining brightly as we walked along the gravelled pathway in front of the southern aspects of the house, a lovely blue sky had replaced the grey and overcast sky that was there when we first arrived, it was hard to believe we had such bad and wet weather earlier in the morning. We arrived at the Courtyard café, ordered our meal and had a very pleasant brunch and a nice way to end our visit. It was nice to meet some old friends of mine who were also enjoying a brunch in the café too.