Phew, what a beautiful week, weather wise. It has been a busy week for me, with a trip out to Thorpe Perrow on Monday, a meeting Monday evening, a trip to Harrogate on Wednesday afternoon, lots of paperwork to sort and pictures to edit. I’ve sat through four warm and sunny  afternoons inside the house in front of a computer whilst the temperature outside has been a barmy 18C,  so today after our early morning walk, I disappeared and took Meg & Gracie for another walk around the Castle Howard estate, the purpose being two-fold really, the first that I wanted to take some more images of the daffodils along the southern terrace, the second reason for my visit being that I really fancied one of their burgers for my brunch. Now I do not eat burgers nor am I an advocate of fast food, but I had one of Castle Howards cheese & beefburgers just over a year ago and it was delicious, so felt it wouldn’t be too indulgent if I had another one hopefully later after our walk.

It was about 10.15am as I drove into the car park and parked up adjacent to the cricket square. The sun was already shining, a lovely clear blue sky and the outside temperature 15C. It was still relatively quiet visitor wise as we made our way across the courtyard to the booking office. I was by myself today, which was quite nice really, by that I mean I could explore more of the grounds and go off-piste so to speak. I followed our usual route to the house from the ticket office, The walled garden is still closed till next weekend, so we couldn’t walk around there. I headed down to the Atlas fountain, which is currently empty of water, I believe early next week they will be giving it a good clean and re filling it prior to the house opening on the 2nd April. There are some lovely views of the house from the fountain so after a few photographs we headed over to the time capsule and up the slope into ‘Ray Woods’, stopping at the top of the slope to admire the view looking over the ‘South Lake’ and back towards the house. After walking through the gate into the woodland my eyes were drawn to the beautiful colours of some of the Azaleas which were in flower. Delicate shades of lilac, red, purple and white brightened up the woodland. On the floor were huge swathes of yellow primulas adding additional colour. We continued our walk through the woods, passing the reservoir and small pyramid, our path meandering amongst the Rhododendrons till we reached the edge of the wood and the ruins of the ‘Temple of Venus’. From here it is just a steady climb along the outskirts of the woodland, beautiful views looking across the fields on your left and the ‘Temple of Four Winds’ ahead of us. The Buzzard was circling high above, its call resonating in the dry still warm air. On reaching the Temple we had a rest for a few moments before following the Southern Terrace back towards the house. This is one of the nicest and most colourful parts of the walk at this time of year, both sides of the pathway are awash with daffodils, several of the early flowering Azaleas are in full bloom and on a warm and sunny day makes for a very pleasant walk. 

We headed past the house along the Southern aspect and made our way to the Courtyard, by now the time was approaching 1.00pm, the temperature 18C, the sun was shining, it was a lovely day, alas as we arrived at the Courtyard café all the outdoor tables were taken, and visitors were queuing to dine inside.  So, to cut a long story short, with it being so busy, and very little shade for Meg and Gracie, rather than queue we should head for home and return another day, which is what we did. My high cholesterol brunch will have to wait for another day.