March has seen a variety of weather to date, Spring has certainly arrived, along with several yellow weather warnings for our area which, fortunately the weather didn’t match what was predicted.

Today was no different, the temperature at 10.00am was 11c with a light westerly breeze and bright sunshine all day, which contradicted the national weather forecast for our area. So, with a blue sky and white fluffy clouds we headed over to Castle Howard for a walk with the dogs around the estate. I had an early morning meeting first thing which was over by 9.00am after which we packed the car and headed over to the stately home. The journey there was quite uneventful with no hold ups on the A64 and within 45 minutes I was parking the car in the visitors car park.

We popped into the courtyard cafe for a takeaway coffee and cake before heading across the courtyard to the booking office. It was surprisingly quiet, I thing the predicted weather forecast of bad weather had kept everybody away. After showing our entrance tickets and exchanging pleasantries with the staff we made our way under the arch and headed through the trees towards the house. The daffodils were just beginning to come into flower, their yellow heads swaying gently in the westerly breeze. We stopped for a few moments at the head of the Lime terrace to take some photographs, the sun was shining through the trees casting shadows across the main gravelled path. The house was looking beautiful in the bright sunshine and set against a blue sky it looked quite palatial. Contractors were busily giving the Atlas fountain its spring clean prior to the house re opening on the 1^st April. The powerful power washing machines blasting  off all the moss and debris which congregates in and on the fountain over the space of the year.

Considerable work was also being carried out inside the house, with staff busily cleaning and preparing the house for its re opening at the beginning of April. After walking along the south terrace passing the house on the left we walked past the time capsule and made our way up the slope towards Ray Wood. Both sides of the grassy bank were covered in a mass of emerging daffodils, it will be several weeks before they will all be in full flower, probably by the Easter weekend 7^th & 8^th April they will be at their best and the whole embankment and slope will be covered in a huge blanket of yellow. We stopped several times whilst walking up the slope to admire the view looking back towards the main house and across to the South Lake. On reaching the top of the slope we headed through the wooden gate and into the woodland. The clusters of snowdrops which were in flower on our last visit had passed their best and were beginning to die back, most of the trees were in bud, some even coming into leaf. We followed the track through the woods, Meg, one of our dogs found great pleasure in rolling amongst the piles of autumnal leaves on the woodland floor, scattering them far and wide. We emerged from the woodland adjacent to the Temple of Four Winds, as always the views around the Temple are quite breath-taking, especially on a nice, bright and clear day like today. One or two other visitors were also admiring the views across the open farmland. After a few moments we headed back towards the house via the lower terrace, I followed the path down to the edge of the South Lake to take some photographs looking back towards the house, it was quite breezy today so any chance of some nice reflections to photograph was out of the question for today, the water was quite choppy. It was quite amusing watching some of the smaller Tufted ducks swimming across the water, often being swamped by the big waves. Clusters of early flowering daffodils provided plenty of photo opportunities as we made our way back to the main house. The contractors were still busily cleaning the Atlas Fountain with their high pressure water hoses as we passed, we gave them a wide berth as there was quite a lot of water flying about and we could quite easily have got a good soaking. After passing the house it is just a steady five-minute walk back to the courtyard where we enjoyed a very pleasant brunch in the courtyard café before we headed for home.