After a hectic but lovely week entertaining the family at home, it was nice to escape the mundane tasks of housekeeping and pop over to Castle Howard for a breath of fresh air and change of scenery for a few hours.

I’d taken the dogs out earlier in the morning for a shortened walk, so after we had our breakfast, we set of for Castle Howard. Needless to say, the traffic was backing up on the A64 at the usual place namely the Hopgrove roundabout, fortunately we were quite early and although it held us up by fifteen minutes, we arrived at Castle Howard by 10.15am. It was a pleasant morning, not to warm or humid about 14c with just a light breeze and cloudy, a nice morning for a pleasant walk without having to wear layers of clothes etc.

We popped into the courtyard café for our compulsory coffee before crossing the courtyard to the ticket office, the courtyard was quiet this morning with just one or two estate workers going about their business. There was a lovely display of fruit outside the farm shop in the courtyard.

One of the things I remember about our last visit towards the end of July was how nice and colourful the walled garden was, so, on leaving the ticket office we headed over to the walled garden for another look and to see what had changed since our last visit. We were not disappointed, the borders were still full of a wide range of flowering shrubs, glowing in the morning light. The giant Alliums for example although they had past their best, still looked beautiful without their tiny blue florets, I am certain they would look lovely once dried out and sprayed and put into an autumnal flower arrangement. Sea Holly too looked lovely with its very sharp prickly leaves tinged with blue and their thistle like florets a magnet for bees and butterflies when in full flower, but today they were dying back gracefully, another plant that would look good in a winter flower arrangement. Huge swathes of flowering lavender filled the borders along with several late flowering Azaleas all providing a bright and vibrant splash of colour on this dull, cloudy morning.

We reluctantly left the garden and made our way up the terrace towards the south front of the house. I was pleasantly surprised as to how quiet it was, though that said I think many visitors had stayed away due to the horrendous weather forecast issued by the met office yesterday. We continued our walk along the south terrace in front of the house till we reached the time capsule where we headed over towards the South Lake. Much of the grass meadow had been left to go to seed much to the delight of Meg and Gracie who although on a lead, loved running into the long grass and having a good roll before re emerging wet through and covered in grass seed! We continued our walk around the lake watching the swans and their young family as they lazily swam across the lake before dipping their long necks into the depth for food. We stopped at the far end of the lake for a rest, photographs and just to admire the view looking back towards the house. After a few minutes we continued our walk up towards the Temple of Four Winds, though on reaching the South Terrace we decided to head back to the courtyard for an early brunch in the Courtyard restaurant before it got too busy. We decided to sit inside primarily because the chairs are more comfortable and should it decide to rain then at least we had some cover also there were less distraction for Meg and Gracie, who contently laid at the side of our table and drifted off to sleep, completely oblivious to all the compliments they were receiving from visiting diners. We enjoyed a very pleasant brunch which set us up nicely for the journey home.