Wimpole Estate

On Wednesday Feb 25, Mom, Charlotte, & I headed to Wimpole Estate in the afternoon. It's not too far from the Old Dairy, so I drove us past there so she could see where we stayed for our first 5 weeks. Our GPS then tried to route us down a back drive to the estate, but we were able to easily follow signage to find the appropriate way to the parking lot! 

Once we arrived, we paid to park and made our way to the "Stables" to purchase membership in the National Trust. Most of our friends here recommended we do so, as there are many sites (similar to the US National Parks System) including houses and gardens and other historic spots that you can get into free once you have membership. The cost of visits is fairly high, so you can make up the cost of membership in just a few visits even with a 2-person membership. Charlotte's free until she's 5, at which point we likely will be back in the States. Yay for free! 

There is a large manor house there, which we elected not to go in for this visit. We did go through the gardens and to the working farm that is on the premises. Normally you have to pay to go into the working farm, but the man who was working the new members table let us in for free. It was a fairly nice day, still a little chilly but not too windy. I didn't get any pictures of the farm, but Mom did -- maybe she'll send me a few more to put in this post! They have cows & calves, horses, Shetland ponies, goats, sheep & lambs, geese, and pigs & piglets at the farm. Charlotte liked watching the cows from afar, but the first animal we got close to was Murphy the horse. He was chomping on some oats in the base of his stall at first, so I took her out of the stroller to look down at him. She was fine watching him, but then he lifted his head and he was tall! Charlotte reared back and got quite frightened :( We reassured her a lot, but she was whimpering and didn't want anything to do with the horse! She was then pretty fragile for a while, especially nervous near the big pigs. She started to chill out when we saw the sheep, and then got excited to see the geese & ducks. Poor little one! Next time we'll start with the smaller animals... lesson learned. 

We walked around the gardens, which were still fairly barren of foliage, but there were snowdrops and crocus starting to bloom on the ground! We had to get a few pictures to prove to Dad that spring is thinking about arriving in other parts of the planet... just not anywhere in the Midwest or Northeast of the US. Hope all are staying warm enough!

Blooming snowdrops & crocus!

Charlotte with her visitor's sticker on her hat, where she wouldn't find it and pull it off :)