So, forsaking a pretty muslin for me, and a white shirt and breeches for him, we donned sturdy outdoor gear as the weather looked positively gloomy, and that’s the only positive re the weather, it was positively gloomy!
Burghley House was magnificently stately, we took turns around the rooms (keeping with Austen theme here) and marvelled at what I would call a lovely ‘Muriel or two’ 😜
We perambulated around the State rooms, wondering why such small people built such big houses with tiny beds and tiny baths and then were told that the Gardens shut between 1 and 2, weird, did the borders need a nap or perhaps a sandwich?
So we ramped up the perambulating and sped to the gardens, which from a wannabe gardener’s point of view were disappointing.. not much inspiration to take home unless you had a garden that could take inspiration from Capability Brown. If you have parkland, a ha-ha, great avenues of trees, stone bridges and lakes from which Mr Darcy can emerge, then Capability is your man, but I’ll stick with Monty and Adam.
The Garden of Surprises, which is filled with novelty water features may be surprisingly pleasant on a warm summer’s day but as the rain started to fall, the sudden appearance of yet more water, was rather unsurprising. The Sculpture Garden was more interesting, both from a garden point of view and a sculptural one. The best surprise was when a hare just hopped past us, I never realised they were so big… Two hares in two days, even I don’t find that many on my chin in a day|
Here’s a selection of sculptures from the garden …
After the Sculpture Garden, we set off for a bracing walk around Burghley’s extensive parkland but torrential rain stopped play, it wasn’t so much the walking in the rain but having somewhere to dry everything without getting everything else wet. So we packed up and headed for our next stop. York
RoundandAbout 