Jun 20 / Administrator

15 to 20 June 2013

The last few days have been busy and fun. We visited Dorset on Saturday and the National Trust property Lytes Carey Manor. It was a lovely day out with a pub lunch and gentle walk.

Sunday was Fathers’ Day and Mark, Jenny, Bethany, Callum and Elsie came to lunch and tea.

Annie had made up a treasure hunt for the children to do. It was fun as they rushed to solve a clue and then find the next one. We all had a great time.

The last 2 days have seen us travel to Market Bosworth (Battle of Bosworth) Fame. We stayed in the very grand sounding Bosworth Hall Hotel. Our room was good (we had upgraded to a suite) but the food was worse than school dinners were when I was a child and the cleanliness and ambience of the dining room were worse than disappointing. The hotel was tired with peeling paint and many visibly rotting window frames. What really disappointed me was the fact that the area around every entrance door was littered with cigarette ends some of which had been there so long the colour of the tips had been bleached out. Hotel Management obviously had no pride in the appearance of their hotel. That said, we could not complain about value for money as the deal was so cheap but we would not bother to go there again.

After breakfast we did a lovely 4.5 mile walk around the local countryside. It was quite weird as we set off because we kept coming across people in day-glow jackets. And, unable to resist enquiring as to why they were there, we discovered that our route went part way along the route being followed by 650 school children between 11 and 14 years of age and they were catching us up! We just made it to where our paths diverged before the lead children caught us up.

On our way to, and back from, Market Bosworth we visited 3 National Trust properties.The first was Baddesley Clinton which was a moated property and really quite charming. After visiting the house, we enjoyed a lovely 20 minute walk through the grounds.

From there we went to Packwood House which had stunning grounds as I hope the pictures show. We had a lovely time wandering around the house and the grounds.