Wollaton Hall

We had a trip to Nottingham on Saturday to see Eleanor, it's the first time we'd seen her since we dropped her off at university over six weeks before. She's absolutely loving her course and has settled in to university life really well. She won't be coming home until she breaks up for Christmas, though she's travelling to Sheffield to stay with her boyfriend this weekend.

Archie was with us and as the weather was fine we decided to go somewhere for a walk. We don't know Nottingham at all but I remember visiting some friends of the family when I was in my teens and we had a trip to Wollaton Hall. It's not far from the university so we made the decision to head there. Unfortunately, I'd forgotten to take my camera with me so the photos included in this post were taken on Mick's phone.

Wollaton Hall is an Elizabethan country house of the 1580s which stands in Wollaton Park.

We couldn't go in the hall itself as we had Archie with us, but since it opened to the public in 1926, it has been home to the city's natural history museum.

There are a couple of suggested walking routes through the park but we just sort of ambled around taking in the changing season. The trees were stunning, all different colours, though they're now dropping their leaves and they're littering the ground.

Archie had great fun running through them.

There are formal gardens in the park, and The Camellia House, the oldest cast iron glasshouse in Europe. Wollaton's Botanic Garden, which has been developed and cared for by volunteers from the Nottingham branch of the Hardy Plant Society, is also here but we didn't visit any of these. I'm sure we'll take a trip here again on one of our visits to see Eleanor so we'll explore further then.

About 80 Red deer and 120 Fallow deer roam freely in Wollaton Park. We approached with care but they don't seem timid at all. Archie was nonplussed and just wanted to get back to the leaves.

Wollaton Hall is a lovely place for a walk but it was rather chilly so we didn't stay too long. Afterwards, we took Eleanor shopping, her cupboards are well stocked again.

All too soon it was time to leave, but when we got home we found that our door key had been left in Eleanor's room and we couldn't get in the house. We had to take a trip to York so that we could borrow Daniel's key. Oh well, at least I got to see both my children on the same day, something that doesn't happen very often these days.