British Weather

Ladybird Fairy Door

Now that I'm officially British, having naturalized in 2012, I feel as though I'm sanctioned to discuss the weather with the frequency and exuberance with which the native British do.

If it's raining, I complain. If it's sunny, I talk about what a treat it is to have sun, and how we'd better take advantage about it while we have it. If it's cold and frosty, I make sure to enter into a conversation about how the trains are sure to be delayed. If it's hot, I'm guaranteed to interject into a conversation about how the Brits just can't cope with heat.

Today's the same kind of situation. It's beautiful outside; cold, crisp, blue skies with high clouds. And because it's a Sunday we do our utmost to find some sort of outdoor activity where the kids can run around (and get tired) and where we can find something interesting to look at, all topped off by the requisite pit-stop at the café for coffee and cake.

Last autumn, as an early xmas gift, my mom generously gave us a family membership to the  National Trust. The backstory here is that when my mom visits us every year for an extended period of time, one of the things she and I do is go off on a two-day trip on our own to visit some places. These usually include castles, country houses, and most usually, some sort of destination that ends up being a Pride and Prejudice pilgrimage (the GOOD one, mind, not the crap one). Last year we went to Sudbury Hall (Pemberly interior), Haddon Hall (Humperdinck's castle from The Princess Bride), and Hardwick Hall (just bloody amazing).  So now our job is to make sure that we go visit as many NT properties as we can, in order to make sure we get our money's worth. And the thing that's great about having the pass is that we can take the kids, and it doesn't matter if we stay three hours, or 45 minutes. We don't have to stay in order to make sure that we get back what we've paid on the day pass; we can come and go as we please, and not feel under pressure to stay if the kids have gone bat-shit crazy because it's late/they're hungry/etc.

So today we decided to take them to Grey's Court, near Henley. House tours happening, gardens open, tea room available. What's not to like?

Grey's Maze

It was a great place for the kids. They get a map at the entrance showing where they should look for 'fairy doors' - little wooden doors that have been put into place in trees, rosebushes, grottos, and on walls, each with a different motif. They're sweet, and you can tell that someone put a lot of time and effort into creating the fairy doors. The ladybird fairy door was right by the maze and the snowdrops. Watching the kids run round the maze as the sun went down behind the medieval castle wall was pretty great (despite the temperature dropping to near-freezing temperatures by the time the property was closing).

Turns out the house was gifted to the NT in 1969, and there's a lot throughout the house from the late 60s and early 70s, which is a refreshing change from a lot of other NT properties that are furnished with Tudor, Jacobean, and other 'period' furniture that most people just can't relate to. Grey's Court is a house you can relate to - bars of soap in the bathroom, crummy mid-80s TVs in bedrooms, regular quilts on the beds, and in the kitchen, early 70s set of pyrex dishes and patterned cookware sit side by side with copper bottomed pans from the early 1800s. 

The only complaints were the tea room and the tour guide. 

For two adult and one child's jacket potato with fillings, a half a cheese sandwich, two packets of crisps, two juice boxes, and two sodas we paid 27 quid. It seems to me that the NT could relax a little bit on the very pricey tearoom costs, especially as potatoes are 30p each, and you can buy a block of cheddar that'll feed 40 people for a fiver. Is this massive markup really necessary? Lower your prices, folks, and you may find more people eat at your tearoom, instead of packing their own picnic.

Secondly, the tour guide was a very well-meaning woman. The issue was that she constantly repeated herself, and hardly was able to talk about the property in a way that was engaging. There were at least 8 kids in our tour group, and she did very little to engage them. She also kept having to stop her story, go back a few steps, correct the story, and then continue on. By the time we'd reached the third room in the house tour, I had almost no idea who she was talking about, and why. I wish I'd bought a guide book.

However, the good news is that the NT family membership comes through again. It'd have cost us 30 quid to go in today. Since we received the membership, we would have racked up a cost of 22 pounds (Snowshill Manor), 29 quid (Hidcote gardens), and today's entrance fee to total 81 quid. Considering the yearly family membership cost is 98 quid, we've probably only got to go to one more property, and we're even. (If you include my entrance fee to Hardwick Hall back in September (14 quid), we're only 3 pounds out. 

So thanks to my mom for such a cool gift. I can only imagine that as the seasons change, and it gets warmer, we'll use the pass more and more.