We had a little dilemma today, Manchester is about 90 mins away from Cartmel, we can’t check in at our accommodation until 3pm, so we looked around for things to do in the morning. Cate, our host, suggested we visit Sizergh Castle and Gardens. She said it was very good so we decided to go and have a look.
We got away a bit after 9:30am and headed to Sizergh, about 20 minutes away. We arrived just on opening time and decided to just do the gardens as we wanted to get away from there around 11am. Sizergh Castle and Gardens is run by the National Trust, before we left Australia we joined our local National Trust and have been enjoying the reciprocal rights free entry to most properties. We highly recommend anyone spending time in the UK to join, it is very handy.
Sizergh Castle and Gardens were built around 1350. The Castle looks in very good condition and is quite large. If we come back this way it will be on our list. We walked around the gardens for an hour, they are very well maintained and beautiful. The veggie garden was impressive as they all have been. Deb loved the flower beds, taking lots of photos. We walked down into the sunken rock garden. It has many water features, the plants are mainly chosen for foliage colour more than flowers. Deb did manage to find flowers in amomgst the leaves. ?
We made our way down the side of the Castle through some very formal geometric hedge gardens, and had a look over the lake. We enjoyed our time there, as we have in all the gardens we have visited.
We had an easy drive to Manchester but then it started. We have found the GPS in our car can be a bit temperamental at the most inopportune times, and it didn’t let us down right to the end. It wouldn’t recognise the address we had for our hotel, so eventually we got Google Maps onto it, and were there in no time. We were very happy when they let us check-in a couple of hours early. We dropped our bags in the room and then took our car back to the rental yard, just around the corner. Winning!
A very domestic afternoon followed with lots of washing to be done and a bit of shopping in readiness for our departure to Iceland tomorrow.
This ends our Adventures in England. We did a total of 2029 miles in 38 days, we saw so much and had a great time.
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