We took a visit to Doddington Hall today – its one of those places that I had always heard off since I was a child but had never been to or even seen it.

We took a look around the House and the Garden (which was in full flower). Faith-Lee didn’t want to come at first but black mailed her into coming if we got her something from the shop there.

We got to the hall around 12 noon and the house didn’t open until 1pm so we took a look around the garden first. It has the usual cut lawn thats as straight / level as anything and flowers and plants that your parents and grandparents would die for! However it is a lovely garden.

They also had something for the kids to do in the vegetable / fruit garden. This was basically a map of the vegetable and fruit garden and they had to find on the map where particular veg and fruit were and stick a picture on the map. While doing this the kids are given a pot to search for a bug and today it was looking for Ladybirds and Ladybird Lavae.

Faith-Lee really enjoyed this and managed to find the fruit and veg herself and you could see she was really pleased with herself when doing it.

She managed to find a couple of Ladybirds, the usual red and black spotted ones and even one yellow and black Ladybird.

There was even a baby caterpillar that was put into the pot.

When the Ladybirds were identified it was time to crush some herbs and see what they smelled like and the lady there explained what herbs were used for in the Tudor days and how it help preserve the meat.

We then took a look around the rest of the garden and saw the Iris’s which they had planted and they looked lovely.

We also spotted a very large wasp (it was almost 2-3 times larger than a regular wasp) but we are not quite sure what it is. Can you identify it?

There was a mini maze to have a go out and myself and Faith-Lee managed to find our way to the centre of it and also find our way out of it.

Once we had looked around the garden we decided to have a bit of a picnic back at the car and go back to take a look at the house then.

We had a look around the house and Julia had one of those handsets that tells you all about that particular room you are in while I helped Faith-Lee do an activity sheet were she had to find certain objects in the house and on each level of the house she finished all the rooms she got a stamp and she could collect a small goody bag as a prize. So as you can imagine this kept her occupied and she really enjoyed it!