Tatton Park, Cheshire

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After a break from the ongoing decorating back at home base and short of ideas as to where to go on a rather nice warm May day, I decided to make use of the National Trust membership, which I often seem to forget I have and went to a place local to me that I had never visited before – Tatton Park.

I was initially a bit put off by the place, as unlike most National Trust places, even members have to pay for parking and at the best part of £10 it’s not cheap, however at the end of the day, when I considered everything, it was probably just about worth it, considering most other “events” were free and I was there a whole day (well, six or seven hours).

I say most other events were free (such as access to the house, the gardens and such like), however as I was accessing the walled garden, I was made aware that for an extra £5, I could attend a tour of the Japanese Gardens, the tour was due to start in a couple of minutes time, so I decided to attend and I am really glad I did.

The Japanese gardens are not normally open and I am unsure of how often they run the tours, but If you get the opportunity to do so, take it as the guides themselves are very knowledgeable and I learned so much from them about many aspects of the gardens.

Nothing is there “just for the sake of it”, even down to the paving stones, some of which are purposely designed to be higher than ones just before them for two reasons, firstly to make the walker slow down or stop because there is a particularly relevant part of the garden to see, or to represent a part of every human’s life that is trickier to navigate than previous parts – i.e. to symbolise a rocky part of ones life.

The tour itself took about a hour and a half and really set me up for the rest of the day, in the end it was probably the best bit of the day.

I normally enjoy the grand houses the most in these sorts of places, however there was something about Tatton Hall that I did not really like, it just did not seem as grand as other houses I have been to and did not really grab my attention that much.

All in all though, to quote a rather Northern phrase…it was a grand day out and nice to have escaped the fumes of paint for a day and to be out in nature again.