Wimpole Estate

Wimpole Hall

I bet you've heard of Rudyard Kippling, but I bet you don't know who his daughter was. She was Elsie Bambridge and she was the last owner of Wimpole Estate in Cambridgeshire. Last week, we met up with Tilly and visited the estate. It was amazing! We got to see the grand house, Wimpole Hall. We saw upstairs and downstairs, the church, the farm and the immaculate gardens. The gardens had been designed by "Capability Brown" a famous landscape gardener.

Elsie died in 1976 and left the estate to the National Trust so people like me could go and visit and see how people lived in the past.




First we started our tour on the ground floor. It was very grand. There was a large hallway and lots of beautifully decorated living rooms. The living rooms were decorated how Elsie would have had them back when she owned the house. She was definitely good with interior design! Mom said she would have loved to have a sitting room like one of the ones in the house. She'd be able to fit a couple of gigantic sofas in there!
In nearly every room there was a massive grandfather clock. One of the housekeepers was giving a demonstration of how they looked after and cleaned the clocks. She opened up the door of the clock and showed us the pendulum swinging inside. The clocks were very old and precious.




The impressive staircase

Upstairs, Elsie's bedroom was just as impressive as all of her living rooms! She had a gigantic bed with heavy curtains draped over it. I wish I had a bed like that. She even had her own en-suite bathroom!

Elsie's bed

Elsie obviously liked horses, as every single room had at least one horse painting or horse ornament in it. Some of the paintings were really beautiful. I wonder how much they'd cost to buy?


Next we explored the lower basement where the servants would live. The kitchen was very impressive with its store of herbs and spices. The lady there showed us some big blocks of sugar that were stored in special cupboards labelled "Sugar" That's how the sugar was back then. It had to be chipped off the huge block, not like today when it is granulated and packaged for us! We saw the servants' bedrooms and they weren't as nice as the bedrooms upstairs but the lady there told us that the servants were well looked after and had everything they needed. Still, I would have preferred a bed upstairs!
Lastly we took a look inside the little chapel

Outside of the manor, we walked around all of the incredible gardens until we reached the park area. There, we had lunch and played on the tiny, toddle go-karts. Me and Tilly were way too big for them, but it was a lot of fun!

There was also a bunch of large haystacks that you could jump across and play on. I'm not the best jumper in the world, but with a bit of encouragment from Tilly I could jump across most of them.

Right next to the park there was a field with goats and their kids in it. They were so adorable but quite mischevious as well. One of them managed to push its head through the fence. Mom thought that the goat had gotten itself stuck so she sent me and Tilly to go and get help.
We dashed as fast as we could up to the cafe. As soon as we got there, Lavinia caught up with us and said that the goat had gotten itself out. I'm sure that goat was trying to trick us!

On the way back to the car park, we passed the farm with the pigs in it. Most of them were really young. The youngest ones ones there were really adorable! The adults weren't quite so adorable, and they smelled really bad!


I'd definitely recommend Wimpole for a day out and I hope we'll be going back soon as we didn't get to see all of it!

Saxon Day!

Lately, I've been learning all about the Saxons. When the Romans left in 410 AD, the Saxons invaded. The Saxons were lots of different groups of tribes, with the biggest tribes being called the Saxons, Angles and Jutes.
The reason I was learning all about the Saxons was because on Thursday, it was Saxon Day at Gamlingay. There was a Saxon-obsessed woman there who taught us all about what the Saxons were like, how life was back then and all about Saxon Weapons. She had a bunch of spears and swords that she showed us; it was awesome!

The talk went on a bit; me and Tilly were a bit bored

We also learnt about shields. There was a table that had a bunch of different parts of a shield, they even had two proper shields that you could hold and and pose with. I never knew shields were that heavy! We had to figure out how the shield was put together and it wasn't that easy!

Heavy!!

In between all of the talks, you could get dressed up in Saxon themed clothes. They were seriously itchy, I could hardly bare it! I think I actually looked quite nice in the clothes though.

The lady in charge asked me and Tilly if we would help her show some groups of children how the shields were put together. We tried to tell them all about the shields but they didn't really listen, they were too busy colouring in!



The final lesson was about how the Saxons used their tools and weapons. The woman giving us the talk took split us into two teams, took us all outside and gave each of us a shield and a stick and then sent us into battle! The battle wasn't very difficult, as it was just a bunch of kids poking each other with sticks, but I still got really into it!




Lining up battle!

Take that!

Another Visit to Woolsthorpe Manor!

Ever since me and Tilly went to Woolsthorpe Manor a few weeks ago, Dad has been dying to go.  I had such a good time there, we went there again to see it with him!
Since we had all day to see the Manor itself, we had a little walk around the lovely village of Woolsthorpe. Opposite the Manor house, there is a massive paddock with three beautiful horses in it.  With the beautiful sky behind them, they looked incredible! I tried to coax them over but they were too busy munching sweet grass.

There was a lot more to do this time than when me and Tilly went to Woolsthorpe. In the main learning centre, there were a bunch of stalls with ladies selling craft kits and really pretty hand-made bunting. I just couldn't resist getting a little patchwork apple sewing kit! Mom bought some bunting with apples on it.
Outside of the learning centre, there were more stalls in the courtyard selling hand-made gifts and jewelry and I couldn't help but buy a couple of presents for my friends!

While we were there, we met up with Lillijana and her family. We played around for a while with the experiments and games until she had to go home. I liked the light experiments best!

Of course, the most impressive part of the trip was having a look around the Manor itself. Dad was definitely impressed with that! Even though I had already seen the house, it was still a lot of fun to see it again.

The kitchen is my favourite part of the house. I love the hares and ducks hanging from hooks and all the bowls of herbs and spices. There was even a plate of little pink and yellow biscuits made from almond paste. They looked just like Battenberg cake. That's my favourite cake!

Play Dates!

Usually when I have a play date, people come to my house, but this time it was different! On Wednesday, I went to Lillijana's house along with Summer. We had a really great time playing around in her bedroom and with her cats! If you know me, you'll know I really want a cat. Lillijana has three cats and I'm very jealous. She also has a very wooly and loving dog called Barnaby. His coat is really soft, it's like cuddling a lamb!

We played lots of random games like hide and seek and playing catch with one of the random bouncy balls in her room.

If it was a nicer, warmer day we would have went outside to play in her massive garden! Unfortunately it had been raining earlier and it was really cold. Oh well, hopefully next time it'll be more like summer-time!

Tilly Time!

Tilly returend to the Shovlin Hotel last Thursday for another sleepover! We did loads of things, it's amazing how we managed to fit them all in!
We picked Tilly up from Gamlingay where we did "sports" before she came back with us.

On Saturday we went to the cinema by ourselves to see The Jungle Book. It was really exciting going to the cinema without any adults, I felt really grown up!  To make sure the experience was as amazing as possible, mom got us some Extra Large Space seats which were made out of proper, comfortable leather. There was loads of room to move about and put your feet in the XLR seating area, it was great. The movie itself was really good also! It was a very modern CGI version of The Jungle Book. It was quite scary in parts, but overall it was an amazing film, I definitely recommend it!




At the cinema!

After the movie, mom and dad took us to the Sugar Mill for a delicious dinner. The Sugar Mill always does really great food!



The next day we went to Uffington Scarecrow Festival.  I was meant to be singing with a Wildcats group there, but I missed that due to some very adorable alpacas! There was a man that had a herd of alpacas and he was letting people into the alpacas' pen to pet and stroke them! I never realised how cute and soft alpacas are.

I never knew how adorable Alpacas are!

Along with the alpacas, the man also had donkeys and lambs! You weren't allowed to go in with those animals, but you were allowed to pet them through the fence.


Of course, the main part of the Scarecrow Festival was all the scarecrows! Almost everyone in the village had made a scarecrow  to put outside their house, it was really cool seeing them all! There were scarecrows from all the countries of the world.




There was a scarecrow trail to follow and a Quiz

Later Tilly and I joined in with the Wildcats. We helped with the Parachute Games. That was actually quite fun!

Monday was the last day of the sleepover, so we decided to meet up with Cat and Lavinia and Elise at Flitwick for swimming. It wasn't the best swimming pool I've been to, but there was a really warm and toasty small pool which I loved a lot! The main pool just had loads of lanes for people to boringly swim up and down them. It was very, very cold in the main pool as well.
After a couple of hours swimming, it was time to go home. The goodbye wasn't too emotional though, as we were going to meet up the next day in Cambridge!



Meeting up in Cambridge was definitely an adventure. Me and mom took the Park & Ride which was very dangerous! The bus drivers drive like madmen! It doesn't help that there are a LOT of cyclists in Cambridge. It looked like we were going to hit loads of them!
We met up in a big park called Jesus Green for a little while to eat lunch before heading out to the Science Centre.




Lunch at Jesus Green

The Science Centre was all about Space and planets. It was really cool even though I'd  seen most of the things before at other science centres. There was a young woman there giving us a talk about how to be safe in Space. It was a bit basic but I still enjoyed it.

Puzzling it out!

After the trip to the Science Centre, we had a little look around the shops. I ended up buying a tiny, purple rubber dragon. Definitely a quality purchase! After browsing around the shops, we decided to find somewhere to have dinner. In the end we went to Wagamama. Wagamama is a Japanese-style resturant and I've always wanted to try it. I had some chicken in breadcrums with a delicious sweet and sour sauce. I absolutely loved it, I'm definitely going to go there again.

Sadly, it was time to say goodbye to Tilly. On the bright side, I'll be seeing her tomorrow at Gamlingay! She might even come back for another sleepover.