Today we were up and out early, heading to the most beautiful house in the country. I remembered my father taking me to Chatsworth when I was young and was excited to relive the memories with my own children. Elizabeth, getting into the swing of these stately homes, wore her crown so that she could be a duchess for the day. We toured the gardens first, which were filled with beautiful flowers. The kitchen garden was overflowing with produce. We saw the grotto, ...

I think the wariness of travel is starting to settle in and the countdown to our return home has started: Lego, healthy food, cosy beds, showers without a press button. Or it could just be the car alarm that woke everyone at 6am followed by a full day adventuring. Today we had an adventure instructor booked and headed to Matlock for some Weaseling (scrambling in and around rocks) and climbing. Needless to say it was awesome. The kids were ecstatic that they were...

We’ve arrived at our last campsite and I’m starting to look forward to a long hot bath and my comfy super-king bed. This morning, we strolled into Pooley Bridge where we stopped for breakfast before going for a walk along the shores of Ullswater. Inspired by others, we removed our shoes and dipped our toes in the lake, which compared to Scotland felt lovely. If only we had our swim stuff!! The Lake District was busy - both on the paths we took and the camps...

Beautiful, wonderful, glorious Kielder forest. We adored it here! Obviously the blue skies and warm sun helped but this is definitely somewhere we’re coming back to. It is a predominantly outdoor place as there isn’t much for a rainy day but otherwise there is so much fun to be had on and off the water, you could easily while away a week here. This morning, after the kids spent an hour or so playing in the surrounding woodland with some other kids, making p...

We had tickets booked for Alnwick castle at 0930 but any concerns about waking late and being in a rush were quelled at 0630 when two excited children started bouncing around the bus. Bad news for the grown ups as the late night last night could only mean two things: tantrums and meltdowns. Great. As it turned out, we only had one major meltdown per child so wasn’t too disastrous. Alnwick castle is home to the Duke and Duchess of Northumberland but is probabl...