Charlecote Park at Halloween

We’ve not had that many ‘free’ Saturdays since Pickle has been born as we take him to a swimming session on Saturdays which falls slap bam in the middle of the day, leaving not a lot of time for trips out anywhere. But this week, we had a text message to tell us swimming had to be cancelled due to ‘high chlorine levels’ resulting from an ‘incident’ in the pool the day before (some child definitely poo-ed themselves, right?). Straight away, I was really keen for us to make the most of our rare Saturday together. Time to make the most of our National Trust membership!

We ventured to Charlecote Park, a gorgeous property just outside of Stratford upon Avon, known for its resident deer. It seemed we weren’t the only ones with the same idea as the car park was rammed – luckily, we quickly managed to grab the space from someone who was leaving. Score.

Isn’t Charlecote Park gorgeous?

We took both the pram and our Beco Gemini baby carrier so we had options whilst we walked around (and we did end up using both!). We didn’t go in the house this visit as we thought it’d be a bit of a struggle with the pram and we just wanted to enjoy the gorgeous autumnal weather. Charlecote Park have set up a Hallow’een trail for the half term so even though it’s obviously aimed at children, we used Toby an excuse to follow it too!

LOOK AT HIS FACE!

There’s something about a good walk in the fresh air, it’s so restorative! We laughed our way around and Pickle was alternating between giggling at us and sucking relentlessly on his fingers. So much dribble. Once he started to get a bit restless in the pram, we swapped to the baby carrier – just in time for a close encounter with some rutting stags!

And they got EVEN closer than this. It doesn’t look like they’re that close in this photo, but trust me – it felt (and sounded!) a bit too close.

After a pit stop at the cafe for a cup of tea, some cake and a feed for Pickle (it wouldn’t be a National Trust visit without cake!), we set about finishing the trail whilst Pickle had a little snooze. Embarrassingly enough, it took us a ridiculously long time to figure out the final anagram. Like, a really long time. But we got there in the end (LPD may have succumbed to Google, but I didn’t!) and that entitled us to a souvenir pumpkin!

I couldn’t resist a family selfie with our pumpkin, even though Pickle was fast asleep.

I really, really enjoyed our day at Charlecote Park. I am so glad we went out and did something rather than lounge around at home (which is what we usually do!). It’s made me more determined to make better use of our National Trust membership, so let’s hope I have more outings to write about soon.