Family Day Out to Erddig

The girls announced at breakfast that it was Spring (1st March) and that we needed to go out for a picnic. Whilst the sun was shining we thought a picnic was a little adventurous, so we packed some snacks and drove over to Erddig, near Wrexham. We joined the National Trust last year as a result of a trip to Speke Hall so I imagine a lot of our days out this year will feature a National Trust property or two.  It is such good value and they really seem to have embraced families visiting with children.  To find a national trust property near you that someone has reviewed simply type National Trust into our search page.

The (muddy) car park is very close to the main entrance and whilst we don’t have a buggy anymore we saw lots of families arriving with buggies to take advantage of the flat wide walkways around the gardens.  We made our way from the car park into the courtyard and started our adventure.

The gardens are stunning even at this time of year and we spent ages just pottering round;

playing with the old hats;

and having a snack in a lovely little cottage at one end of the gardens.

They were all having such a good time, but then we found the Wolf Den!

Wolf Den

When we went in the gentleman who scanned our cards, told us to head straight there and how right he was. At first glance this area is just a collection of cut down trees, but they have done a fantastic job. We literally spent 2 hours just in this area. There was so much to do:

Pretending to be a picture

Building a Den

Being a Queen on her Throne

and climbing, jumping, swinging – getting braver and braver and giving me heart failure!  This little video shows what they got up to in this area!

Had the rain not started to fall I think we could have spent even longer in this den. There was a whole wood behind this area we didn’t even look at, never mind explore; but the rain really did start to get heavy and it was pretty cold, so we went into the house.  As with many National Trust properties early in the year, the house was only open for a few hours. In fact it was actually only the servant quarters.  We didn’t spend too much time exploring because it was really lunchtime, but the girls spent a little while trying to locate the little teddy bears in each room (they were tiny, and it was quite dark) and it was actually quite hard.

We had taken snacks but not a full picnic which is actually quite unusual for us, but we were very glad to be able to go and sit in the restaurant and warm up.  Two of the girls had a snack box into which you could put 5 items for £4.20, and the other had beans on toast (which hubby balked at paying £3.85 for).  I thought the snack box was good value though.  The restaurant also had a collection of games to keep little ones entertained, lots of high chairs, and a microwave and bottle warmer for baby milk/food.

When it was time to leave (so hubby could get back to watch the Rugby) there was some sad faces around.   We wandered back past the memory tree and added our favourite memories of Erddig.  All three chose the Wolf Den – no surprise there.

We did giggle though when the car got stuck in the mud in the car park! Thankfully some kind visitors helped push us out so we could get home. Never a dull moment!

For another review of Erddig, click here to see the review Jess wrote.