Mrs Hudson says... August 2022

Every month, Mrs Hudson, along with her three children and Dinky the Irish Wolfhound investigate the best family and dog friendly heritage attractions that the UK has to offer.

Read on to see where the Hudsons have been this month.

When we left you last month, I mentioned that I had allowed the children to plan what we were doing over the summer holidays and that each of them compiled a list of activities. These were then popped into a bowl and they took it in turns to choose something for us to do each week. It seemed like a good idea at the time, until it looked like we would be visiting Scotland, then Northern Ireland, then Cornwall all in the space of a month!

With rising costs, Mr Hudson and I thought it might be prudent to have a sneaky look through the suggestions and remove those what were too much of a trek. It didn’t look like anyone noticed that the scraps of paper in the bowl reduced overnight and we ended up having a really lovely summer of adventures together, so it is definitely an idea we’ll repeat again next year.

In the object of fairness, we allowed the children to pick in alphabetical order, so our first visit was courtesy of Bertie who selected Warwick Castle, which is only around a two hour journey and would take us through some really lovely places. Warwick Castle is a great place for the whole family and we’ve been before many years ago, because it is so popular, it was busy and we ran out of time for doing any other exploring but it was a great day out!

Image: Warwick Castle

Over the summer holidays, there was a series of live shows taking place including the War of the Roses LIVE! Which was a wonderful experience! All three of the kids were entranced and debated whether they were team York or team Lancaster on the journey home! As well as the War of the Roses show, there was also a bird of prey display and of course, we spent some time exploring the castle itself too, it blows my mind how old the site actually is! We didn’t brave the dungeons this time, but I would like to return when the kids are a bit older and less likely to have nightmares.

After our return we spent time locally, visiting places we could also take Dinky, though he would have been perfectly happy pottering around at home, he loves it during the school holidays when there is always someone around to make a fuss of him. We spent a lot of time making use of our National Trust memberships, as several of our local sites are happy to accept dogs in the gardens and who doesn’t like a sneaky slice of cake or two from a National Trust café?!

Elwood’s choice was up next, and he selected Tintagel Castle. After doing some calculations, we figured it would take us between 3 and 4 hours to make the trip, but luckily, we managed to find and book a room in Exeter, which was just over halfway so we could make a long weekend out of it. We set off much earlier than any of us would have liked, leaving a disgruntled neighbour with the dog, and arrived in Exeter around lunch time, giving us plenty of time to explore the city. There were a surprising number of free things we could do, including several museums. Our favourite was the Royal Albert Memorial Museum – there was so much to do in there! We also joined a city tour and of course, visited the cathedral. It is one of the most significant cathedrals in Europe and has over 2000 years’ worth of history! We all thoroughly enjoyed our lay over and I’d be keen to visit again another time, the quayside was lovely and after we embarked on a paddleboarding adventure a few months ago in Bradford on Avon, we’re all keen to try out the sessions on offer in Exeter. The following morning we continued on to Tintagel Castle.

Managed by English Heritage, Tintagel Castle has links to King Arthur, who we are all a little fascinated with, living so close to Somerset and Glastonbury, it’s part of the reason why the twins wanted to visit. It is a truly beautiful place to visit, and we were so lucky with the weather – incredible blue skies which really added to the experience. I would say it isn’t the most accessible place – there are a lot of stairs, but it is worth it for the views and of course the kids all had to pose with the statue of the king. As we were already in Cornwall, we thought we might as well make a bit of a journey of it and made the drive down to St Michael’s Mount. Again, what a beautiful place! The castle is still a family home and features a sofa where Queen Victoria sat and a mummified cat all the way from Egypt! It was honestly one of the prettiest and most fascinating places we’ve ever been. Perhaps we’ll have to book a holiday to Cornwall so we can spend more time there as we were a bit rushed and it would be nice to be able to explore properly.

Image: St Michael's Mount

It was quite a trek to get home, taking over 4 hours! It was worth it though!

Finally, it was Florence’s turn and she picked the jackpot, ending up with Hampton Court Palace. As she is obsessed with the Tudors, it was the perfect day out for her! We chose to get the train into London Waterloo and then caught the over ground train over to the station nearest to Hampton Court, trains run between these stations every half an hour and we were lucky to avoid the train strikes, though we’re sure we could have gotten there another way, there are bus services that stop outside and buses that service the nearby underground stations too.

While we were there, we enjoyed a series of live performances that were included in our entry fee and of course, we had to visit the maze!

Image: Hampton Court

And so, that was our August, the train strikes towards the end of the month meant that we were a little more limited on where we could go, but we do still have a bowl full of things to do that we can either use next summer or maybe during October half term if we have the chance. Now though, it’s time for us to start preparing to go back to school, but with Heritage Open Days coming up in September, there will still be plenty of adventures to be had!

And to sign off, here's Dinky enjoying the summer holidays for you! 

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