Mrs Hudson Says... February 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!

I know I shouldn’t say this, but I am very glad that we have a little while before our next school holiday! After our pledge to visit as many locations as possible this year, our February half term was pretty full on and with the storms we lived through this month, there was a lot going on!

We were lucky where we were and got away without much chaos during Eunice, Dudley and Franklin. The kids were just happy to have an extra day off school and Dinky slept through the whole thing! For us, it was mostly all over by the weekend and the actual week of half term looked fairly bright, so we spent the day planning our adventures for the coming week and we managed to fit in much more than we initially thought!

On Monday, I took the children into Bath on the train. We love getting the train into Bath, especially on a sunny day when you can see the sun reflecting off the Bath stone and passing through those old bridges and viaducts. When the boys were younger, we would take them on the train quite regularly, especially when they went through their Thomas the Tank Engine phase!

Our first stop when arriving in Bath was to visit the Roman Baths. We’ve been before, but it is a favourite of ours and every time we go there is something new to discover. Bertie in particular is quite into the Romans at the moment, someone told him the story of Romulus and Remus and being a twin, he has become fascinated with the founding of Rome and everything to do with the Roman Empire. After spending some time walking around the Baths, we visited the Fashion Museum and the Victoria Arts Gallery. Despite living near Bath for most of our lives, they are two places we’ve never been before. Florence loved the Fashion Museum and both places had lots of activities and workshops taking place for half term – we’ll definitely be back again!

We had initially said that we would go for a picnic in Priory Park, but the ground was still very wet – far too wet for a picnic, so we’ve decided that in the spring, we’ll tackle the Skyline Walk and finally have that picnic. Instead, we decided to go somewhere a little more historic for lunch and visited Sally Lunn’s. Sally Lunn’s is one of the oldest places in the whole city and we can’t fault their cinnamon buns! They’re huge, so the twins shared theirs and Florence and I had one between us – another thing we’ll definitely be doing again.

Whilst walking around the Abbey, I did notice some signs for ghost walks around the city, so I am now actively trying to find a babysitter so that Mr Hudson and I can have a night out searching for ghosts!

The following day we had a bit of a late start, but the sun was shining, so we bundled ourselves out and headed to Castle Combe for a few hours, taking Dinky with us.

Castle Combe is such a picturesque place to visit, in fact, Florence delighted in telling me that it is known as England’s prettiest village. I just love it there because it was the filming location for the original Doctor Doolittle film, which was my favourite film growing up and whenever we visit it reminds me of being a child. I especially love being able to visit with my children and the dog, especially because Dinky is possibly the perfect size to be mistaken for a Push-me-Pull-you!

Wednesday was also dry and fairly bright, so we decided to enjoy the weather while we could and headed to the city of Wells, which is England’s smallest city. It is also where the film Hot Fuzz was made. The film’s director, Edgar Wright, attended the Blue School in the city, something that Florence repeatedly tells the boys whenever we pass through. They’re too young to know Hot Fuzz, but Florence enjoyed it and loves putting on the accent. She was very excited when we passed the Swan in the city centre.

We took Dinky with us and had a wander around the Bishop’s Palace and the Cathedral – Dinky even made an even dinkier friend during our travels!

The weather turned on us for the last few days of half term, but that didn’t stop our fun. We decided to stay a little closer to home on Thursday, visiting Trowbridge, which isn’t that far from us. It is actually the county town of Wiltshire and, as we learned during our visit to the museum, was once a hub for West Country wool production. The museum is free to enter and was well worth the trip, who knew there was so much history on our doorstep!? The museum has a host of machines from the industrial revolution which the boys found fascinating, including one of only five Spinning Jennys left in the world. The town was also known for spitfire production during WWII, something that Florence has been studying at school as part of her European studies lessons, I’m sure she’ll have plenty to tell her classmates when term begins again.

Overall, it was a very busy and full on half term! Hopefully, we’ll get to that picnic in Bath in March, we just have to hope for a couple of nice weekends!