A Few of My Favourite Things – Lacock

I love this tea-pot, a gift from my lovely Mum, during a Qld visit in March 2017

Today’s travel post is taking me back to one of my favourite days during our 2014 overseas trip.  What does a tea pot have to do with it you may wonder? I love tea. I love tea pots. I love anything to do with England. English folk are traditionally known as a nation of tea drinkers.  Therefore, as you may have gathered, this post relates to England. We paid a lovely visit to the gorgeous English village of Lacock. We were there for only a little while but it was enough to satisfy my pre-conceived notions about the place which were that I was going to love it. I did!

Lacock Village, Wiltshire, England

We’d embarked on a day long ‘Mad Max Tour’ which departed from Bath.  More about the fantastic Mad Max experience later, but suffice to day it had NOTHING to do with Mel Gibson/Tina Turner or Beyond Thunderdome and everything to do with a fantastic day spent meandering through England’s green and pleasant lands.

We visited Avebury, Stonehenge and Castle Combe, as well as Lacock, and these are all worthy blog posts in their own right. Watch this space.

Oh my, but Lacock. I think this was the reason I have always wanted to go to England. By no means is my thirst satisfied, however, as now I have an insatiable desire to go back and see MORE of England. I was right in thinking it was gorgeous. I was right in thinking I would love it there.

Picture perfect buildings in Lacock. Searching for Mr Darcy…

Anyone who has seen the BBC version of Jane Austen’s ‘Pride and Prejudice’ will probably recognise some of the buildings and street frontages that were used in the series’ production. These formed the backdrop for the fictitious town of Meryton.  The Bennett sisters regularly strolled into the village and many an iconic scene could be imagined as one wandered down the main street of Lacock.  Well, perhaps these scenes could well be imagined by ME (having seen the series a few, urm, ..well a lot of times). I am not sure the rest of my travelling companions were as awe struck….The historic village was also used in ‘Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince’. This didn’t quite feature highly on my radar that day though, as much as I love Harry Potter. It was ALL about the Jane Austen vs Mr Darcy connection. I will freely admit that I was in a kind of trance-like euphoric state gazing at the buildings and trying to suppress a squeal of delight to be ACTUALLY HERE (well maybe I didn’t manage to suppress it, who can say…).

We sampled some English fare at the delightfully quaint King John’s Hunting Lodge Tea Rooms . This was a fabulous find for our lunch after we traipsed down a lane to get there. The lane itself dripped with English gorgeousness.  I enjoyed my bobbin (a vegetable filled pastry) and an obligatory, delicious cup of tea.  My boys had a variety of fare from the menu, including soup, sandwiches and scrambled eggs on toast. Hot drinks all around resulted in a moment of upset for poor Miss K who spilled her hot chocolate.  She recovered admirably, bless her, and we continued on exploring the village after lunch was finished.  The bike, casually parked out the front of the tea rooms, is one of my favourite photos (of the 1000’s taken) during the whole trip.

 On the wall, next to the darling wooden dresser full of cups, saucers and tea pots, were framed pictures that had been signed by some famous visitors to the tea rooms. Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint (aka Harry Potter, Hermione Grainger and Ron Weasley) had visited the tea rooms and autographed the picture of the three of them,  which now hangs proudly on the wall.

 We were soon back on the road, continuing to wend our way through the English country side. Before that, though, there was just enough time to pop over to have a look at Lacock Abbey.  This gave the boys a chance to burn off some energy and was a fantastic  look at the beautiful old building.  The fact that we climbed over a fence down towards the back of the property kind of added to the thrill of the whole experience. The main entrance, hence all the tourist throng, was quite a bit away from where we ‘snuck’ in so we seized the moment and captured some brilliant photos. We enjoyed the Abbey grounds to their full effect! 

The trusty gate that afforded us a sneaky look at the Abbey grounds, 150m AWAY from where we were meant to be…!

This glorious and lone tree stands impressively in the field near the Abbey. 

I created this scrapbook layout (quite a while ago) to celebrate our Lacock visit. All credit and thanks go to my extraordinarily talented crafting friend Carole for the original idea for this layout. It is yet another one of my favourite things 🙂 Esther