Results matching “Christmas”

It's December first, so that means we can all dig into our advent calendars for the big count down. This year, I purchased the Craft Gin Club Advent Calendar and the "Perfect Pairing Advent Bundle" available with a selection of different tonics and garnishes for each daily sample. The advent calendar comes with twenty-five miniature bottles of gin from twenty-four different distilleries and one from the Craft Gin company, and those who receive the advent calendar can learn about the daily gin and the best pairing for it. For spoilers, scroll below or click away from this page if you want it to be a surprise. 

The gins that I received in the advent calendar include:

• Nelson's Distillery & School: Nelson's Gluggle Jug Gin
  
  • This small-batch gin was created by one man who had previously worked in Michelin rstaurants. The distillery is located on the borders of Derbyshire and Staffordshire, and it's a relatively new venture. Nelson's Gluggle Jug Gin is a dry gin, and it won the Gin of the Year award in 2019.
• Brinfle Distillery: Cuckoo Supernova Gin
  • Brinfle Distillery is produced on a Lancashire farm, and their range of gins is called "Cuckoo". The "Cuckoo Supernova Gin" miniature is provided as a sample, and it is described as a summery gin with hints of refreshing grapefruit. I've sampled one of the other gins in their range previously, and it was a treat.
• The Spirit of Manchester Distillery: Manchester Gin - Wild Spirit
  • This distillery in Manchester started as a hobby where the founders began to distill gin out of their dining room in Manchester, and they won awards. Their distillery dates to 2019, so it is a relatively new venture. The "Wild Spirit" gin is a herb-flavoured gin instead of citrus. Sage, thyme, and silver birch are all used to give the flavour.
• Brass Lion Distillery: Singapore Dry Gin
  • Brass Lion Distillery is located in Singapore, and it was one of the full-sized bottles for the subscriber "gin of the month" for August (see post). This gin won the gold award at the Gin of the World awards this year. The gin concept was born in 2012, and they toured the world to create different gins and then to create one using the flavours of Singapore, which is how this gin came about.
• Cotswolds Distillery: Cloudy Christmas Gin
  • Cotswolds Distillery, located in the Cotswolds, distills different types of alcohol (namely gin and whisky). There's a wealth of knowledge behind this operation. The Cloudy Christmas Gin is their award-winning dry gin, but it has a Christmas spice twist.
• Poetic License: Old Tom Gin
  • Poetic License is a relatively young small-batch distillery located in the north east of England. The Old Tom Gin uses a recipe from the 1800s, and the gin is aged in oak casks and retains a golden colour. It is a dry gin and described as having a sweet taste.
• QVT Distillerie: QVT Dry Gin Edition CGC
  • QVT Distillerie is based in Provence in France, and a full-sized bottle of this gin was given in the April subscriber box this year (read post). The dry gin is described as having floral notes using juniper, and it is an easy-drinking gin with an enjoyable flavour.
• Batch Distillery: Whinberry Gin
  • Batch Distillery is a distiller of rum and gin. It is a small batch gin founded in an old mill in Lancashire. The distillery started in 2011-2012 and started to win awards a few years later, kicking off to popularity in 2017. The Whinberry Gin is a type of sloe gin.
• Otterbeck Distillery: Winter Cotton Gin
  • Based in the Yorkshire Moors, the gin was created using local ingredients. The award-winning Cotton Gin is named after the history of the area with its cotton and silk mills. The company prides itself in sustainability. The Winter Cotton Gin is a twist on the distilleries award-winning gin.
• Dunnet Bay Distillers: Rock Rose Citrus Coastal Gin
  • Based in Caithness in Scotland (in Dunnet), this distillery focuses on tradition, sustainability, flavour, innovation, and heritage. The gin has won many awards. "Rock Rose" is a name of one of their brands of gin, and the sample received is the Citrus Coastal flavour. Their branding implies the tradition of this part of the world. The distillery has been in operation for several years, and I have purchased some of their products previously.
• Sabatini Gin: London Dry Tuscan Gin
  • Sabatini Gin is created in Italy. The family's history in distilling goes back generations. This London Dry gin is described as having a Tuscan twist using the flavours from Tuscany.
• The River Test Distillery: Chalkstream Gold Gin
  • Based on the River Test in Hampshire, England, this gin was provided as a full-sized bottle in the March subscription box this year (see post). It is made from local ingredients, including local barley and it has a herb flavour. The gin has also won awards. I found this gin to be enjoyable.
• CHX Distillers Ltd.: Altitude Gin
  • CHX Distillers Ltd. is a distillery based in Mont Blanc, France that had previously gained popularity in 2020 due to Craft Gin Club. It was founded in 2017. The company supports sustainability and environmental research with the sale of its gin, and its gin has won awards. Altitude Gin uses local ingredients, such as pine from the Alps, to create unique botanicals.
• Warington's Original Ludlow Gin: Ludlow Spiced Gin
  • Based in Wales near the Welsh-English border, this distillery has been experimenting with creating the best gin for many years now. The Ludlow Spiced Gin is a spiced version of their popular gin.
• Burleighs Gin: Burleigh's King Richard III Gin
  • Based near Leicester, Burleighs Gin distills out of a converted barn and has been in operation since 2014. The King Richard III gin is named after the king who was killed and buried in the area, and it is named after the different ingredients that would have been used in the kitchens of the palace - clove, sage, thyme, mace, etc. 
• Anno Distillers: B3rry Pink Gin
  • Based in Maidstone in Kent, Anno Distillers was founded in 2011. The "B3rry Pink Gin" is inspired by the Kent countryside and uses various berries - strawberry, blackberry, and elderberry - to create the flavour.
• Pennington Spirits: Lakeland Moon Snowfell Gin
  • Founded in the 1990s, Pennington Spirits creates different liquers. The Kendal Mint liquer is one of the first created, more of a hobby. Its success meant the founding of the company and the distilling of other flavours of liquer and gin. Lakeland is their popular gin brand, and it has won awards. A small sample of the Lakeland Moon Snowfell Gin is provided, and this won the silver gin awards and was produced with Craft Gin Club. It is a more refreshing citrus take on the company's gin.
• Warner's Distillery: Sloe Gin
  • Warner's Distillery was created by a farm family who decided to get into the gin business in 2012. The company creates different flavours of gin, and the sloe gin is provided in the advent calendar.
• Pienaar & Sons Distilling Company: Orient Gin
  • This small craft gin distillery is located in Cape Town. The Orient Gin is created using different flavours of Asia, which uses spicy and sweet flavours.
• Whitby Distillery: The Bramble & Bay Edition
  • Whitby Distillery is a new distillery located in the town of Whitby in northern England. The Bramble and Bay edition of the gin uses blackberries and bay leaves to create the flavour.
• Chemist Spirits: American Gin
  • Chemist is located in North Carolina in the U.S.A., and the gin is distilled in the Appalachian Mountains. The botanical ingredients are rose, citrus, spice, and juniper. A full-sized bottle of this gin was provided in the subscription box for the month of July (see post). The gin has won multiple awards.
• Cambridge Distillery: Cambridge Dry Gin - Rosemary & Lemon Verbena Edition
  • Cambridge Distillery is inspired to create gins that are inspired by the English seasons and countryside. In the advent calendar, the Rosemary & Lemon Verbena Edition gin is provided as a sample.
• The Gower Gin Company: GWYR Gin Original
  • The Gower Gin Company is a Welsh distillery. The GWYR is one of their signature gins and is created with foraged local ingredients using the dry gin and citrus flavours.
• Southwestern Distillery: Tarquin's 'The Cornish Christmas' Gin
  • Southwestern Distillery was founded in Cornwall in 2012, and they create colourful bottles of gin. I've previously had their gin, and their gin has won awards and is on sale in many shops. The Cornish Christmas Gin sample is provided.
• Craft Gin Club: Schofe's Winter Gin
  • Craft Gin Club have created a new gin with Phillip Schofield, "Schofe's Winter Gin". A sample of provided in the advent calendar.

In addition to the advent calendar, I purchased the tonics and garnishes ("The Perfect Pairing Advent" selection), and I received a different flavour of Artisan-branded tonic for each gin and four bags of garnishes to be paired with the gins. I received five of each flavour of the tonic: classic, skinny, violet blossom, pink citrus, and Amalfi lime. The garnishes included large bags of: grapefruit, lime, lemon, and orange.

I am looking forward to enjoying a daily gin and tonic each evening, so keep coming back to check out my favourite brands.

I recently met up with a friend in Dorset, and we had a long walk around the estate and a chat. The autumn colour has come later this year, and a lot of the trees have not yet changed much. It is possible that they will simply fall off, or it could be a late autumn like we had in 2019 when the trees finally changed at the end of November. This autumn has been a wet one, but we managed to have a dry day for our walk around the estate at Kingston Lacy. The last time that I visited Kingston Lacy was for the snowdrops walk in 2019! This was my third visit to Kingston Lacy as I had visited twice with friends in 2018 - once during the summer when I toured the house and once at Christmas for their winter illuminations, which were free to members.

The estate walk is approximately three miles long, and it starts off on the edge of the cattle pasture.

I've been into the house at Kingston Lacy twice - once to see all of the rooms and once to see only a few of the rooms that were open and decorated for the holidays in December.

The walk bordered the pasture for awhile before circling around into forest.

As you can see from the photographs, the leaves are starting to change with the orange maple below.

In the forest was a large holly bush full of red berries.

By the time we came near the end of the circular estate walk, it was mid-afternoon and starting to look like it was going to get dark with the sun low. Darkness is the downside to this time of the year.

More posts featuring Kingston Lacy on this blog:

I spent a day at the Country Living Christmas Fair in London this week. The Christmas fair is organised by "Country Living" magazine, and it aims to bring together advice and workshops along with a shopping experience. I visited the fair with a VIP ticket, and this enabled me to do a bit of shopping and put my items in the special cloakroom, enjoy free hot drinks and Prosecco all day, and have a place to sit. As with any of these events, lack of seating and long queues for the food is a problem, so the VIP ticket is worth it. The Christmas fair was held near Angel station at the Business Design Centre.

Workshops can be attended with a cost associated with them, but I did not bother. I had planned to attend some of the discussions and demonstrations, but I ran out of time. There is so much to see, and I spent my time looking around the different sellers between returning to the VIP lounge to have a seat and a glass of Prosecco. 

When I arrived, I took a few minutes to relax and enjoyed a glass of Prosecco and a slice of carrot cake. The drinks were included with the cost of the VIP tickets, but any food was an extra charge. The carrot cake was delicious. I had a lemon tart later in the day, but it was not nearly as nice.

I spent a long time looking around the different vendors. The food items were all located below the VIP area, and it was a smaller space. I purchased some gin, oils, a knife with holes in the blade that cuts through items easier, chocolate, cheese, a cat food monthly subscription, and a subscription for a weekly meal delivery company. There were so many other items to purchase from clothing to jewellery, candles to crafts, decorations to artwork, body care to experiences, home goods to craft supplies. It took the whole day to see everything, and I parted with a small fortune.

I headed back to the VIP area for a late lunch, and I had the thyme chicken and a cold potato salad that came with it. There were a couple of other cold sides that I could have had, but I dislike beetroot and the salad came with dressing.

Overall, I had an enjoyable day looking around the Country Living Christmas Fair, and I did struggle a little bit with heavy bags. Part of the problem was that all VIP members receive a large goody bag on the way out, and it contained a few heavy items. 

Southampton-based Whimsical Kitchen is owned by Jackie, and she creates marshmallow treats. Whimsical Kitchen started in October 2016 and sold at local markets. One of the popular products is rainbow-coloured marshmallows. In 2019, Whimsical Kitchen became very popular, and this trend continued in 2020 with the pandemic. I've been following Whimsical Kitchen since the spring of 2019 and kept failing to order treats until a week or two into October 2020. I ordered rainbow marshmallows, pastel rainbow marshmallows, and a couple of Halloween marshmallows.

The products are Instagram-able! However, you will need a larger cup as the marshmallows are very large! I only had standard-sized cups at the time, so the marshmallows did not really fit. I purchased a large mug in November, but I've not been quick enough to purchase more of the marshmallows since! D'oh!

One of the Halloween marshmallows was a large (too-large-for-the-cup) marshmallow of Jack Skelton from "A Nightmare Before Christmas".

The other item that I was able to order was the candy corn marshmallows. The marshmallows look like the popular American sweet called candy corn, but they do not taste like it; they are vanilla marshmallows cut into a triangular shape, such as the sweet.

I managed to purchase some additional items in advance of Halloween 2021. I purchased "Oh Bloody Hell" chocolate-covered marshmallow in a red velvet flavour, a biscoff chocolate marshmallow bomb, mini marshmallow pumpkins, a pumpkin "tart", a vanilla "tart", Pumpkin whipped marshmallow, and a Eyeball Screwball whipped marshmallow inspired by the sweets. The biscoff one tasted amazing in my hot chocolate! "Oh Bloody Hell" was good, but it was such a pain to eat as the marshmallow kept running out, and the chocolate was very thick on one side.

In February of this year, I ordered some new products as they were doing more chocolate-covered marshmallows, and I love chocolate-covered marshmallows. I ordered a delicious biscoff marshmallow-chocolate on a stick, two packets of the mint and chocolate marshmallows, biscoff marshmallows, sour apple marshmallows, and a white chocolate ice cream marshmallow bar. The only one that I was not too keen on was the sour apple, though I think I should have had it toasted. I was also able to try out the new cup that I purchased last Christmas.

In June, whipped marshmallow was the rage. I tried the whipped marshmallow flavours released. I had Mini Eggs, Hippo, Squashie, Banana, and a toffee flavour.

The marshmallows are delicious and much better than what you can buy in a shop. I hope that I am quick enough in order to purchase more.

Sunday was open day at Eastcote House Gardens, a place that I came to enjoy and visited often during the third lockdown winter months. Sunday marked their open day and features a classic car show, various stalls with items for sale, a bake sale, information about the history of the now-demolished Eastcote House, a plant sale, a book sale, and ice cream truck. The cafe was also open, as it normally is. The dovecote door was open so visitors could look inside, but no one was allowed to enter, and the stables were open with some crafty items for sale and information about Eastcote House Gardens.

The car show is located at the grounds, close to where the demolished house used to stand. The footprint of the house has been laid out in the grass. The event started at 11:00, and by the time I arrived at 11:30, it was already very busy. Unfortunately, the weather was not the best. The day before had been beautiful with warmth and sunshine, but it sadly did not make an appearance today. In fact, the weather was dull and cloudy with rain.

The little kiosks set up in the grounds included plant bulbs for sale, flower clubs, knitting items for sale, and a bake sale with hot drinks and cakes on offer.

One of the little kiosks was selling the book that featured the postbox toppers in the area that I blogged about (Postboxes in Ruislip and Eastcote Have Been Yarnbombed: Postbox Toppers), and there are a few of them on display.

Jazzology provided some live jazz-vocal type music.

The stables or old barn is laid out like a great hall and is a large open plan. This is the first time that I have been inside, and it contained a few tables set up with cards and knitted items for sale, local history information for sale, and history of Eastcote House and Gardens. Objects discovered during various escavations from 2012 to 2017 were also on display, including several pieces of broken pipes, fragments of pottery from different periods, a piece of marble from a fireplace, roof tiles, and pieces of children's toys.

The dovecote door was open to look inside, but it was locked so visitors could only have a look in through a little window. There were a lot of items on display inside, but they could not be read or seen from the distance and angle.

I had a walk around the gardens as I've not been around them too often in the past couple of months. The gardens are still looking lovely with a display of early autumn or late summer flowers. Some winter or spring flowers and roses were starting to re-bloom, or perhaps the weather just hasn't been great this year that they never stopped blooming.

I've often seen the Pinner Flower Lovers' Society miniature boquets on the benches in the garden during my visits, and they had a kiosk on the grounds. A few of the benches included a little boquet.

As the car show was very busy earlier, I decided to walk through again and check out what I did not get to see before due to the crowds. It was still busy, and a few of the cars had left. A couple of new cars appeared. I took some more photographs, and then the clouds opened up.

I would have stayed around longer had the weather been dry, but I decided to call it a day at that time (and when checking to see that the rain was scheduled to continue for the next couple of hours). Perhaps next year will be nicer weather.

Here are more posts about Eastcote House:

Spring Photos at Eastcote House
Eastcote House to Pinner
Eastcote House to Ruislip
Eastcote House at Christmas
Snowdrops, Crocuses and Daffodils in Eastcote

God's Own Junkyard are a company based in Walthamstow that have produced neon artwork and signs that are installed around London (primarily in Soho) for nearly seventy years. Their signs have appeared in several films, such as 'Captain America', 'Batman Begins', 'Tomb Raider', 'Who Killed Roger Rabbit', 'Mission Impossible', 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory', and 'Judge Dredd'. I visited God's Own Junkyard in Walthamstow a few years ago, and I fully recommend it. (You can read about that visit here: God's Own Junkyard). A new exhibition titled 'Electric City' came to Leadenhall Market from the end of May until the end of July this year to showcase the signs.

One of the films highlighted is Stanley Kubrick's 'Eyes Wide Shut'. Pinewood Studios was transformed into New York's Greenwich Village, and actual Manhattan neon signs were recreated for the set. No additional lighting was used in one of these scenes with the glow of the neon lights and Christmas lights offering the only illumination. The sign producers also were on set and got to hang out with Kubrick during the filming at Pinewood Studios. The below window shows signs used in the film.

'Judge Dredd' was another film that signs were made for, and the signs were set up in an unused space. In addition to the signs, the company's founders also appeared in the film as extras.

The final unit of the exhibition showcases the main signs used in other films or some designs offered on sale for the "Electric City" exhibition. I photographed most of them, which can be seen below.

I am a little bit behind on my posting for the past three or four months. I visited this exhibition in early July, and it has since finished.

Cancelled at least twice after booking months in advance and delays due to the pandemic, Adelphi Theatre's production of "Back to the Future" finally opened on Friday after a much-anticipated wait. I saw it on its second day of viewing on Saturday evening. This is the first time that I have been to the theatre since the pandemic; the last time I visited the theatre was in December of 2019, when I saw White Christmas at the Dominion Theatre. 

The play follows the popular "Back to the Future" movie that released in the 1980s with a new cast of music to help tell the story. There have been some adaptations and changes to the story along the way. After all, the musical itself is held on stage with musical numbers, so some of the sets were reused. 

One surprise was the Delorean built for the stage; the Delorean is the iconic part of the franchise, so it plays a part. The actors got a lot of laughs, particularly the actor for Emmett Brown. Jokes were thrown in for good measure with some play off the audience.

In terms of pandemic, visitors are crammed into the theatre without any social distancing rules, so if you're not feeling safe, hold off visiting for now. 

Photography has been a passion for me since I was very young. For one of my birthdays (I may have been eight or ten years old), I received a camera from my aunt. Not to show my age, but this was a point-and-shoot camera that took a roll of film that needed to be processed as a negative. I immediately went out to take photographs around the farm and promptly used up all twenty-four or thirty-six exposures on capturing animals and buildings. Of course, I was unable to see the photographs taken until the film was developed and returned to me, but I was already fascinated with the art of photography to capture moments.

Fast forward through my life and I found myself studying photography classes at university as a part of my degrees with a SLR camera, though I hated developing my own negatives. I was not very quick to adopt the new digital SLR technology as the results were never as good, but I eventually did and currently own a digital SLR that I use to take most of my photographs. With the improvement of mobile phone cameras, I do take photographs on my mobile phone too. With that in mind, photography has been an important part of my life.

William Henry Fox Talbot was a mathematician and chemist who spent time at his home at Lacock Abbey creating the science behind photography, notably the photographic negative and the process of creating many prints from one image. Camera obscuras and painters used smaller light boxes to draw outlines of paintings. Others discovered chemicals that changed colour on paper and other processes for it. A French inventor, Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, made some other advancements and was able to capture a faint image over an eight-hour exposure using an engraved process.

William Henry Fox Talbot moved into Lacock Abbey when he was 27, although he did inherit the property much earlier. Talbot was interested in botany and classical literature, and he would attempt to draw plants. While on honeymoon in Italy, he attempted to draw but was not very good, so he decided to try to invent a way for people who had no artistic talents to create imagery. He started to experiment with different methods in 1834.

The first image was exposed over several hours of the window in the abbey (see my post about Lacock Abbey here to see a photograph of the window). The image was the size of a postage stamp. It was created in 1835, but Talbot did not tell anyone. Niépce, who started to experiment in 1826, created an image in 1837 and told the world. Neither men knew that they were experimenting on the topic, so it was not a race.

Talbot continued to improve the process and discovered that chemicals added to the photographic paper continued to "develop" the invisible image in darkness. The process was named Calotype, and he patented the idea. A printing company was set up in Reading, and over 50,000 prints were produced, but the company was considered a failure.

The museum has several information boards, personal items, and a group of old cameras to see. After visiting the museum, I had a walk around Lacock village and ended up having lunch at one of the pubs. As lockdown was only just partially-lifted, some places were not yet open. Here's a selection of my photographs below.

My final visit was to the Tithe Barn, and it is located in the village. The barn was open to have a look inside. It is empty, but visitors can walk in to see the construction of the building.

That concludes my visit to Lacock. Additional posts about Lacock can be see below:

A Spring Visit to Lacock Abbey (Wiltshire, National Truse): Lockdown Edition
Visiting Lacock at Christmas (National Trust, Wiltshire): Lockdown Edition

After museums started to reopen, I decided to take a day off to spend time exploring some National Trust properties that I had not yet been able to explore as I had only become a member in the summer of 2019. I had the perfect weather for it, and my first stop of the day was to visit Lacock, a property and village that impressed me during a December visit, which you can read more about here: Christmas at Lacock. You may recognise some of the photographs of the abbey and village because it is used as a filming location. Two of the most famous franchises was filmed here: Harry Potter and Downton Abbey.

There are two parts to Lacock Abbey - the older monastary for nuns and abbey and the mansion house. The mansion house was actually built from the monastary. The rooms were re-purposed and extended for private family use. Remaining bits of the abbey can be seen in the cloisters and the rooms leading off of them. In addition to the abbey, visitors can walk around the gardens and wooded areas, explore a museum about photography, and enjoy the shops and facilities that the village has to offer. (The photography museum here focuses on the work of William Henry Fox Talbot, who lived at Lacock Abbey and helped to create the photograph negative to allow the image to be captured and reprinted on paper).

When I arrived at Lacock, I walked by the resident kitty, and he or she relished in some attention.

I had a quick look into the gardens and a walk around the trails to the abbey before it was open for my visit. The spring colour was welcoming after so many wet and cold days and being stuck inside my home for so long.

Unfortunately, many of the rooms off of the cloisters were closed to visitors because of the coronavirus pandemic as they could cause bottlenecks, though no one was around when I visited. I had the place to myself.

I entered the abbey to see what it was like inside. The first room (the Great Hall) was spacious one filled with sculptures floor-to-ceiling. Apparently there is a tradition in this room with one sculpture with a human and a goat. A former visitor balanced a sugar cube on the goat's nose, and the owner thought that this was funny, so a sugar cube is kept on the goat's nose.

Many of the rooms have had walls added or removed from its former days as a nunnery. The below is the Brown Gallery that contains some old paintings and a portrait of the last owner, Matilda Talbot. She donated the abbey to the National Trust in 1944. It was becoming too expensive to maintain.

Off of the gallery is the Pulpit Room, which is where nuns would have eaten and read from the Bible.

This long corridor-looking room was much larger and was the sleeping quarters of the nuns at one time. It has been divided into smaller rooms with a ceiling added. Twenty-five nuns would have slept in this area on straw beds and separated with screens.

This gallery contains the oldest door in the abbey.

The Blue Parlour is where Matilda Talbot would have had afternoon tea, and she painted it the blue colour. It appeared in "Country Living" magazine in 1923. The room was used by William Henry Fox Talbot as his study, and it was filled with books.

The South Gallery was a corridor that separated the guest area from the private area at Lacock Abbey. 

In this room is the famous window that was used to create the first photographic image, dating 1835. The image or a copy of it exists in the museum next door. The light coming in from the window exposed a small lightbox (a small wooden box with a tiny lens inside) placed on a mantle. Over time, this produced an image.

The dining room was the last room before exiting back through the Great Hall. This room contained several paintings. In the octogon space above the door in the below photograph, a portrait of Henry VIII by Holbein was present. It was sold to pay for repairs to the abbey and it has since been lost.

Due to the pandemic, not all areas are open just yet in Lacock Abbey. After visiting what I could, I headed back outside. 

The stables outside of the abbey contain the remains of a brewery, bakehouse, and other work buildings. This is one of my favourite areas of Lacock Abbey because the doors in this courtyard are spectacular.

After my visit to the abbey, I visited the Fox Talbot Museum at the entrance. This little museum details the discovery of photography and the processes of capturing an image through cameras to print. I'll be adding a separate post for this visit. I do recommend a visit to it as it is very interesting. I wonder what William Henry Fox Talbot would think now with almost everyone (at least in first world countries) having almost constant access to a camera on a telephone device that fits in a pocket.

For more posts about Lacock Abbey:

Visiting Lacock at Christmas (National Trust, Wiltshire): Lockdown Edition

We had the first day of summer yesterday, so I thought that I would share several photos of Eastcote House and Gardens throughout the spring. I have found that (so far), Eastcote House Gardens looks the most beautiful in the spring. Early to mid-April was probably my personal favourite time that I have seen the gardens looking their best with tulips and blossom. However, every time that I visit the gardens, there is always something new to see. 

In mid-March, I had a wander from Eastcote House Gardens along the River Pinn to Pinner. The weather was glorious, and it was one of the first sunny and warm days of the year after a spate of weeks of cool and wet weather. I walked down the High Street in Pinner and stopped a Foodie Wuwdies for lunch and enjoyed the weather in Pinner Memorial Park where there is a museum and nice park with a pond and aviary. Someone was playing the guitar and singing "Beatles" songs here. It was a lovely atmosphere, and it was in the middle of the third lockdown. 

In late March, I enjoyed seeing hundreds of tiny yellow daffodils. I had previously written about the larger daffodils, crocuses, and other early spring flowers. The smaller variety seemed to emerge later, so the garden was covered in yellow and purple.

Early April brought the first tulips and blossoms.

A week or two later in mid-April, and the sunshine made all the difference with the garden view and unleashing more beautiful blooms. This was my favourite visit.

At the end of April, the tulips were just passed their prime but still looking lovely. Later types of tulips (purple ones) started to emerge too, and the bluebells were beginning to crop up.

In early May, the tulips were mainly gone, and the garden seemed to be in a state of refresh with some blooms ready to emerge and different colours starting to show. Irises were the primary flowers in bloom.

Here's some photographs taken in late May with the iris flowers and wisteria in bloom.

In mid-June, different iris flowers were in bloom, and the wisteria was almost over. Roses were appearing as well as lavender, and the gardens were looking especially green and lush. 

Here are some additional posts about Eastcote House & Gardens:

Eastcote House to Pinner
Eastcote House to Ruislip
Eastcote House at Christmas
Snowdrops, Crocuses and Daffodils in Eastcote