Up north or bust Our tour of Northumbria and the East Coast 8th - 10th June

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Saturday 8th to Monday 10^th   

We are traveling across to St Ives where at some stage our son will come down and join us.  A meandering route across which takes us past the National Trust Ickworth House. Now if you have scanned the blog regularly, you’ll know that me and the boss like calling in at NT properties. We have an annual membership and its well-used most years.

Ickworth House and gardens are stunning. Lots to see and talk about. An Italianate palace for a start! 100 acres of parkland, formal gardens. So much to see and do. It was worth a visit just to see the Rotunda!

Our site for the next few nights is Wyton Lakes Holiday Park. Many of the pitches back onto lakes – so if you are a fisherman – paradise! It was a pleasant site but we thought a bit more expensive than we normally pay – but at the time our best choice for various reasons. Friendly wardens, clean facilities, a Dobbies garden Centre restaurant and a small Waitrose across the road. Bus stops to Cambridge 200 metres along the road. We liked it.

We do another National Trust call in on the way to the site – Anglesey Abbey House. This was the home of Lord Fairhaven who transformed a run down country house and desolate landscape. And, boy, did he do it well! He was passionate about impressing his guests – wanting to inspire and surprise them – so a spectacular garden, a cosy house and a restored watermill. 1930’s luxury for his guests!

Lord Fairhaven lived at Anglesey Abbey from 1926 until his death in 1966. There is an eclectic collection of antiquities dating from the early Tudor period through to the 1960s. However, the building has a long and fascinating history that stretches back nine centuries.

From the National Trust pages – “Anglesey Abbey is believed to have been founded by Henry I in 1135 as the Hospital of St Mary. In the early 13th century, it was converted into a priory of Augustinian canons (despite its name, it was never strictly speaking an abbey). The canons' way of life ended abruptly in 1536 when Henry VIII began the Dissolution of the Monasteries”.

The Abbey then passed through several families, the Hyndes’s, Fowkes, Hobson’s and Parker’s. “In 1734,  the leasehold was bought by Sir George Downing (3rd Baronet), the founder of Downing College in Cambridge. Downing Street is named after his grandfather, the 1st Baronet (also called Sir George Downing). The 1st Baronet was largely responsible for the British acquisition of New York City from the Dutch. Samuel Shepheard MP owned the house from 1739-78. Shepheard was a wealthy merchant who served as director of the new East India Company and headed the South Sea Company. The Reverend John Hailstone, vicar of the neighbouring parish of Bottisham, bought Anglesey Abbey in 1848. He made several changes to the building, demolishing surviving masonry from the monastic buildings to create a stable block, and removing the Jacobean dormer windows from the front of the house. He was probably responsible for naming the house Anglesey Abbey”.

Up the road from Wyton lakes, within an easy walk, is the lovely old mill at Houghton. Yep, you guessed it – another National Trust property. But what makes this one special – is it is an actual working mill and luckily on the day we visit – millers are in the house – so to speak!

What a fascinating demonstration and chat with one of the millers. To feel the warm flour fresh out of the mill process. Although it’s run by electric now, the creaks and grinds of the various blocks and tackles and mill stones gave a realistic ‘atmosphere’ to the visit.

 And its here that we end our tour! We started almost six weeks ago in Plymouth! We travelled all the way up to Hadrian’s Wall and then back down the East coast of the UK. I haven’t bothered to tot up the mileage or the expenditure on this trip. We had a blast and saw so much of our fair country that we haven’t seen before!

And that’s the great beauty and privilege of owning a motorhome and having the time to do such trips, isn’t it!