Scuppered Plans

When the warm weather was with us, we took to walking Archie early morning and later on in the day, when the sun had lost a bit of its heat. It isn't only Archie who struggles in the midday sun, walking during the hottest part of the day isn't much fun for me either. It's been much cooler this week but we've still been walking at different times to usual.

On Tuesday, we decided to visit Temple Newsam, one of our regular walks. I thought it would be nice to show you the walled garden and how colourful it's looking. We arrived about 5pm and just as we were walking towards the gates we were met with a loud "Closed" from a groundsman who was approaching us to lock up. I didn't realise that the walled garden actually closed. It seems we'll have to revert to walking a little earlier if we want to visit this part of Temple Newsam.

Instead, we walked back up towards the house and decided to take a look around the back, an area we don't often visit on our walks. Archie enjoyed having a sniff around.

This is where you'll find the south garden, a formal 17th century design with beech and box hedges, trained laburnum arches and a pleached hornbeam walk.

It's all looking very green at the moment, not much colour about, but I did manage to find a few flowers in the border directly in front of the house.

I was saying to Mick that I can hardly remember what the inside of the house looks like now, I was just a little girl when I last took a look around.

Temple Newsam has featured heavily in my life. From the time I was two years old, our family home was within walking distance so we visited often, and as I was growing up, because we lived so close, I visited with friends. We'd walk or we'd ride our bikes. There was countryside surrounding the grounds but since then, so many new homes and businesses have been built around the area and there's such a lot of traffic. You wouldn't dream of allowing children to wander around by themselves now, how times have changed. We now live a short car ride away from Temple Newsam.

I just love hydrangeas but it's only a recent thing, they're a flower which has grown on me over the years.

Can you see all the seed pods hanging from the laburnum? I'd meant to visit this garden over the past few weeks as the laburnum walk looks fabulous when it's in bloom but I completely missed it. It's something to put in the diary for next year.

The warmer weather is supposed to be returning this weekend but looking at the forecast, it seems to be missing us. It looks like we're in for a bit of sunshine, cloud and rain. more of the same then.