Saturday night when I got home from seeing some friends in London, hubby and I had a quick chat about what we wanted to do the following day. Checked the weather forecast and Sun all day! Brilliant. We got out our National Trust handbook and started looking at where is open during February that isn’t too far away.

Belton House is somewhere that I remember going to a lot as a kid – in the summer it has an amazing Adventure playground which Monkey will love as he gets older. I *think* these pics were taken there in the early 90’s – I’m sure it has changed a bit since then though!

Anyway, back to this weekend and the house and adventure playground are closed at this time of year but there is still a lot to see, so we decided to head on up and make the most of the day. It’s near Grantham so only about 40 mins away from us which is easily doable.

It is a beautiful house set in some amazing grounds -and we had a lovely time exploring the gardens…

…the maze…

…and the rest of the grounds. There is a lot of snowdrops blooming too which is just so lovely and very picturesque.

They have a fantastic ride and play cafe but unfortunately it was really busy today as they had a party booking and we couldn’t get a table, they do have another lovely restaurant though so we had lunch there. Monkey loved his pea soup!

We had a bit more of an explore after lunch and then little Monkey got tired leggies so had a piggy back on the way back to the car. I asked Hubby to try and get some piccies of Monkey and I as I am usually the one snapping away and we don’t have too many of us together. Clever Daddy got some great pics of us so I am very pleased.

There are a lot of deer on the estate too but we only saw them from the car so no pictures I’m afraid! We had a fantastic day though and will definitely have to go back as there is plenty more that we didn’t get to see.