As we received a National Trust membership for Christmas, we have been aiming to visit as many properties and locations as possible. Thanks to the move and the slightly disappointing time we have been having housing and health wise this hasn’t been achieved to its fullest potential, so we are giving it our all before Christmas if we can.
Croft Castle was the first of a run of these undertaken, and here’s what we thought:
Entered via a very long single track driveway down into the parkland, you instantly get the feeling of how vast and extensive the parkland is. Situated deep within the countryside it is surrounded by vast amounts of mostly unspoiled beauty. The car park is situated slightly ahead and to one side of the main house.
The grounds are very clean and tidy, well presented and welcoming. With various different areas to explore, including a walled garden, various other gardens, a chapel, many walks and the main house of course.
The house has 1000 years of history, which I shall not spoil, if you want to know more about the history/background you can ready it at the National Trust’s page here. The children enjoyed that it was not roped off inside, meaning they could get right up to everything and see it all. In the main house there was even a little “spot it” type guide for the children to draw interest and focus in each room (this was for fun, and as such was free).
As it is the UK Summer Holidays, there was also a fun trail (with prize) for the children to do, which had them going from one place to another to find clues, puzzles or riddles to untangle, or tasks to perform, and get an answer sorted on their trail booklet. Once all was finished they were able to choose a prize (this was at an additional cost of around £2 on top of the entry fee per child). It was well thought out, very well sign posted and very clear for them to do. They really enjoyed it.
We can make no comment about the eateries on site as we did not utilise them. But we did see a cool little park (where they’d even built a mini castle). The toilets near the cafe/park were clean and well equipped.
The site was accessible for a wheelchair on the most part, and seemed quite family friendly. If your children like exploring and don’t need things to be overly stimulating to enjoy. If they like things to be electronic and very interactive then it is perhaps not the place for them.
A Pleasant Chaos 
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