Roald Dahl at Tatton Park – The Gardens

June 17, 2016

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Some days you wake up, the sun in shining, there are no plans but you just want to get out somewhere. On days like that more often than not we will head to a National Trust property, we’ve been members for a while and live in the middle of some great places to visit. A few weeks ago I wrote about our trip to Tatton Park – we were going to check out their Roald Dahl celebrations and spent a day exploring Home Farm and the gardens. We arrived just in time for a picnic lunch and even thought we didn’t stop all day we still didn’t have chance to see everything. We’ll be going back to see the house and the rest of the gardens on another sunny weekend – it will be soon as I LOVE the Roald Dahl characters you can spot all over the attraction. It makes a great day out just that little bit more memorable.

If you are a National Trust member you get free entrance into the house and the gardens and half price entry into the farm. Otherwise a family ticket for all three attractions cost £27.00 Everybody has to pay the parking fee of £6 whether you are a National Trust member or not.

We’d spent a few hours down at Home Farm hunting out Fantastic Mr Fox but knowing we probably wouldn’t have time to see both the house and the gardens we decided to visit the gardens as the sun was shining. We had an ice cream pit stop at The Stables, the courtyard area with shops and restaurants which also has a few Roald Dahl surprises, before going into the garden area.

I could probably spend the whole day in the gardens; I really like these big stately home gardens – I kind of wish they were all mine and like to imagine having it all to myself. The Roald Dahl extras make it even more suited to children; we were given a map when we went in which told us to look out for James and the Giant Peach, The Twits and the Danny The Champion of the World Trail (my favourite Roald Dahl book).

The Danny Trail was amazing – you follow sign posts deeper into the gardens and there is a little garage pitstop and caravan before you start the trail with logs to climb over, tyre stepping stones, rope swings and tunnels. At the end of the trail is a pushchair full of pheasants for you to uncover, if you’ve read the story this will make complete sense, if you haven’t it doesn’t matter – the kids love it anyway! We could hardly keep up with Lucas and the twins were determined to do it all too. We spotted a few adults doing it too and I can’t really blame them, there is something about it that makes you want to be a child again.

After the trail we wandered around the rest of the gardens – heading towards the maze and rescuing our boys from the trees. Even though the boys were getting tired they perked up when they saw the maze, the paths were so narrow it felt a bit like a secret garden and there was only us and a few other children in there. We missed out on The Twits, I was itching to go and find it but I think the boys were just too tired, instead we headed to the giant peach pit in the orchard. The boys loved that you could climb into it and if you look through the telescopes surrounding it they each have a scene from the story – we tried out best to piece it together from memory for the boys.

Here are a few of my favourite photos from the gardens – I think the Danny Trail was the best bit, it felt like there was another surprise around every corner. I can’t wait to return!

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Tatton Gardens (23 of 23)

We were given free tickets to Tatton Park in exchange for this review. All words and opinions are my own and we enjoyed it so much that I decided to write it up as a few separate reviews.

This year is a great year for Roald Dahl celebrations and there are things happening all over the country! Penny from A Residence has put together a wonderful map to show all the places you can visit with a Roald Dahl theme, including Tatton Park. Why not see if there is anywhere near you?

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4 Comments

  • Memeandharri

    My girls would love this!!! We are not too far from Tatton Park but for some reason haven’t been. Definitely one to try in the holidays xx

    June 17, 2016 at 6:31 pm Reply
    • hayleyfromhome

      We were the same as you – it’s only about 40 mins for us and we’d never been! I’d really recommend it – there was so much to do xx

      June 20, 2016 at 12:38 pm Reply
  • Karen (@karenjwhitlock)

    This looks fab! Freyja is enjoying the Roald Dahl stories now and would love this!!

    June 19, 2016 at 5:34 pm Reply
    • hayleyfromhome

      The twins loved it anyway but we’ve read Lucas Fantastic Mr Fox so he really loved that bit at the farm! It was a lot of fun xx

      June 20, 2016 at 12:40 pm Reply

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