Ickworth House

Last week we drove out to Suffolk to spend 3 days holiday at a rather knockout stately home Ickworth House. To say it was amazing does not do it justice it was majestic and otherworldly.

Ickworth house was originally the home of the 1st Earl of Bristol,
the main building 'the Rotunda' pictured here was commissioned by the 4th Earl inspired by his travels through Italy and Rome. Building begun in 1795 and completed after his death in 1803.

The hotel accommodates the East wing of the property renovated and converted to a grand luxury style family hotel. Here is the entrance....

The view from our bathroom window with a panorama of the estate parkland beyond...

This view shows the conservatory (left side) where we would eat our meals -not bad eh!

A striking old Cedar tree.

As one can imagine we all had a brilliant time, living like aristocrats but the best thing was how great a time Olive had. The facilities were superb with loads of stuff to do from swimming, riding bikes around the estate and 2 playgrounds -and that was just for the dad's!

Olive got involved....clambering through tunnels...

...Driving lessons!

Cheeky little thing!

Although the biggest hit for Olive without a doubt was the trampoline. Olive got stuck right-in with the bouncing and could not get enough of it! A brilliant piece of apparatus inducing euphoric screams of excitement, great exercise and get's them good and worn out for bed time! The Smalls got herself some air and impressed us greatly with her natural bouncing skills!

Tried to post a nice video of my monkey bouncing about but it would not upload -argh! However, I did manage to upload a little video of Olive signing her ABC's and a nice rendition of Bah, Bah, Black Sheep (need to turn up the volume a bit):

The fun continuous with Mummy and Smols workin' the "death slide"!

Short and sweet, all-in-all we really had a great family holiday.

(had to get that macro bee shot in there!)