Tuesday 7 August 2012

Isle of Wight - castles and stately homes toddler style

On our first day on the island we joined Nana and Grandad to visit Carrisbroke Castle and Osbourne House. What do I mean by toddler style? Well very fast through the inside bits, long times waiting in gardens and help climbing lots of stairs.


Charlie really enjoyed the castle, he liked climbing the stairs (holding Mama's hand tightly) and was curious about the canon.


We saw a couple of the 'famous' donkeys (they draw water from the well) but surprisingly he wasn't too fussed, preferring to run around on the grass. I carried him up all the steps in the pic below - it felt like they were never ending at the time, but he loved going into the keep and climbing further to see the flag. Though he promptly complained about the wind and so we started the long descent down again!


As with most two year olds his attention span wasn't too long so whilst Nana and Grandad finished looking around the museum, we sat out on the grass and looked at the Thomas sticker book!


At Osborne House C-bear was a little grumpy and really we shouldn't have tried to do two historical buildings in one day, but apart from a meltdown halfway round the house which meant I never did get to see the upstairs (and I would have loved to have seen the nursery), he was actually on best behaviour.


I fell in love with Osborne House as soon as we arrived and definitely recommend you take a visit! It was built by Victoria and Albert as a private retreat from court life and after Victoria's death was given to the country (and at some point English Heritage) so this is truly Victoria's house as no-one else has used it as a family home. I thought we'd take the boy in the buggy to zip round the house (and maybe he'd take a sneaky nap) but that was not to be as buggy's were banned inside, we did have a nice walk in the grounds which was made better by having the buggy rather then me carrying a grumpy two year old, so definitely worth taking it along. Charlie liked this pig statue:


And I liked the fact that these two aren't a matching pair, a pig and a dog guarding a side door - weird huh!

After his meltdown, C and I spent a long time sitting on this step, excuse the bad photo but I wanted to show off his trainers, I got them in the sale at John lewis and love them - plus they're his first shoes with proper laces rather then Velcro.


And finally a couple of photos from the gardens, they were beautiful, behind the wall there was a gorgeous view to the sea.


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