National Trust

At the beginning of September we were in England to celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary. What we do on these England trips is to (a) go to North Yorkshire to visit my parents graves, (b) go see my sister’s family in Lancashire, (c) go somewhere we haven’t been before, and then (d) end up in Windsor for a couple of days as it’s close to Heathrow and the flight home.

The unknown is made more interesting by visiting National Trust properties, especially those with some old house you can wander around, and that also come with large gardens within which you can go for a walk and get some exercise and fresh air. We’ve been members of The Royal Oak Foundation for over 10 years now, this allows us entry to all National Trust properties.

This year? I perused the guidebook, selected some properties, and off we went, visiting one a day essentially.

The last one we went to was close to Windsor. The name sounded familiar but maybe I was fooling myself since it was close to Dorking, where I went to school eons ago. We checked in and suddenly the path we were taking to get to the house looked … recognizable. And, yes, once we got to the house, we had been there before but couldn’t remember when. Oh well.

The property was Polesden Lacey, and admittedly it did look a bit different because they were renovating the outside. The first time we’d visited was in 2018, our 20th wedding anniversary as it happens.

Polesden Lacey in 2018

Polesden Lacey in 2023

I resolved to make a list of all the properties we’d been to once I got home. It took a little while: some of the properties I could remember their names and where they were, but others just drew a blank. I basically scanned through our photo collection wishing I’d at least taken a photo of the property sign to help, but eventually I managed to list them all.

It turns out that we’ve been to 50 National Trust properties, around 1/7 of them all. Next year? There won’t be any repeat!

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