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Wednesday 25 January 2017

Through the Rabbit Hole at Erddig House

 
 
On Sunday we packed up a picnic and drove to Wales to visit Erddig House near Wrexham. We wanted to do the Alice in Wonderland trail there before it finishes at the end of January. The house itself is closed for the winter, but the garden has been turned into Wonderland by a team of artists and sculptors and they have done a lovely job. I love the book, so I tried to bring the story alive for them as we walked around the garden. Emma is a particularly imaginative child who delights in make-believe and she thoroughly enjoyed pretending to be small after drinking from an imaginary 'Drink Me' bottle and then being quite anxious to find the sculpture of the caterpillar so we could eat some of the mushroom to grow big again. We had a really lovely time following the trail through the garden and the Mad Hatter's tea party was wonderful. It thoroughly delighted my sense of whimsy and Emma and Alex in particular loved pretending to eat the very realistic pretend cakes.
 
It was a very cold day, so we were very glad of our hot winter picnic. We warmed up with tea, soup and sausages in the car park before climbing back in the car and heading back home.  I thoroughly enjoyed our trip to Wonderland and we intend to go back in the warmer months and explore the house and estate further.
 
This bold little chap hopped into the ticket office and explored behind the counter whilst we were in there and then posed beautifully for me outside.

There was a dress-up area, so Emma was in her element

There were distorting mirrors to make you appear bigger and smaller, like Alice in the story. Alex really loved these, especially the one that made him bigger.

Two little caterpillars

I'm late, I'm late!






Alex thought the Cheshire cat was a tiger...Emma found it rather scary!

 
She's getting so grown-up this one!


Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum


 

Alex looking longingly at the pretend cake and, I suspect, wishing it was real!

The Mad Hatter's tea party was so beautifully laid out and was my favourite part of the trail.




This squirrel was having the time of his life on the bird feeder!

Painting the roses red

A winter picnic. Tom was very cold and opted to sit in the car.

 

1 comment:

Ann Kay said...

Looks a great day out. Our neighbours daughter had an Alice in Wonderland themed wedding and it was brilliant, complete with mad hatters hat for a wedding cake, a table as we went in with all kinds of jars of sweets on it that said "eat me", the table decorations she had done with all shapes and sizes of teapots, cups, sauces all fastned and glued together and decorated with flowers.
At the moment cannot get my e-mail to to work otherwise I would have sent you a few photos.