Leens, Burg near Groningen, Netherlands

Posted on 20 September 2023 by Katrina

I’m looking back to early June when we were visiting my brother in the Netherlands. On a really hot day we visited Leens Burg. It’s a rather grand manor house, which belonged to the people who owned the farmland in the area. It’s now open to the public and it’s a lovely day out although when we were there the cafe was closed for some reason. That was a bit of a shame as we had planned to have lunch there.

As you can see the house has a moat, it reminded me of the previous house we had visited in Norfolk, it even has the same kind of tiles on the roof, but it isn’t nearly as old as Oxburgh was. There are a lot of similarities between Norfolk and the Netherlands countryside and architecture wise.

Leens is run mainly by volunteers, whoever does the gardening does a great job anyway.

I took a lot more photographs of the interior, below is the sitting room which is a mixture of very grand and quite cottagey and homely. I think the original owner would have been called a gentleman farmer. As you can see the ceiling is just wooden boards, whereas in the UK a house like this would have very ornate plaster ceilings. It’s still lovely though. I’ll blog about the rest of the interior soon.

You can see more images of Leens here.

Prestatyn, Wales

Posted on 20 January 2021 by Katrina

I’m casting my mind back to 2019, the glory days when we could just jump in the car and drive to wherever we fancied. In September of that year we had a bit of a road trip to Wales, part of which was a belated 60th birthday treat for me. We visited Prestatyn, a coastal town where some friends of ours lived. It’s always good to be shown around a place by people who know the area well. We would never have known of the very steep and winding (scary) road which leads high above the town. This very attractive pub is about half-way up, sadly it wasn’t open, but I was able to have a walk around the beautiful garden. The pub is called Eagle and Child, it’s known locally as the Bird and Bastard!

Someone spends a lot of time cutting this hedge.

Considering this was September and is half-way up a hill there’s an amazing amount of colour around. I think Wales does have a very much milder climate than Scotland has. They also call hills mountains for some strange reason.

You get a lovely view looking down to the town and the Irish Sea and over to Rhyl from the top of the hill, but I hope that no drivers actually partake of the booze in the pub, it was bad enough going back down the road with a completely sober driver!

Balbirnie House Hotel, Fife, Scotland

Posted on 27 April 2020 by Katrina

The local posh hotel – Balbirnie House Hotel – has beautiful gardens, and now that it is closed due to the lockdown I felt I could take the opportunity to snap some photos there.

If you feel that you’re hemmed in by four walls I hope these photos will go some way to making you feel a bit cheerier. Just take a big breath in and imagine you are there.

It was a very bright day and the sun made some of the photos look a bit faded.
There’s obviously still a lot of hard work going into the upkeep of the gardens, which is just as well as wilderness takes over so quickly if you don’t put in the effort to keep things trimmed. It’s a shame there are so few people to see it though. I suppose I’m rectifying that a wee bit now.