I’ve always wanted to visit Beatrix Potter’s home Hill Top, in the Lake District. So imagine my disappointment when we drove into the car park and read a notice which said it was closed on Fridays – yes, it was Friday. I can’t really complain because it does have a key at the bottom of the National Trust book which makes it clear that it’s closed on Friday – but why is it? It’s such a popular place, we weren’t the only people who were hoping to get in that afternoon. Well I suppose we’ll go back another time. Of course, the NT shop WAS open! Anyway this is a photo of Hill Top, Beatrix Potter’s home.

It’s quite a modest looking house, when you consider how rich she must have been, she was often mistaken for a tramp by visitors because she really wasn’t bothered what she looked like. When my mother-in-law was in the Brownies in the late 1920s her pack camped near this area on Potter land and Beatrix met them and gave them signed copies of her books.

These photos look quite faded but that is how it looked, it was a bit misty and the grass looked almost yellow as it had recently been covered with loads of snow.

The house above is the nearest one to Hill Top and this is the view which Beatrix would have from the front of her house.

This teeny bit of walled garden is to the left hand side of Hill Top. It looks like the original Mr McGregor’s garden, much smaller than I had imagined it to be.

Below is the view you get looking to the left of the gate.

And below is the view of the right hand side of the garden.

And look who else was there, just on the other side of the wall there were some descendants of Peter Rabbit, not at all bothered about us, too busy munching.

Some sheep were in the same part of the garden, complete with their lambs. It seems to me that being a ewe is quite a hard life, lambs are fairly aggressive, nothing was going to stop them from getting their milk.

So we’ll have to go back and try again because I want to see the interior as the furniture which features in the book illustrations is still in the house.

We bought fudge and raspberry curd at the shop. I had only eaten lemon curd before but I recommend the raspberry curd – delicious.