Cragside

It was unexpectedly hot! Almost too hot in the full sun of the adventure playground. Elizabeth enjoyed doing the 'challenge' as she called it:

Sebastian enjoyed having a go on everything.

Francesca's arm features in the picture above - she was there, honest!

Getting too hot, we moved on to the labyrinth, which I thought might afford us some shade.

Here are the girls approaching the carved wooden statue of a wizard called George, at the start of the labyrinth:

Here they are discovering an elaborately carved throne:

And sitting on it:

We had our picnic in the middle of the labyrinth.

We saw damsel flies, which the children were interested in. Incidentally, we did some map work, looking at the road route round Cragside that we followed to get to the various carparks for our destinations.

This is supposed to be the quintessential Cragside image, with the iron bridge in the background but I'm not sure you can make it out all that clearly.

We had a pleasant stream-side stroll and finished off with ice creams and coffee at the visitors' centre.