National Trust challenge

When I was a student and able to skive off every so often, Jeff and I used to take advantage of mid-week skives and visit a number of National Trust and English Heritage properties. We both loved learning about History and liked getting out in the fresh air so it combined both!

Sadly I started working about a few years ago and as a Consultant, was sent all over the UK and lived away from home - this sadly meant that we only had weekends to visit stately homes and impressive monuments and towards the end of our relationship, other things seemed to become more important so the day trips sadly tailed off.

The list of places we went to was huge and to be honest, I doubt either of us could remember how many we went to and what they were called. A number do stand out - including Traquair House in Scotland (we were lucky enough to stay there) and Fountains Abbey, which is in Yorkshire and an exceptionally impressive ruined abbey which I fell in love with when I saw it.

We also went to Warkworth Castle in Northumberland which apparently was once home to 'Harry Hotspur', hero of many Border ballads and the bane of Scots raiders. All the photographs you see on all the blogs are mine BTW, I fancy myself as a bit of an amateur photographer and thankfully Jeff fancies himself as a very laid back kind of bloke so is more than happy to let me snap away as much as I want - Another thing I never appreciated when we were together the first time. Some people get quite impatient when you're stood there for a few minutes adjusting various controls, changing lenses etc. When in Northumberland we also visited Alnwick and Bamburgh - both of which are stunning and far more impressive than a lot in the South of England. Apparently there are over 70 castles in Northumberland - even we didn't manage to do all of them (well, not yet, anyway!).

The last place Jeff and I went to was in June 2009 (4 months before we split up) and was Scotney Castle which isn't a castle, but in fact 2 beautiful houses which were built in 1837.

As a 'new us' I suggested to Jeff we do them all over again and he doesn't think it's such a bad idea :-) So, this begins the 'National Trust Challenge' which entails us going to as many National Trust places in 2011 as possible - that, combined with our holidays and random jaunts (e.g. the National Cheese awards) should prove very interesting!

- Molly