Fifty shades of Spring

It's been another hectic week over here at Pennypincher cottage.  I bagged some charity shop bargains, we've had a visit from an architect, a new shed has been installed in the garden, and the chicken run is almost finished.  We watched an eclipse on Friday morning and popped over to our favourite National Trust properties, Baddesley Clinton and Packwood House afterwards.

First, the bargains, managed to grab this full length Scottish made pure wool ladies kilt for just £1.99, the lovely Jocasi bright Spring green leather bag was a pound, as was the tie dye Gringo bag, and the pretty and solid glass pendant was just 99p. 

OH and I planned a well needed day out on Friday but we hung around at home long enough to watch the eclipse and take a couple of photos.  It wasn't total, but the chance to see anything at all with England's unpredictable weather was a bonus!

The sun was indeed smiling on us!

Off we went to Baddesley Clinton, with packed lunch.  A lovely young National Trust guide took our photo in front of the house.

 I'm wearing old grey check coat from Debenhams sale years ago, Fatface grey leather boots - ebay, grey leather gloves - Christmas gift (but were from Lidl), old Primark dark denim jeggings, silk tie dye scarf - charity shopped and my new green leather charity shopped bag.

We had a wander around Baddesley's lovely gardens and the pretty little church on the estate, St Michaels, where I found this headstone

I know it is inevitable but still slightly creepy!

Anyway, back to Baddesley, here's a few pics for you

Those ducks in front of the main house are actually asleep, they soon woke up when we got the duck food out!

In an attempt to get at the food we had, one duck circumvented the crowd and walked along the bridge,she was thwarted!

 

We had to get quite close to this scarecrow before we realised he wasn't alive

These sheep near the church were particularly noisy

We saw very few Spring flowers out, a lot less than I thought, seeing as we have plenty of daffodils out at home.

After a sandwich and cup of tea with cake and biscuits, we drove over to Packwood House, which is just two miles down the road.  One of the things Packwood is famous for is sundials, I have no idea how many there are, but there are lots!  The writing reads "Septem Sine Horus" which I think means that there are seven hours where the sundial cannot tell the time because there is no sun (on the longest day), although there are only eight hours marked on this particular sundial anyway.  You can see I took the photo at almost 2pm.

This is my favourite corner of Packwood

The two storey outbuilding, gate in the wall, bench, wrought iron staircase and hidden oven (see pic below) this corner has everything!

I do love a good gate, and Packwood has plenty of them, these are particularly fine

Another lovely gateway, I do like the anticipation you feel when approaching a gate, where does it go to?  The water trough, half hidden behind foliage, is solid lead, huge and monogrammed.  You know you are someone when your water troughs have your initials on them!

Benches, ahh I love a good bench!

OH struggles with clearance on some of the doorways

Packwood is most famous for it's clipped yew trees, representing the Sermon on the Mount.

I was pleased to get the famous house-peeping-through-the-yew shot! Not a tourist in sight either, despite the place being really busy

We had a great day out in the glorious Spring sunshine, but it's back to work for OH, and I need to crack on with work on the house and garden.

Linking up with Patti's Visible Monday!!!