Bluebells at Rufford Abbey

Spring brings us a time when the countryside and woodlands are filled with beautiful bluebells, these enticing blue flowers carpet the ground between the trees and make theses places even more inviting to explore.

With sunshine a plenty, we ventured over to the wonderful Rufford Abbey, it is a favourite spot of ours and as it's just 20 minutes up the road from us, it is a great place to head out for some time outside. With woodland, a ford, plenty of bird spotting opportunities, a park and gardens there is so much to do.

We headed out into the woods in search of some old logs on the woodland floor, they are great places to find bugs and little creatures, especially this time of the year as they start to come out of their winter slumber.

The woods are a great opportunity to explore and capture some beautiful moments, both of my children love to run and jump about, finding old tree stumps to stand on, we even found a tree that had fallen over and it was a beautiful opportunity to capture some family photos.

This time of year, as the trees start to unfurl their new leaves it and a wave of green washes over the land, is a great time to get out into the fresh air and embrace the outdoors.

After we'd spent an hour exploring the bluebells and woodland, we headed down to our other favourite spot, the ford, for a spot of car watching, we had a warm sausage roll for lunch and then headed back round the lake to park.

The park is always a hit with the children, who love to run through the tunnels and play in the sand. We took a wander back up to the abbey itself, underneath, there are rooms which were once home to the monks and staff who lived and worked in the once great house that also stood there. It's a great place to stop and learn about the history of the abbey and its visitors over the years, which included Charles II.

Wherever you live, I would highly recommend a visit to one of this countries many bluebell woods, last year we visited Bunny Wood and that was a true delight, with a vast blanket of bluebells to explore. I never appreciated them when I was younger, even though the woods near where we used to have a caravan were covered in them. Maybe like a lot of things in life they are something to be appreciated as you get older.

Hello Spring...Out in the Garden

So unless you have been living under a stone or in a part of the country it isn't sunny you will have noticed that recent days have been truly wonderful, sun shining and blue skies with a little bit of a chill.

Perfect weather for being out and about and today as we went to hang out our Pinata Box Bird Feeder we also took the time to look at the garden, the bulbs sprouting, the moss and everything in between.

I think even just spending half an hour in the garden is good for the soul, there is so much to see and as it grew a little colder and darker it was nice to come in and have a lovely hot chocolate to warm those little hands.

First we found this bone, my son thought it was a dinosaur bone and although I hated to shatter his vision I told him it was probably from a lamb (we have a few neighbours who leave meat out for the cats/foxes)

We also found this nest that had fallen out of a tree, my sons face was a picture.

Looking under rocks for bugs we found some little roots from trees and seeds.

We had a look at the moss on the rocks and touched it to see how it felt....furry apparently ;)

I'm not sure how this got here, I am assuming someone made it for their children that used to live here with some fern leaves and concrete.

Next we had a look at the castor oil plant, these leaves are very Jurassic, they are huge so this thrilled my dino loving son.

We also  these found these 'helicoptors' from the ash tree, one had a little root growing from it so this was exciting to see.

And finally we found some gorgeous lichen on the apple tree and a beautiful pink heather which we think look like little bells.

There are some really wonderful things in the garden at the minute, coming into life as the sun starts to heat everything up.