Exploring More of Newstead Abbey

Last weekend we visited one of our favourite places in Nottinghamshire, Newstead Abbey. We have been so many times now and each time, we usually walk around the same bits. This time though, we spotted the old cannon fort on the other side of the lake and decided to take the muddy walk over to see the abbey from a different perspective, as well as seeing this wonderful old piece of history.

When you hear about a cannon fort, you probably wonder how much navel defence was required in landlocked nottinghamshire, but the real purpose of the fort was as a play thing for the 5th Lord Byron, along with his fleet of miniature vessels. The lord would fire real cannonballs at the ships. which were crewed by his unlucky servants. According to the staff, none of the servants were hurt but I can imagine it still being a frightening experience.

I only slipped over once as we headed through the muddy forest, much to my husbands amusement. Along the way, my daughter picked up twigs, trees and plants for her nature project which she happily carried in her jelly bag. 

It was fun to explore a piece of the abbey we hadn't seen before, and it would be good to go back, maybe on a less muddy day next time. When we got to the cannon fort though it was well worth the wobbly trek over, you can only begin to imagine what this would have looked like back in its time.

The view from the other side of the lake was amazing and one we've never seen before and possibly very few people who visit do, I absolutely love the idea of this eccentric Lord playing real life battleships here.

Each part of Newstead feels as though it has been made with the view in mind and it is always a pleasure to take pictures there.

Afterwards, we headed to the rose garden to eat our picnic, the children had a quick game of hide and seek and then played on the park, before we moved onto our favourite spot, the Japanese Water Gardens. We love this place, the sound of running water, the shapes of the trees and stone decorations and there is always time for the children to role play some ice cream selling from the wooden hut.

It was great to find something new in one of our favourite places to visit, hopefully this post might inspire other visitors to go in search of the magical cannon fort too.

Visiting the Major Oak

Nottinghamshire has a lot of history, one of it's most famous residents of course, was Robin Hood. If you are visiting the area then one of the most likely places to be on your must see list is the Major Oak. This beautiful piece of forest is filled with the most majestic oak trees and the one everyone wants to see is the Major Oak.

At between 800-1000 years old, it is now held up by supports, but this is only to help it live longer! On our visit there, we learnt about oak trees, how they take 300 years to grow, live for about 300 years and then die over 300 years, the supports on the Major Oak help this process and mean the tree stays here for people to enjoy for much longer.

Oak trees are beautiful, the shapes they form and their leaves are unmistakeable, some of the older trees in this forest have bands on them to help them stay alive.

We looked at the tree stumps to see if we could figure out how old the trees had been when they fell, there were lots of information points, to help us learn about the wildlife and we saw lots of fungi.

Some of the stumps had been made into fairy houses, we loved this sign that told you not to poke things into the trees trunk as it is a home to many little creatures.

On a few of the trees there were these fab faces made from clay, feathers, twigs and leaves, we are definitely going to give these a try!

Onto the major oak itself, you can't really tell from the pictures the size of the tree, but believe me,  it is big.

The trunks on oak trees are hollow yet the outside keeps on growing, the hole in the trunk here an adult could get through standing up, the reason for the fibre glass on part of the trunk was due to some ignorant person trying to burn it down and this will stop any mold setting in.

This weekend there was an archer talking about the bow and arrows that Robin Hood and the knights of the crusades would have used, he gave an awesome display of archery.

He then went on to tell us about the different arrows, allowed the children to try holding the sword and went on to tell us about the battle of Agincourt. It was really interesting and gave an insight into the world of Robin Hood.

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