Somerleyton Hall and Gardens

At the end of September we decided to visit Somerleyton Hall and Gardens:
Somerleyton Hall is a large country house about 12 miles or so from where I live - this was our first visit since we moved here in 2008. For this visit we decided not to pay to go into the house, but just pay for the gardens. I would describe the land more as parkland rather than gardens, although there is a large formal garden to the front of the house.

It was a beautiful, exceptionally hot (for the time of year), clear, sunny day with quite a few visitors considering this was the last day of the season. However we were slightly disappointed with the grounds - there was not enough garden and the formal garden wasn't particularly impressive.

I could see the benefit for a town-dweller visiting these grounds - lots of lovely parkland to walk around, but for us, living in the country, with the Norfolk Broads on our doorstep, I wasn't excited by them. This lead to a less than impressive set of photos as you can see...

The first photo, shown above, is of a small pond set to one corner of the grounds where the public can roam. It was in quite deep shade necessitating changes to the camera settings to cope with the dull light.

There were some quite impressive specimen trees and stands of white pampas grass. The second photo below shows an example.


There was plenty of grassy open spaces between the trees with paths to walk around. It was difficult to get a photo without other visitors appearing in the shot, but occasionally I did manage a couple of views as can be seen below:

Getting the following image without people took a little while as it was popular for visitors to stand by for their own snapshot photos!

The final photo is of this large spreading tree near the entrance to the gardens. It appears to have sprouted many other trees around it from either the roots or branches touching the ground - so it it one tree or many? This photo was taken from within the circle of trees and shows a branch growing down then bending back up to the light. I also love the texture of the bark.


After we finished, we went of to a local pub and had an enjoyable meal in its restaurant before going home.