The bluebells at Blickling Estate

The weather was awful when we woke up this morning - raining, cold and with an icy wind. We decided to avoid the coast for walks and rather go inland, so after breakfast we went to Blickling Estate, a National trust property near Holt that has an impressive Jacobean mansion house and extensive grounds. I had seen on social media that the bluebells were good there this year (I tend to use social media as a photographic reference source).

The wind was not so fierce there although it was cold. I was grumpy about the cold weather, by the end of April I don't expect to be wearing warm jackets and a woolly hat. When we phoned Tommy and he said it was sunny and a lovely day at home, so I was more than tempted to pack up and just drive home!

The bluebells were worth the visit. We had a long walk over the parklands to find them in the woods, and despite signs saying that in the areas where they were most dense they had put up a rope barrier to prevent people from walking amongst them and crushing them, so please to stay behind the barrier, and to please keep dogs on leads in this area, there were countless idiots walking amongst the bluebells taking stupid selfies with their dogs bounding about crushing all the bluebells. As I was in a grumpy mood I told one man off for trudging through the bluebells while his two hyperactive Spaniels were bouncing about all over the flowers. If you crush bluebells their leaves die and then the plants cannot photosynthesis so the flowers die off.

More than half the world's bluebells are found in the UK. The staff at the estate said there were over 4.3 million bluebells plants on the estate (not sure how they know that!) but there was a wonderful display of them. In the extras Xena was let off her lead to sit in front of the bluebells, at no point was she bounding all over them!

After we left the estate we went to Holt for lunch, where we had a delicious lunch at The Snug. Holt is a charming town, full of interesting original shops, cafes and restaurants and is well worth a visit.

By now it was sunny, and I took a few more photos of rapeseed fields on the way home.

A Gentleman in Moscow on Paramount was superb, Ewan McGregor plays the role of the count just as I had pictured him to be from reading the book.