Audley End House and Royston Caves

What a chilly, grey day!! Rugged up and prepared with a thermos of warm coffee we made tracks to Audley End House, which isn’t too far from Sue and Patrick’s. It’s a lovely old stately home with huge gardens which members of the public are welcome to look around. Today when we arrived there were women doing reenactments of the yester-year, all dressed up and making Rhubarb pie, scones and butter the old school way, it was all very cool and what’s even better about all this is, is the fact that they were making all these goodies for a children’s picnic that was happening later in the day. It was a nice little touch and really brought the place alive. They told stories as if they were back in the 1800s and it was a lot of fun.

The house itself was impressive, many paintings of the lords and ladies of the day and the generations of those who had owned it. At one stage the King and Queen were said to be coming to stay at the house, so it was all done up and staff put to work, but then after spending so much money in doing this, the royals changed their mind and decided not to come, I guess if you’re the King of the country you can do that! The most beautiful part of the whole house though was the gardens. These were lovely, big and spacious. They have a veggie garden that was set up in the 1800s and is still bearing fruit and veg today. A stream and small waterfall ran through the lawns and there were lovely big old Oak trees all around. It was such a nice place to sit and relax and take it all in.

Though it doesn’t sound as if we saw much it took hours to get around the entire complex and gardens and we had to make tracks to Royston Caves as it was close to closing. We made it to this destination with half an hour to spare and if I’m going to be honest, this attraction has been one of my very favorite during our entire trip. It’s just a small cave about 30 mts underground and it has carvings all around the walls of various different historical figures ranging from St Christopher, Christ on the cross, an angel sitting at an empty tomb, St George with a cross pointing up towards the 12 disciples and another with a hand extended with a dove flying out representing the day of Pentecost, and what’s more is that these carvings were hand chiseled way back in the 1000AD by the Knights Templar. All very very impressive and just mind boggling to me.

I loved these caves. This cave was made in secret and was also a meeting place for the Templers, it wasn’t actually found until the 1700s. It was just very amazing and I had a sense of peace and calmness over me as we stood in the cave and I could have stayed a lot longer, if it weren’t so bloody cold! We head home then for an early night and one where Chris and I began to pack up packs once more as tomorrow we’re headed out on a road trip to Snowdonia and the Lake district, something we’re very very much looking forward too!!

written by

Chris and Emily on May 4, 2009 from Royston, United Kingdom

from the travel blog: Europe 2009

Send a Compliment

comment on this...