Stowe landscape gardens

On Sunday Chris and I wanted to escape the lack of kitchen in our house, and make the most of the sunshine so we packed a lunch (nothing cooked, due to the non-existent nature of our kitchen at that point), got into the car and headed off to Stowe landscape gardens.

The gardens are run by the National Trust, and are on the site of Stowe school, near to Buckingham. I'd love to have those gardens as the surroundings of my school, and to be able to walk amongst all of the temples in the gardens, and the sheep on the grounds.

 Here's the first lovely temple within the gardens. 

And here's Chris peeking out from one of the pillars...

Cobham's Pillar - though we thought they missed a trick and should have called it Cobham's Column..

Here are a couple of the sheep that managed to resist the urge to run over and give me their fleece.. How cute is the little lamb :)

We stopped to eat our picnic lunch by this lovely fountain, and enjoyed the view over a small lake while sitting in the sunshine on the bench, thoroughly pleasant!

I'm pretty sure this is the bridge featured on the front of the National Trust weddings brochure.. Very picturesque. From the bridge we saw this:-

 

There were several Grebes bobbing about, but they kept diving as soon as anyone tried to take a picture, so I couldn't catch more than one at a time!

All in all Stowe landscape gardens were a lovely retreat from the chaos that was our house (it's becoming less chaotic, as will be revealed in a couple of days) and I think the sunshine and gentle exercise did us both the world of good.