Sheffield Park Waterlily Festival

We visited Sheffield Park at the weekend with my family. It's our nearest National Trust property and, as we are all members, we visit here lots during the year, watching it all change with the seasons. The property is just a big garden (the house is there but now privately owned and split up into majorly expensive flats I think) with a series of large ponds which culminate into a lake and lots of lovely plants and trees. 

At the moment they are celebrating the beautiful waterlilies on the ponds with their annual waterlily festival. They add decorative waterlily sculptures and trails around the garden, and also install a floating jetty on one of the ponds so that you can get up close and personal with them. Of course the ducks and geese will join you pretty much wherever you go. They are fairly tame here and you can buy duck food for them at the shop - we always take our own proper duck food as the babies absolutely love it! And to be honest, I do too. They will eat out of your hand and climb all over your feet so it can get a bit muddy and messy but it's good fun. If you've got your toes out they are often partial to a toe nibble or two and we ended up putting safety crocs on Baby F so he didn't lose any digits. 

It's such a beautiful place to go and walk round. We like visiting when it's fairly quiet and, as there was lots of rain and a thunderstorm forecast, there weren't many people going round on this particular day. We managed to get most of our picnic in before the rain started, and then kind of hid under the trees for a while to finish it off. Even though it was raining it wasn't cold so we mostly weren't bothered and carried on with our walk for a little while longer - eventually ending up in the main café which is outside of the entrance and back through the carpark but serves the most excellent rhubarb flapjack!!!

If you get a chance to visit this place it is absolutely worth it! Walk down from the entrance to the main pond and go around it towards the left and you'll come across a little shed called The Shant which does excellent hot chocolate and snacks for you to carry around with you or sit and drink in little covered seating huts, then wander around the big lake at the bottom, up the hill to the cricket pitch and over the little bridge...there are so many hidden alleys and walks. If you want to get away from it completely there is a woodland walk away from the main track (somewhere Reece and I went on one of our first dates and spent a long time sitting on logs chatting about anything and everything). Lots of good memories for us here.