Easter Egg hunt at Upton House

It’s been a while since I’ve been to our nearby National Trust property, Upton House. And a few years since I took N for a Cadbury easter egg hunt there. The first time we took N’s youngest cousin with us, and this time we invited him along too.  At 8 he’s still willing to look for Easter eggs, and he and N always love being out and about together.

With my family membership I could get the nephew in too, so we only had to pay the £3 each for the Easter egg trail.

We’ve never really done the woodland walk before, but it’s definitely something we’ll do again. The easter egg trail followed it round, and while the boys enjoyed spotting the clues and doing the activites, they were more interesting in playing on the natural play areas. With logs to balance on and jump over they were in their elements challenging each other.

There are also some willow tunnels and they discovered some other hidey hole ‘dens’ to hide from me in.

The easter egg trail itself was answering nature questions and taking part in nature based activities. So we added to a spider’s web, a birds nest and an insect hotel.  Both boys refused to have their photos taken to go on the Upton House website – nothing like woods to explore to make boys run off from having their photo taken!

After completing the trail I managed to get them to continue walking round the grounds.  I was disappointed to see that the mirror lake was still not open after being closed for winter to rebuild some bits and clean it up.  I thought I’d read it would be reopened for the start of the season but it’s obviously running late which is a shame. I’ll have to come back once it’s opened to see the new 1920s exhibitions in the house as well.

The biggest draw for the boys was the various slopes around the house. They were quite happy rolling down them, and then pushing each other down a ‘drop’.  Thankfully no injuries, so letting them run a bit wild was fine on this occasion.

Afterwards it was time for a quick drink before heading back via the woodland walk to collect their easter treats. It does make me laugh to see the boys get shy when random volunteers start trying to make conversation with them.  They’re both quite quiet boys naturally until they get to know people, but I know how they feel. Because while people do like to chit chat, sometimes you just want to get on and not faff around having a lovely discussion about what you’ve been doing. N’s cousin just looks shy, and N looks perplexed because he’s not sure about why this strange lady started chatting to him. Thankfully they did say thanks for the chocolate rabbit they were given.  Then we made our escape.

We were probably only at Upton for just over an hour, but being so close and having membership is handy because you can just pop in rather than having to drag out a stay past what the children are interested in.

Of course, their 1 chocolate bunny, was topped up a ridiculous amount on Easter Sunday by my sister in law who did them an easter egg hunt. N came home with 9 (!) pieces of chocolate – some larger eggs, a box of Heroes and some (as I would expect) smaller hollow egg hunt eggs.  Given he’d already got a small egg from me and then the same from my brother, I’m not particularly pleased with the amount of chocolate.  Next year I think I’ll probably not bother myself and maybe just get him a book or some art supplies instead.

Have your children done any Easter egg hunts?  Are they overdosing in chocolate?

Why not take a look at these related posts:

• Easter trails in Oxfordshire and around
• Sharpie your egg cups
• Ideas for decorating eggs