DAY OUT: Woburn Abbey

We were surprised and somewhat disheartened to realise that we had chosen to visit Woburn Abbey on the day of a 'garden show'. In theory this meant more to see I suppose, but in practice what it actually meant was that our £17 ticket now cost £26. When they said 'garden show' I think I was envisaging a 'flower show' of sorts and yes there were some flowers (a few) but mostly it was a cavalcade of wank. A festival of tut (copyright Alan Sugar) if you will, you know the kind of thing: tents inhabited by people who spin yarn for fun, Gin sellers, overpriced cake bakers, the sort of people who cut wooden animals out of wood and stick buttons to them. C***s, basically. Admittedly we did succumb to the woman selling caramel shortbread, and it was quite nice... though at £2.50 per (smallish) slice it really out to have been the best thing I've ever eaten.

So we pottered around the place chuckling at the crap these people were peddling and then headed off to the arboretum where we encountered a not overly friendly squirrel and the world's simplest maze. I kid you not, fifteen seconds and we were in the middle of the thing!

After that we wandered through a greenhouse and off to the 'Private Gardens' which were okay, but largely gravel paths and somewhat lacking in flowers (just like most stately homes really). We headed back to the car for lunch and then made for the house. The house wasn't bad, although a few of the paintings were a bit dodgy, one poor woman was distinctly boss-eyed and one of the recent owners was portrayed as a drunken cougar, which was amusing...

The tour of the house was punctuated by amusing interludes, not least an overheard conversation between two people who seemingly used to know each other and didn't seem overly keen to reacquaint themselves ('You used to look after my kids, before you buggered off and left...). Then there were the overly enthusiastic room guides and then ones who barked at you if you tried to do things in the wrong order.

The house tour ended in a 'grotto' completely decorated in shells, that was actually quite cool and pleasingly cool (in the literal sense as it was quite a warm day 20-26 degrees). After we left the house we had a final look around and headed for the 'Sculpture Gallery' which sounded like a promising way to end the visit. In reality the sculpture gallery was not a gallery of sculptures as one might expect, but yet another tea room (bringing the total opportunities for beverage consumption to ludicrous heights!), this really was taking the biscuit(s).

By now it was half past one and we decided that as it would literally be impossible to 'get our money's worth' since there simply weren't enough hours of daylight left to recoup fifty two English pounds of investment, we called it a day and headed home. But not before one more militant parking Nazi tried to intercept and redirect us as we tried desperately to leave via the exit!