Burleigh Burghley House

My Auntie suggested that we go to Stamford for the day just before we left Cambridge. Gem wasn't that enthusiastic because we needed to catch a train there and back and we didn't have a clear idea where or what Stamford actually was. She almost convinced me into not going at all but we had already seen most of what there is to see in Cambridge (short of going into each and every college) so we did end up hopping on the train. Stamford turned out to be a cute wee town that is apparently England's finest stone town. The reason for this is not due to any one building but because pretty much all of the town is constructed out of the same type of brick giving it a lovely consistency (it sounds like I'm talking about cake or something doesn't it?).

We headed out to Burghley House which was about 2 miles from the town centre and its a lovely state home. Its very impressive looming up as you walk up the drive and it is massive (it has over 200 rooms!). The walk through the house was really cool and they gave you a wee pamphlet called the 'Burghley Code' (due to filming of the DaVinci Code there) which had little things to work out in each room and a code to figure out (quite fun, at least for me). There was also a funny dry moat around the house which Gem told me was called a 'haha'. I then had much fun saying 'haha' for the rest of the day.

They also had a Garden of Surprise there which turned out to be a fun courtyard/garden which had fountains and water spouts all over the place. There were lots of kids in togs running around through the water curtains but we tried to stay high and try. There was no hedge maze but we did go through a mirror maze where we got thoroughly confused.