Audley End House

Back to Gamlingay and more cooing over Isla Grace Slimm, or just Isla Grace if you're Eloise.

Eloise gets in lots of cuddles and Nicky is doing very well at being Mum, balancing pints of suspiciously Guiness-like stuff with breast feeding with the aptitude of a pro.

Our day trip this time is to Audley End House, a stately home not that very far from Cambridge. The weather is fine and sunny as we sit down for a picnic on the lawn by the lake with the house in the distance.

We walk around the rather splendid gardens admiring the greenhouses and organic gardens and the waterfalls and what not before having a look around the "authentic historical experience" of the servants quarters which are well maintained and perhaps even a tad authentic but rather clean and slightly incongruously multimedia-enabled.

As we stop for coffee the sky darkens threateningly. As the rain begins to pour Eloise becomes listless and as I give her cuddles I observe she is boiling hot and clearly quite unwell.

Uh-Oh!

Eloise and I head back to Gamlingay with Chris, Nicky and Offspring as the others make their way around the house - only to find out you have to have the guided tour and the guided tours have finished, so they aren't far behind us.

We are faced with the dilemma of Eloise's illness and whether we can now go down to Hampshire for Ben and Lou's wedding.....