Osbourne House

So we had a lovely weekend in the Isle of Wight, on Sunday we went to Carisbrooke castle and on Monday we enjoyed a lovely afternoon out at Osbourne House.

Me and James decided to join up to the English Heritage (in hindsight we should have done it the day before) but two adults would have cost about £26 to get in, which is quite a lot so well worth paying for a year subscription if you will make use of it.

The grounds were absolutely beautiful, the sun was blazing in the blue skies which heightened everyone's moods and showed off the vibrant colours of the flowers and gardens. We even had the second picnic of the year on the grass!


The house itself I personally thought didn't look too impressive from the outside, big but not necessarily beautiful, but as people say 'don't judge a book by it's cover'. Inside was very regal, well it had to be seeing as it was Queen Victoria's holiday home! Every wall was covered it artwork in golden, decorative frames, you could view many rooms about the house, my favourite being one that had the sea view in the centre of the room; the weather was so clear we could actually see the Spinnaker tower in the distance.

 I must admit we didn't get the best look around the house as Sam was tired and crying a bit too loud we felt a bit awkward for everyone else, so walked around quickly-typically he fell asleep just as we were finishing!

We then took a longish walk to the beach that was once their own private beach, it was so nice to be walking along green grass and dusty paths rather than sloppy mud and puddles. The beach itself wasn't stunning like the rest of the grounds but the boys enjoyed throwing stones into the sea as we all sat upon a wall watching them. It's well worth the walk though as the ice creams there are delicious!

We then took a walk back up the hill towards the Swiss Cottage which is where the children would play and be taught gardening skills, the vegetable patches were rather sweet.

After all that the boys were all quite tired, I was so impressed that Alex had walked around for the whole day, it was 2 miles down to the beach alone! He and Uncle T (who's only 18 months older than him) enjoyed collecting many sticks along their travels! They weren't too tired to enjoy the fun park they have there though, the big zip wire being the favourite-not just with the kids (oops)!

Would definitely recommend going with or without kids, we didn't even walk around all the grounds and see everything that's there so could have quite easily have spent a couple more hours there-we had a boat to catch though!