Blaise Hamlet

Monday morning started dry, and with the museums in Bristol closed for the day I took a bus out to Henbury and, in particular, the Blaise Castle Estate.

First up was a visit to the beautiful National Trust managed Blaise Hamlet (main picture). The nine houses gathered round a village green are all occupied, so aren't open to the public. Originally they were built for the estate workers at the nearby estate.

The 650-acre estate is now owned by Bristol Council and has many paths and trails, grassland and woodland, a ravine and fields, as well as an 18th Century castle (see extra). Plenty of places to walk and explore, however the earlier dry weather didn't last. A sudden but short hailstorm was a foretaste of what was to come and, sure enough, an hour or so later it started to rain and that settled in for the remainder of the day.

A bus back into the city centre and dinner in my hotel. I wasn't venturing out into the wet again!