It was a relatively dark morning for the end of August, the nights are certainly beginning to lengthen a little. I was up, out and on the Barff with Meg and Gracie for 6.00am, the sun was beginning to rise on the horizon. It was a much cooler start to the day, dry and 10C, I was pleased I had a lightweight waistcoat on for our walk through the woodland. 

I had a free day today so after breakfast we headed off for a walk around the grounds of Castle Howard. 

Traffic on the A64 was relatively light until we arrived at the ‘’Hopgrove roundabout’ where the traffic was stationary, I had no escape route so had to sit it out for the next fifteen minutes before the traffic started moving again. There was no accident or incident, just volume of traffic and poor road layout. We arrived at Castle Howard for 10.30am. The car park was relatively quiet as we made our way to the courtyard Café or a takeaway coffee. After leaving the booking office, we headed over to the Walled Garden. It is a month since our last visit and could not believe the change and how much everything had grown. Some of the Allium plants had gone to seed but the remaining flower heads looked just as beautiful as they would have done when in full bloom. What amazed me was the size of these dried flower heads, we grow a lot of Alliums in the garden at home but some of these heads must have measured twelve inches in diameter, they would certainly look good in any floral arrangement. 

The formal gardens were still full of colour and form and the vegetable beds brimming with produce ready for the kitchen. We reluctantly left the garden and made our way along the ‘Lime walk’ to the house. The Atlas fountain was calm as we passed so we continued our walk along the front of the Southern aspect of the house, stopping for a few moments to take some photographs. We continued past the time capsule and made our way up the gentle slope towards ‘Ray Wood’ stopping occasionally to catch our breath and admire the view looking over the South Lake’ with the ‘Mausoleum’ in the distance.

On entering the woods, we followed the trail towards ‘’the Temple of Four Winds’, the Rhododendron’s had all flowered several weeks ago so everything today was quite green, that said there was still lots of different trees and shrubs to look at.

As we left the woodland and made our way towards the Temple, it was noticeable how dry the ground was, the long grass had turned yellow like hay. The views looking across the Howardian hills looked stunning, Angus cattle were busily grazing on the dried grass, the view over towards the ‘New Bridge’ and ‘Mausoleum’ looked quite surreal, we watched a Buzzard for several minutes as it soared high above us, circling around a coppice of trees in the distance. The blue sky with cotton wool clouds makes for a pretty picture and we stayed here for a few more minutes just to enjoy the view. On leaving the Temple we followed the ‘Southern Terrace’ back towards the house, stopping every now and then to admire the views over the ‘South Lake’ and all the wildfowl on the water. 

On reaching the house I headed over to the Atlas Fountain, which was now working and looked quite magnificent glistening in the morning sunlight. The fountain was first installed at Castle Howard during the early 1850’s and has remained here ever since. The huge figure of Atlas, the decorated basin, and the four tritons with their conch shells were carved out of Portland stone by the Victorian sculptor John Thomas. The globe is made of copper with a gilded band showing the signs of the zodiac. The jets and cascades are all fed from pipes in a chamber below the fountain devised by the engineer James Easton. The water comes directly from Ray Wood Reservoir, a quarter of a mile away to the north-east. The fall of water from the elevated reservoir (some 70 feet above the fountain) means that gravity produces enough pressure to power the jets; there is no mechanical assistance. After taking several photographs we headed back to the house and made our way back towards the Stable yard courtyard café, where we enjoyed a very pleasant brunch in the afternoon sunshine, before the journey home.