Last week we visited North Yorkshire on a bit of a last minute Easter break – we only booked it earlier in the month and so didn’t really do much research on the area or anything, just using the criteria of ‘affordable using clubcard points’, ‘somewhere North’ and ‘maybe near Skipton’ to pick where we stayed. Once we arrived we looked into the local National Trust properties, to make use of our membership, and found a few to visit – including Fountains Abbey.
We lucked out that the Easter event for Fountains Abbey was on during the week we were staying, especially since the majority of the country – including the local schools to the area – seemed to be out of step with our break by a week, with most schools breaking up the day before Good Friday.
Fountains Abbey & Studley Royal is a large National Trust property that encompasses the ancient ruins of the monastery, royal water gardens, and a large deer park. We parked up in one of the main car parks near the visitor centre, and lucked out by being able to plug the car into one of their free car charging points (donations accepted for the use – we dropped some money into a pot on the welcome desk while getting our cards scanned).
The property is on a very steep hill so they run a shuttle service between the abbey, water gardens, and visitor centre. I’ve upset my bad knee recently so was having to baby it a little, so we made use of this to travel from the very nice visitors centre to the abbey – and back again later. We paid our £3 per child and picked up Easter trail sheets and bunny ears from the visitors centre before we headed to the abbey – they also gave me the chocolate eggs reward to look after so we didn’t have to worry about getting back to them before closing, as it was already mid-afternoon when we arrived.
National Trust Easter Egg trails are slightly different at each NT property, but follow the same basic premise – you go to several marked spots on the map and take part in activities or answer questions, or something along those lines. At Fountains Abbey the girls had great fun playing a variety of games and trying out some new activities.
They had everything from welly wanging to charades, including a mission impossible style yarn ‘laser’ challenge, an obstacle course, spot & count the coloured paper eggs, and bunny origami.
We all enjoyed exploring the huge abbey ruins which have been used as a filming location for loads of tv shows and films – including the Witcher and the Secret Garden (twice – both the 1993 and 2020 films!). I also recognised a spot from the Death in Pemberley mini series which I recently watched on Netflix – and of course had to look it up afterwards to make sure I was right.
I wish we’d had more time to explore the property as I would have loved to see the royal water gardens, and it sounds like the play areas would have been great fun for the girls. However, we were definitely limited by the weather and time for this trip (as well as my dodgy knee!), as despite the sunny photos it was only after lunch that the rain clouds cleared away that day – there were some huge puddles we had to skirt around as it was.
As the River Stell actually runs underneath the abbey ruins in places, Lydia also played an epic game of pooh sticks by chucking in a stick and legging it to see how long it took to appear downstream on the other side of the infirmary ruins. She was very pleased to spot it appearing at the other end!
The Easter trail is on until the 7th April at Fountains Abbey and is also run each Easter at many other National Trust properties every year. We’ve tried to go to take part in a NT Easter hunt most years since the girls were tiny and they have always enjoyed them. They are definitely worth checking out as an Easter holiday activity – and Fountains Abbey was a beautiful property to explore.
