Much earlier in the year while looking for a place to holiday in the UK during school holidays we stumbled across The Gatehouse Lodge at Easton Walled Gardens, and it looked idyllic. It was also very reasonably priced, and available on dates that suited us, so we snapped it up. Lincolnshire may not be on everyone’s holiday list, but it’s a beautiful county. The walled gardens are close to Grantham which has great transport links, and also less than quarter of an hour from my brother’s house as it turned out.

One of the attractions for me was the private entrance to the walled gardens, which holiday cottage guests could make use of when the gardens were closed. That meant we often had the beautiful gardens to ourselves and could pretend they were our own - the garden to holiday cottage was heavily skewed to the garden side here!

The homely and yet quirky interior was also a plus - not many holiday cottages come with their own chandelier and library, but this one did.

And this was how close to the gardens we were - I’ll share pictures from the garden another day.

Back in the living room we spent the evenings enjoying the view out towards the garden, and of the interior decor. Unfortunately the August weather meant we didn’t get a chance to make use of the small patio area, which was a shame.

It was great that the kitchen was well equipped, and the welcome package was very much welcomed by us. We now have a rule of checking out what holiday cottages have in the way of utensils and such before deciding what we might cook while we’re there - we didn’t need to here. In fact the only thing that was probably missing was some espresso cups - and you can live without them (or I can anyway!).

There were some great additions to the decor, this clock was one.

And I am rather partial to a fish shaped plate - we carried one around Dublin when we visited many years ago, and just about got it home safely.

It was a compact and bijou lodge, which we knew and were perfectly fine with. The bathroom was larger than ours, and tranquil - with some great tiles.