Mummy and I took a trip to Llanerchaeron House, a National Trust Property near Aberaeron.

We started by having a look around the inside of the house. The staff told me to try and find 10 small cuddly mice that were hidden throughout the house, I found all 10 and two real cats which was a treat as I got to stroke them. Both cats were sleeping in warm spots in different rooms in the house.

Things Learnt Inside:

• What a scullery is – a scullery is a room used to prepare vegetables and clean utensils used in cooking. This allows the people in the kitchen to just focus on the actual cooking.
• Taxidermy – this is where real animals that have died are stuffed and treated to look very real again. I’d seen this before (read here about it here) but had forgotten what it is called.
• What a logo is – a logo is a picture that represents a specific company. The National Trust logo an oak leaf and we saw the logo on every sign.
• Old wooden puzzles & games – in one room there were lots of wood working tools on display. There was the opportunity to have a go with spinning tops and a wooden puzzle where you had to fit all the pieces into a square frame.
• What a mangle is and how it works. In olden days people used a mangle to dry their clothes. It’s like our little die cutting machine, you turn a handle and your clothes and pulled through a very small gap between to big drums and the water gets squeezed out as the clothes pass through.

It was the nicest day we’d had in ages so after enjoying some food in the cafe, we explored the outside.

Things Learnt Outside:

• Espalier – in the walled garden mummy pointed out that the fruit trees had been trained to grow flat along walls and lines of wire. This is called Espalier and people do it to make the fruit easier to harvest.
• We found the herb garden and I rubbed my fingers on the rosemary, I thought it smelt like sausages.
• Identifying tree leaves
• We watched lots of mallards all relaxing in the sun that was hitting the side of the island.

We decided to see how many spring flowers we could find:

• daffodils
• crocuses
• pansies
• snowdrops

Visiting the farmyard and Geler Jones Collection.

In the farmyard we saw sheep and chickens.

There was a big barn containing lots of very old farming machinery, mummy recognised the two biggest ones as being Thrashing Machines, these were used to separate the charf from the corn. Mummy told me about a time when she visited her Uncle Edwin in Ireland who had arranged a historic thrashing event on his farm. The local newspapers attended to report it.

Next we went in the milking parlour and I could see where the cows would have stood to be milked.

Next door was the dairy which had old machines for making milk and cheese. Some of these were the same as the things we saw in the Cheese Factory we visited last week.