A Day Out at Enchanted Audrey End

Audley End House and Gardens is a really lovely English Heritage grounds, that we tend to visit whenever they do any of their seasonal events. This year, they had a light festival called Enchanted Audrey End. I had heard all about Audrey End light shows, but you do need to pre-book well ahead of time! So, this year we were prepared and we were able to get the whole family along for the fun trail!

Audley End House has a lot of space, unlike our other light trails which have felt quite densely packed together. This trail started with a talking tree, much like another trail we had previously been too, which welcomed us. We then saw a bunch of snowflakes on the ground, which danced around a bit! The trail was around the grounds, which are massive, allowing us to explore around and see the newly put up lights. The trail is direct, and many of the paths were quite thin, but it was still really fun to walk around. Dann describes this walk as more scenic, a route to take around the ground itself. There wasn’t punchy music (many off the areas had no music at all!) and each bit of the trail felt very deliberate.

Many of the light area actually were lighting up statues that are already there, highlighting what was there. In this light festival, there were two stopping points which had rides. These rides were not included in the ticket price, but were interesting to check out. The first stop had two rides, a few fair ground games, and fire pits. The pits were interesting, as you could purchase marshmallows to roast in them, but sadly the pit itself was a bowl-shaped pit, which reflected a lot of the heat onto little hands, meaning adults had to put up with it just to get a bit of heat in the marshmallow. This area did feel like a community, though, which was a nice touch. The second bit of rides had more rides, and a proper food cart selling hot dogs and burgers.

Dotted around the light trail, there were these super well lit picture frames, beaming light at whoever stood in them. These were a really fun concept, and other families were happy to take our picture for us! They were a bit tricky to use when it comes to seeing the background, but really fun to take a look at and enjoy. When it comes to the light themselves, we saw some lights we had seen other places, but lots of lights that played on the water and looked lovely on the grounds. There was a little fairy house section, which seems to be a theme this year. The house itself was impressive, shining light on the building and on the massive garden around it. That part alone was breath-taking.

Enchanted Audrey End had really a lot to see, I just wish that the areas that had photo aspects had more around them. It’s a really interesting place, and if you love exploring beautiful, historical places, you will enjoy this walk too.

This post is apart of our Blogmas series, with each and every post being about Christmas or Winter.