Ickworth’s Light Nights | Wintertime Light Walks

Each and every year, Dann, Claire and I all go to a wintertime light walk, checking out all of the Christmas decorations and feeling the festive season. This year, Claire picked out Ickworth’s Light Nights, which isn’t particularly Christmas-themed, and felt very unique to other light walks we’ve previously been on!

Ickworth is a National Trust site that Claire has been to before – a large historical house on a huge garden space. The building itself was closed, however, one of the staff said it would be opening soon with Christmas decorations and tons of history about the house, at Christmas time, when it was lived in. The light night trail started at the entrance gate, where we were greeted and then followed a glowing arrow around the front gardens of Ickworth House. The front of the house had lots of lit trees, in various colors or with lights wrapped around them, creating a path up towards the back gardens. There were also sculptures, all lit up, which were made of sticks, showing some bores! These were really well made and seemed very natural and interesting. Another showcased deer a bit further away from us.

Along the way, there was a crepe stand that sold hot chocolate, coffee and a bunch of different crepes. We grabbed a lotus and oreo crepe, which was pretty good, and enjoyed watching the person make it! He was streaming to Tiktok, so very into the creation of each crepe. This was the only food stand along this walk, and Claire, Dann and I felt like next year they should consider adding some more with savoury food!

The back garden is the real highlight in Ickworth’s Light Nights, which felt really whimsical. There are more trees that are lit up, as well as some placed out stumps – I am not really sure how to actually do justice to describing these, so you will need to look at the pictures. These stumps are lit up, and carefully placed in a way that they seemed magical. One stump collection was set up to look like a dragon, with smoke blowing out of their mouth. This was amazing and we spent a lot of time watching it. There is a bunch of orbs in a big field too, that continued to blink and change color.

Continuing around the back, you end up seeing the entire back of the house, lit up, changing color, with bushes along the bath that are also changing color. This is stunning and seemed like the WOW moment of the walk. Going around the building, we ended up seeing the front of the building as well, which was also all lit up and changing color! At the front of this walk, there was another stick sculpture of donkey, and the path leads to the gift shop and cafe. At the cafe, they had sandwiches, sausage rolls and jacket potatoes – the selection of food was very limited so we didn’t get anything, though we did check out the gift shop and used book shop!

The end of our walk just took us around to the car park, where we then said our goodbyes to Claire and headed out. Ickworth’s Light Nights is a more natural feeling, simple trail. There isn’t any sort of music as you walk around, and instead is an experience focused on the grounds. We really liked this – as it felt very much like a highlight of the grounds themselves. However, it is worth noting this walk is short (the staff suggests walking it twice before you enter), and there isn’t very many food options or bins if you get a coffee / crepe.

If you like wintertime light trails, we have a whole list of the best ones to check out this holiday season.