Over the border to the White Rose county... Leeds 3rd May

Another of the places on my hitlist. I became aware of Temple Nemsam when I saw it in a "Best of Yorkshire" brochure at the Harrogate Spring Flower Show last year so it became of seeing if that could be combined with something in and around the Leeds area.. and the obvious place was Roundhay Park.

It was slightly strange to actually get off the train at Leeds and explore as I've normally used that station as a staging point to get to Harrogate and on one occasion, transiting through to York.  The railway station is little distance away from the bus station though the main road has bus stops every 30 yards so with each having a handful of buses for that particular stop only.  There's a summer seasonal bus direct to Temple Newsam but as luck would have it, I saw it going in the distance so I had to make do with a 20 minute walk after getting off the bus that turns off Temple Newsam Road.

Eventually getting to the grounds, this is the side view of Temple Newsam.

Home Farm is situated on the left and they had a few births recently amongst the animals. Here's one of the lambs.

The farm itself is quite small but there goats, geese, pigs and cows amongst the animals on display.  Lowlight of the visit was seeing a male goose deciding to have it's way with a female goose in front of a few children. Awkward question time for the parents!


Going round the back of Temple Newsam, there are the house formal gardens with each shrub styled in such a way that a cross is made. The picture below gives the idea.

One of the paths from the house leads onto the Rhododendron Walk. This is the rather pleasing view taking you round to where the bulk of the rhododendrons are.

To give an overview of the extent of them, I took this panoramic view.

There is also a walled garden and glasshouse.  As it was still early in the season for plants, there wasn't a lot of colour. The greenhouse had a mix of flowers. Varieties on a them?

Then it was back to the entrance in time to catch the bus at Temple Newsam back to the city centre.  Once there, made my way to the bus stop for the bus to Roundhay Park. There was a charity shop by the stop that was getting refurbished and a lot of notices advising it was closed. I lost count of the number of people who tried to get in.  Is eyesight that poor in Leeds?

Shortish trip to Roundhay Park but it had started to cloud over.  The park is large and split by several roads - far too big to do it justice in a 2 to 3 hour period.   First port of call is Tropical World with various plants and animals to be seen in the tropics.  A number of butterflies were large but going round the path you come to a little pool with these turtles.  For some strange reason, there were a group of Polish men who decided it would be "fun" to pick them up and try to get ladies to take a selfie of them, the lady and the turtles.

Once out of Tropical World, there are some set gardens and an Ornamental garden. Here's a picture of the latter with fountain going for all it's worth.

Cross the road  and you are signposted to view some gardens that featured at the Chelsea Flower Show. From all of them, this is the one I liked the best with a Chinese style pagoda.

Go to the other side of the road and there's the main park area with a number of flower beds near one of the entrances. There were quite a number of families having picnics which made it hard to get a nice photo. This is the best I could manage.

Lots of paths leading here, there and everywhere so I picked one at random to see where it would take me. Little did I know that it would go past a cricket match so I stayed for a few minutes trying to take some sporting action photos.  For one of them, I pressed the shutter just a fraction of a second too quickly as the ball was hidden by the batsman...then the sound of the ball hitting the wicket came. Never mind. The new batsman came and here's a classical forward defensive stroke for  a left-hander.

Continuing round the paths, you get to a lakeside walk with a number of young families throwing bread for the ducks to have.    I then noticed Barrans fountain so it was a case of clambouring up the hillside to take some photos of it from different angles.

I pressed on towards the Mansion area but there was a wedding party taking place so it wouldn't be appropriate to go near there.  Still a lot more of the park to explore but light was starting to fade and I looked at my watch and decided to head home.