National Trust - Lyveden — Attraction in Aldwincle

This reviews the tea room. The rooms are as pleasant, clean, and well-appointed as we expect from National Trust properties.

There's a limited offer of sandwiches, soup, and a 'Workers Nuncheon'. There are cakes (see the photo). I asked the server two questions about the food - they had to go into the kitchen to get answers from someone else. Maybe they were new to the work, but I expected they would know what was in the salad dressing. Knowing what is in the food is basic to the job of a food server. The server on this day was pleasant, welcoming and willing, but clearly hadn't been briefed properly on the food offering.

Very ordinary cheddar, a basic salad, small portion of a pleasant onion chutney, celery, and a cheese scone was a 'Nuncheon'. They said the dressing was 'French Dressing' but it had bits of some green thing I supposed was herbs that I don't expect to find in a vinaigrette. I wanted them to tell me the additional ingredients.

The background music was Norah Jones singing 'Sunrise', then Norah Jones singing, 'Sunrise', then Norah Jones singing 'Sunr... over and over. Even after I suggested they made a change. (Someone tried, but failed).

£14 for two coffees and two Nuncheons was not bad, but there's some scope for no or low cost service improvements, including the punctuation on the menu.

Four stars with well-trained staff, more choices on the menu, and a better cheese than bog-standard...

Had the chance of a one day free entrance to a NT property, and this was fairly close to home and although we'd heard of it, had never visited, so although the weather was a bit on the dull side, decided to pay a visit. Glad we did, very friendly man on the entrance caravan who scanned our ticket and explained what there was to see and the best places to get some photo's/videos, also unfortunately, that we couldn't enter the "New Bield" as some of the lintels had been found to be unsafe. We had a nice walk up to the building, passing the orchard and the mounds with the moat and managed to get a few reasonable photo's & videos. The path is only hard up to the orchard, a short distance, after that it's all grass which was OK where it had been trimmed, but was sopping wet if you went off it to get a photo etc. After our walk we visited the toilets about 5 in total, unisex plus a baby changing one, all very good with soap topped up and dryers that worked. Inside the Manor there were rooms detailing the history and a free library area upstairs. Back downstairs is a very large area for the cafe which seemed to do some quite nice looking food, although we only had a pot of tea each, see the photo's for prices. All in all a very...

A wonderful day walking around the incomplete house built 1605 and landscaped fields. We felt the £6.80 per adult was reasonable. Its unfortunate that google maps shows you everything, so you need to resist looking, or else theres nothing "new" to see. Our only real criticism was the staffs "hard sell" to join the national trust. We always say "no thank you, we really are not interested and gave a very good reason", but they insisted on telling us more and after both of us giving a second firm rejection, they still felt obliged to tell us about all the other sites that may interest us (staff are "all very in" on the act), in the hope to steer the conversation back onto getting you to join. Anyway... wrap up warm its a bit exposed and the free voice guide (1 hour) was at times interesting, but somewhat dragged on. The Elizabethan lodge is in remarkably good condition despite entirely open to the elements. Overall the tea shop was very good (They offered soup/sandwiches which was very nice and big pot of tea!) but it only had two small rooms to sit down in. We enjoyed spending a pleasant 2 hour break. Don't forget if your not interested in joining national trust, don't allow them to be rude enough to talk all about...