Guest Page No. 12
Christmas at Wollaton
w/e 25 December 2022
All of this week's pictures were taken with mobile phones

Thanks go to son and daughter-in-law Adam and Tracy for this selection of images following their visit to experience the light trail around the Hall in Wollaton Park. Adam also provided the commentary. After parking in the car park, it's just a short walk up the hill to the start of the light trail. The route takes you by the illuminated house, which looks fantastically cartoon-like as you stand next to it.

The trail begins through trees and plants that are illuminated in an ever changing series of colours, while gentle music plays as you walk through the garden. Lanterns and decorations hang from the trees, and there's even a model dinosaur wearing a festive hat. Tracy refused to take a photo of the dinosaur, but instead captured the festive ambience seen here.

The deer of Wollaton Park were represented in light form next to a sparkling tree. What you can't tell from this picture is that they were about 8 feet tall! Adam tries to watch the 1980s BBC TV series “The Box of Delights” every Christmas, and this reminded him of Herne the Hunter from the show. No magical box was found anywhere nearby.

The trail continued through an illuminated tunnel which led to the Formal Gardens, where plants were lit up like Christmas trees. Tracy thought they looked like cacti. Many other trees were brightened with spotlights from below, but the bushes and plants looked especially nice - the rain started gently falling as we arrived at this section, and the lights reflected nicely in the puddles that formed.

Moving on to Camellia House (the oldest cast-iron-framed glass house in Europe), the interior was filled with a laser light show. The lights constantly moved in a rainbow of colours, and it was slightly disorienting to walk through. However, if you stood still, it looked amazing! We left the room by walking toward the bright light, which was quite disturbing after such an ethereal experience!

This led us to a multicoloured Christmas tree around the other side of the house. The lights were synchronised to a musical background, with more lights appearing on the tree as the music reached its crescendo.

The house changed colour with the music, and projected giant snowflakes finished the effect.

The path continued toward the end of the trail through a warmly lit corridor of trees. In the distance, a fairground ride could be seen, but more on that in a moment!

The last part of the trail was a path down to a gate, lit brightly on each side.

The experience concluded with a small fairground and a food market selling Yorkshire pudding wraps, giant sausages, and a variety of hot chocolate and coffee. We thoroughly enjoyed the light trail and hope that it's on again next year! All that remains is to wish everyone viewing this page a very Happy Christmas from the Newton family.