A few places worth seeing and a few places not, should you find yourselves in the vicinity of North Wales with a 5 and 2 year old in tow.

You’ll note that National Trust properties feature a lot – this is because we’re members and because we prefer a free (well, okay … pre-paid) day out where there’s no pressure to enjoy it – if it’s boring, or the kids are playing up you can just leave without feeling that you ought to get your money’s worth first.

Penrhyn Castle

A fairly “recent” castle (built in the 19th century) built on the profits of slate mining and the import of Jamaican sugar. I have to say that if I had the money to build an absolutely HUMUNGOUS stately home, I would build it exactly like this one.

Plenty to do for all ages – we easily spent the entire day here, and even had we paid the entry price as non-members it would have been worth every penny. The tour of the house, takes around an hour (and I swear we must have only been shown around a tenth of the whole building), then there’s a steam train museum, various exhibitions, extensive gardens (walled and bog), adventure playground, and decent picnic provision. Even though it rained on and off throughout the day, we still had a fantastic time.

(Akra’s top tip: wear a baseball hat underneath your raincoat hood to keep rain off your face and glasses – much nicer).

Would revisit and still get a lot out of the return trip.

Anglesey Sea Zoo

Would that I could say this place was as good a value.

It was nice enough – it’s a large marine aquarium with lots for the kiddies to see, including crabs, a lobster hatchery, rays, sharks and seahorses.

My main quibble was that it cost just under £20 for the four of us and even though it was packed and moving slowly (so the boys got frustrated at being unable to see) we got through the lot in under an hour. Then everything outside (crazy golf, side-show style entertainments) was an extra cost.

Not good value for money and not recommended unless you desperately love fish and have money to burn.

Plas Newydd, Anglesey

Fortunately, just down the road from the Anglesey Sea Zoo is another National Trust property. We popped in as a way of not spending more money while killing a few hours before going back to camp, and ended up falling in love. If only we’d gone there first and been able to spend more time exploring the grounds.

The property itself is unusual, as the furnishings are more modern than many NT properties – with some of the rooms dressed in the period of 1930s. The dining room has a fabulous scenic mural painted from the artist’s imagination based on all the places he visited – I wish the children had slowed down a little there for me to have found out more of the backstory. There is also a collection of artifacts from the Battle of Waterloo, but to be fair we didn’t get to see much of that as the boys were desperate to get outside.

The grounds were magical and great fun to explore. There’s formal gardens, a woodland and marine walk, adventure trails with play areas and best of all, a tree house! We only left when Akra Jr and Li’l Bhaji couldn’t physically take another step.

Segontium

We just followed the brown NT signs for this one and didn’t quite know what to expect.

According to the members’ handbook, it’s a ruined Roman fort, and that it is – except the accompanying museum didn’t open until later, and without a proper leaflet or guide explaining what you’re looking at, you’d be forgiven for thinking it was just a few piles of stones laid out in an orderly manner.

Unsurprisingly we all got bored within seconds and went back to the car. Probably much more interesting without kids in tow.

Bodnant Garden

This promised to be really good. It’s billed as one of the top 20 tourist attractions in Wales (or could have been North Wales, I forget now), and as the kids always enjoy the gardens far more than the stately homes, we felt it was no loss to visit somewhere which was solely gardens. Acres and acres of gardens.

The first sign that all was not going to be as expected, was the large sign on entry that picnics were forbidden ANYWHERE within the grounds. This is most unusual – most NT properties seem to have a fairly lax attitude to where you choose to picnic, and even those that have designated areas have decent (and discrete) picnic tables. I have NEVER ever seen a litter problem at any NT site that allows this, even though bizarrely many of them forget to provide bins, relying on its visitors to take their rubbish home with them. To have a sign saying no picnics is deeply unwelcoming, especially to families with children who seem to need sustenance every 5 minutes or so.

The point where I lost all goodwill towards the place though was at the gate, where we discovered the only way to get a map of the extensive grounds was to pay for a £3 guide book. Normally, you get a small leaflet with a map of the premises as you enter the property, even if you don’t shell out for the (mostly useless when you get fast tours with children dragging on your arm) guide book.

Muttering darkly, we started to explore. Bodnant Garden is a set of Italianate terraces and formal lawns, with Woodlands and wild garden underneath this. Translated, that means a lot of steps, steep slopes and scary drops. We were not able to let go of Li’l Bhaji’s hand for a second.

When we got to the bottom (what a great place for a coffee shop THAT would have been!), the children were whiny and we were all not a little fed up, so we turned around and went back up (taking a few photos along the way, just to feel that we’d actually visited the place), past the craft shops, gift shop and garden centre they drag you through to get to the exit (by this point carrying Li’l Bhaji as the poor mite’s legs had completely given up), back to the car to eat our lunch vowing never to darken its doors again.

Would highly recommend NOT going to Bodnant Garden if you have small children.