Tea with the Queen

Not to far from King's Lynn is Sandringham Estate.  It is the much-loved country home of Her Majesty The Queen.  The "house" is set in 59 acres of gardens in the heart of 20,000 acres.  There have been 4 generations of British monarches living here since 1862.  HM The Queen opened the house to the public in her Silver Jubilee year in 1977.

A friend of mine and I took what turned out to be a really nice Saturday to tour the house and it's grounds.  And it just so happened that it was the last weekend that the house was opened before it closed to prepare for when The Queen comes.  She spends her Christmas here every year.

Walking up to the house we noticed that the shades were all pulled down.  At least they were on the side that we had walked up, which is the side in the picture above.  We started to wonder if the house was even open.  Thankfully it was.  This part of the house is where Prince Charles stays when he is here, so I'm sure that is the reason the shades were pulled.

You enter the house from the back...or the front.  Not really sure which side they would consider the front.  Front or back, the entrance is pictured above.  You actually only get to tour about 4 or so rooms.  And unfortunately, you are not allowed to take any pictures on the inside.  Of course the inside was gorgeous.  There was a lot of history in those rooms, as you can imagine.  What surprised me the most was there was a lot of Oriental items throughout the different rooms.

In honestly didn't take very long to go through all the rooms. But we were able to see the stairs in Prince Charles part of the house.  There were several pictures of horses on the wall heading up the stairs, but that's really all we could see.

The grounds around the house are amazing.  You could spend all day just walking around.  And I think that's what a lot of people do.  We walked around for awhile and then decided to head into museum.  You actually spend a lot more time in the museum then you do the house.  There were a lot of cars on displays and different things about the royal family and their time at Sandringham. 

There is one room in the museum that, well, to be honest, kind of freaked me out a little bit.  It was a room full of mounted animal heads.  You walk into the room and almost come eye to eye with a rhino head.  There were all sorts of different animal heads on all four of the walls.  Apparently they have all been shot by different members of the royal family throughout the 4 generations.

Next to the museum is a little tea shop where we stop to have a cup of tea and some cake.  So here I am having tea with the Queen!  Or at least that's what I'm going to tell people I did.

Just outside of the estate's miain grounds is the Church of St. Mary Magdalene.

I am told that the Queen walks here to celebrate Christmas every year.  You can tour the church, but again, you can't take pictures inside.  It is beautiful inside, but smaller than I thought it would be.  The chruch is only open in the winter months for service.

You can still visit the grounds of Sandringham outside of the 59 acres that the house is on all year long.  There is a country park with nature trials, as well as a restaurant, gift shop and plant centre.

If you are ever in the Norfolk area of England, I highly recommend coming here.  It is well worth the visit. And if you do come, make sure you stop by the main gates and get your picture taken out front!