4 Amazing Places to Visit When Vacationing in Wiltshire as a Family ⋆ The Quiet Grove

(Our recent visit to Wiltshire England was facilitated by VisitWiltshire.co.uk and the tickets for Stonehenge were supplied by English-Heritage.org.uk to help facilitate this post. The thoughts and opinions expressed in this post are entirely my own. You can read my full disclosure here.)

Are you planning on visiting England as a family this year? If so you will totally want to schedule a few days in Wiltshire.

On our most recent visit to England, we were blessed to spend a couple days in Wiltshire (a county in the South Western part of England just east of Bath & Bristol.) The main reason we decided to visit Wiltshire was to go see Stonehenge. I mean, seriously you can't visit England not go see Stonehenge. After all, it's an ancient wonder of the world.

While staying in Wiltshire we discovered that in addition to the gorgeous rural countryside there are actually a ton of Family-friendly attractions and venues to see and visit. In the end, due to time constraints, we were only able to visit 4 but are soo happy with the ones we chose.

1 STEAM – Museum of the Great Western Railway

My husband and I chose the STEAM Museum as our first stop of our Wiltshire visit because we know how amazing trains are and knew our kids would love going. We are so glad we went.

Walking through the rooms of the STEAM Museum (which is found in a restored building that was once in the heart of the Swindon Railroad works) was like stepping back in time. Each room not only showed how the trains were made and operated but also gave a glimpse into the lives of those who works with those majestic trains.

My husband and I were impressed with the details of each of the exhibits down to the lifelike looking mannequins. My children loved getting to climb onboard and explore these old trains and cars imagining what it would have been like to have been one of those long ago passengers.

My kids also loved the little kid's section found partway through the museum. They had a fun little interlude playing with the toy trains and coloring the fun coloring pages provided by the museum. If your kids are as fascinated by trains as mine are then your family will love this museum!

2 Lacock Abby and Villiage.

Lacock was the Second place we visited in Wiltshire. **As a note, their last entrance to the Abbey is 45 minutes before closing. you will want to be there before then or you won't gain entrance. We got there just in the nick of time and are so glad we did.

The first thing I noticed upon entering the Abbey was the iconic hallway where they filmed a few scenes from two different Harry Potter Movies. Do you recognize it?

At the beginning of the tour of the Abbey, my children were delighted to discover that there were 8 little mice figures hidden through the Abbey. This made the tour fun for the kids as they searched for each figure which allowed my husband and me to spend the time to really enjoy the art, furnishings, architecture, and history found throughout the Abbey.

After we finished touring the Abbey we all enjoyed exploring the gorgeous grounds. We probably spent as much time exploring outside as we did inside. I loved how there were tons of little nooks and pathways throughout the grounds.

After Exploring the Abby and Grounds we moved on to Lacock Villiage. At this time many of the little shops were closing but it was still fun to walk the streets that are immortalized as "The Villiage of Meriton" in BBC's Pride and Prejudice. As we made our way through the quaint cobbled streets we were happy to discover a gorgeous old church that was open to the public. As with all the old churches in Europe, this one had gorgeous stained glass windows and a quaint old cemetery.

3 Stonehenge

As I said Stonehenge was the main reason we decided to visit Wilshire County. We decided to go first thing in the morning after our arrival. Ok first thing as soon as they opened which was 9:30 am.

Did you know that Stonehenge has a museum at their site? The nice man at the ticket window said many skip the museum opting to head straight to the site of the ancient standing stone but they are really missing out. After hearing that, we just had to check out the museum first thing. After all we wanted the full experience. (well as full an experience as we could manage. They offer an audio tour but due to traveling with 3 really young kids we opted to not even try to attempt the audio tour)

When you first enter the Stonehenge Museum you find yourself in a circular room with 360 view of Stonehenge projected on the walls. Lets you feel as if you are standing right in the middle of the ancient standing stones. As you stand there the view shifts from day to night and through the centuries it is really cool. The rest of the museum is like most museums out there. They have lots of placs with information about Stonehenge and what is known of the people who built and used it. They also had a lot of cool artifacts behind glass. I have to say it was very informational.

After you leave the main building of the Stonehenge Museum you get to walk through, enter and explore replicas of the Neolithic huts used by the people who built Stonehenge so long ago. The kids loved going inside them and imagining what it would be like to live in such a place.

At last, we boarded the bus that would take us as well as a bunch of other tourists to Stonehenge itself. To protect and preserve the standing stones you can't go right up to them and actually touch them (understandable). However, you do get to walk all the ay around them and there are plenty of opportunities to take stunning photos and selfies. There was such a magical feel of this ancient site. It has long been a dream of mine to go there and I was not disappointed.

**BTW Stonehenge is just one of the many English Heritage sites that if you are planning to be in England for a longer visit or live in England I highly recommend getting an English Heritage Membership which covers the entrance to not only Stone henge but also over 400 other amazing Historical places for an amzing low price! You can get the membership here--> http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/join/

4 Longleat

When we heard that Wiltshire had an Animal Safari Park on an old English estate I knew that we had to go see it. We really had no idea what all Longleat entailed. However, we were warned that we would want to spend all day there so we decided to go after Stonehenge) (After having gone I wish we had had two full days to explore Longleat. 1 day just wasn't enough. Seriously.

On the days leading up to our visit to Longleat, every time someone found out that we were going they would tell us how lucky we were to be going. One person in Bristol even begged for us to take her along with us. lol. As I said, we had no idea how AMAZING Longleat was until we were there experiencing it ourselves.

When we arrived we were told that Longleat had 3 parts. The Animal Safari, The House & Grounds, and The Main Square. Finding out that the Animal Safar closed first we decided to go with that. At the very beginning of the animal safari, there was a place to park so you could walk around and do fun things like feeding the giraffes and walk among the lemures.

For the rest of the Safari, we were to remain in our car as we drove carefully right through each animal enclosure. The kids loved seeing the various grazing animals. They especially loved when our car was surrounded by deer and one of them even stuck its head into our car.

The security and care of the Carnivore animals (lions, tigers, leopards, cheetah and wolves). For these enclosures, we had to keep our windows rolled up and were warned under no circumstances to leave our car. We all shivered with excitement when the Tigers got up and walked side by side right in front of our car.

After we finished the Safari we parked our car and got out to explore the house and grounds which looked quite grand. Unfortunately, we were not allowed to take any pictures inside the great house. However, let me assure you it was AMAZING! As a lover of art and history, I was in seventh heaven. There were even plenty of things inside that the kids found fascinating (including the ghost).

After the house, we ended up skipping the formal gardens and heading straight to the Main Square (since our kids were getting restless). This part of Longleat was more like a zoo/theme park. They had a ton of fun animals. One of my daughter's favorite moments was having a bird perch on her arm in the bird enclosure.

Our son begged to go on the train ride (which along with almost everything at Longleat was included in the admission) after which we all explored their amazing hedge maze.

We ended our time at Longleat at their adventure castle which was an amazing. Basically, it was a huge wood castle playground heaven for kids. Our kids were having soo much fun there we had to practically drag them away as the park was closing.

To top off our amazing experience for our Wiltshire we book to stay at the charming Church Farm Cottages (these gorgeous English cottages on an honest to goodness sheep farm) Upon entering the cottage my 7-year-old twirled around and declared it "The most charming place ever!" I loved walking down the lane that evening to watch the sunset to the gentle baaing of the sheep. I'll have my full review of our experience there posted shortly.

**One last thing about visiting Wiltshire. Due to how spread out everything is you will want to get a rental car for your stay. The good news is if you are visiting from an English speaking country like we were (yep if you didn't know we are American...) we didn't have to have an international drivers license like if we were visiting a non-English speaking country. Nope, our regular license worked just fine. You will need a credit card (not debit) for the rental. A few rentals will accept Discover Card (which is the card we usually use back in the states), but pretty much all of them will accept Visa and American Express. Make sure the car rental agency you book through accepts your card and BOOK EARLY. the closer to the date of the rental the higher the prices are.