June. 9.20pm. The sun is hanging like a hazy sovereign over the Malvern Hills, heading for its place below the horizon with the precision of a butler laying the family silver. The air feels thicker somehow, perfumed with wafts of honeysuckle and jasmine and wisps of woodsmoke.
There is a clink behind you, and you turn, because you are part of this scene. You have been drawn out of the Gothic Drawing Room and onto the terrace by the promise of the sky’s nightly show. Someone arrives with a tray of glasses and a jug of Pimm’s, brimming with apples and mint and strawberries. You sigh contentedly. It is, you think, the ideal summer night; the closing act to a perfect summer day, spent roaming around Eastnor Castle.
But perfect days at Eastnor do not begin at 9.20pm. They begin like this.
Morning
Summer mornings arrive indecently early, making you newly appreciative of whoever had the foresight to install curtains thick enough to survive both the 19th century and a June sunrise. Early birds should stay in the Turret Suite, waking to swallows twittering and soaring around the turret, frolicking in the first fronds of golden daylight. The State Bedroom on the ground floor, meanwhile, is strictly reserved for those who believe unnecessary movement before coffee should be avoided.
Visitors return to the castle in summer, so overnight guests should get up and out before the first groups arrive mid-morning. Anyway, you want the lake walk to yourself; you want to feel the grass damp from dew and to soak in the feeling of waking up in a castle. Of breakfasting in the Great Hall before the house feels fully awake.
Afternoon
Summer afternoons are given over to Eastnor’s visitor activities – running wild through the maze, leaping from the tyre swing, spotting supercars lined up next to the ramparts, watching birds of prey swoop low over the lake, practising archery on the terrace, doing a slight double take as a knight in full armour strolls past... Perfectly normal summer behaviour, as far as Eastnor is concerned.
You could skip all of this, of course, and simply romp through the Deer Park, with a picnic in a basket and champagne in the cooler, to find a remote spot where it is just you and the world; you and the hills and the buzzing of bees and the soft of English grass beneath you. And, in the distance, Eastnor Castle looks back at you – the thing in the landscape that makes it all feel like a Richard Dadd painting.
Evening
Visitors peter out by late afternoon, either back to whence they came or into the tearoom for an ice-cream. And here, now, the castle transforms.
The sun slips westward, its rays softer and more flattering, reaching through the Gothic Drawing Room windows and beckoning: out you come. And you oblige, kicking off your shoes and heading onto the terrace with a tube of Pringles in one hand and a tub of caviar in the other.
There is something particularly good about summer evenings on the terrace. The birds, after a season of practice, now give one of the Malvern Hills’ best symphonies. The cellar list is brought out. Perhaps you head downstairs and select your alfresco dinner bottle yourself. Or perhaps you offer only the vaguest of instructions – something white, chilled and Italian – and trust the house to take care of the rest.
Later, when the skies are peppered with stars and the last of the glasses have been gathered away, you climb the stairs to bed. Tomorrow morning, the swallows will be waiting. And by 9.20pm, you suspect, you will find yourself right back here again.