One Sunday a few weeks ago we were at a bit of a loss as to what to do.  We’d exhausted pretty much everything on our Summer Bucket List (which was relatively short anyway as I wanted a slower, more simple summer than the usual mad-busy craziness that I normally create by packing as much into every single day as I possible can). The girls were grumpy and bored, I was in a funk because I hadn’t got out of the house and the husband was looking at us all helplessly not knowing what to do to cheer us all up.

Then inspiration struck.  I suddenly remembered that when we were in Bude on holiday earlier on this year we did a Treasure Trail and we’d all really enjoyed it.  Knowing that there were more of them all round the UK I decided to have a quick look and see if there were any local-ish to us that we could do.  To my surprise there were – loads of them in fact!  We read through the descriptions for them all and decided that the trail in Acton Trussell would be a perfect way to spend the afternoon.

Acton Trussell is home to The Moat House, a popular hotel and wedding venue in Stafford that I’ve had the fortune to be a second shooter at to help out one of my photographer friends.  Even though the village is close to the town of Stafford, it’s right in the middle of the countryside so the surroundings are very picturesque.  And despite it being so close to us, we’ve never explored it.  I think it can be really easy to get caught up in thinking you can only go adventuring and sightseeing when you’re on holiday, even if it’s just in another part of the UK, but I’ve decided to make it my mission to get out and about in our local area more – there is so much to discover quite literally right on our doorstep.  I had no idea that any of this was here so now I’m determined to find out what other parts of Staffordshire we’ve been missing out on all this time.

Here are some photos of what we got up to on the trail:

The trail starts in the car park of The Moat House, which is right on the banks of the canal

The rear view of The Moat House – I bet this wisteria looks absolutely stunning when it’s in full bloom!

The trail took us to a nearby church

A bucket of windfall apples left outside someone’s home, with a “Help yourself” note attached to it. I love the kindness of strangers.

I loved this gorgeous garden on the banks of the canal – it was so full of the most beautiful flowers #gardengoals

Walking along the canal towpath

My little tribe 🙂

The Treasure Trails are a really fun way to get kids (and grown ups) out and about for a couple of hours, especially if they are prone to wailing “But going for a walk is BORING!” whenever you suggest a stroll in the countryside.  It gives a purpose to the walk, something for them to do, and it really gets their (and our!) brains working – some of the clues are pretty tricky!  There is always a storyline to follow (for this one we had to work out where some stolen wedding rings had been hidden), which really captures their imaginations.

You can either send off for a pack to be posted out to you or you can download it and print it out straight from their website.  We’ve done both and there’s no difference in what you get.  We’re planning to work our way around all of our local ones and we’re definitely going to check the Treasure Trails website whenever we visit a new place to see if there are more adventures to be had.

Please note that nobody has asked (or paid!) me to write this post and all images, thoughts, feelings, ideas and opinions are my own.