Doddington Place Gardens proved to be to the perfect place for Our Kent Family

I don’t really do surprises.

It’s controversial, I know, but I’m not a massive fan of the unexpected.

Unless we’re talking children sleeping-in on Sundays, spontaneous offers of dinner or a night out, I’m rather partial to a plan.

I also like to think I have a pretty good working knowledge of Kent and, to add to this, since having Oscar five years ago I would have guessed there isn’t a woodland we haven’t walked, country park we haven’t played in or tea rooms we haven’t devoured enormous slices of cake from, within 15 miles of home.

(That’s right, I may be a bit odd in shying away from surprises, but what sort of person doesn’t like cake?)

However, an outing not that far from our front door has put me firmly back in my box and proved there are still parts of Kent we know little about, including some hidden gems on our doorstep.

In Sunday’s glorious sunshine we spent the day with friends at Doddington Place Gardens.

Found just off the A2 between Faversham and Sittingbourne is the Oldfield family’s Victorian mansion surrounded by 10 acres of gardens and the absolute beauty of the North Downs.

Armed with little more than a rough idea of how to get there courtesy of a few road signs we knew were along the way we were officially ‘winging it’ for want of a better phrase, as to whether this would be suitable for adults, children, toddlers, babies and pushchairs or whether we would find ourselves out of place with noisy, excitable children in an environment much more suited to grown-ups and plant lovers.

But this turned out to be the very best surprise and we had an absolute blast.

In fact I would go as far as to say it is one of the best days out we have had so far this year. Although I accept the weather had a major part to play in the above bold statement.

There are wooded areas to explore, woodland gardens, rockeries with pools, carpets of bluebells, grass to run on and tea rooms to sustain us.

Tea rooms which even hand out pristine picnic blankets for those keen to pitch up on the lawn rather than take a table on the patio or who like us felt it simply more practical and safer to sit smaller members of our group on the grass.

The children climbed trees, ran around them, poked sticks in water, watched the sheep and their lambs, enjoyed the bluebells, hunted for tadpoles and generally thrived on some freedom to roam in the most perfect surroundings.

There was some target practice in the form of archery sessions and they even had their own falconry experience at no extra charge – getting to fly barn owls across the manicured lawns with some guidance from volunteers.

Although there was a somewhat unfortunate moment when one of the dads among us decided to boldly step forward and show the kids exactly how it was done, only for Cinders the owl to suggest he was no Prince Charming and flounce off to the trees where neither food nor a glass slipper was to tempt her down for a good 20 minutes.

But for the rest of us, this day had a definite fairytale ending, and we’ll be opening the pages of this one again really soon - weather permitting!

Doddington Place Gardens is open from March to September every Wednesday, Sunday and bank holiday. For further information click here.

For more from Our Kent Family click here.