While we got to Butchart Gardens before the sun set as seen in this post, the purpose of the visit was to see the illuminations. I had been there before during the day and knew it was a pretty garden but I didn’t know what to expect with the illuminations. I thought it might be pretty but was not expecting it to be so dramatic. The first are had some lovely lights within the trees with animated icicles. We then followed a route around the gardens to cover all of the areas. These areas also included displays themed around the twelve days of Christmas.
One area that really blew me away was a section under tree cover where they had lasers mounted on the tree trunks that scattered their light into the canopy above. The effect was magical and I spent a long time looking up at it as well as trying to get a decent shot of it. On one, the lens wasn’t originally zoomed out and so it drifted a little in zoom. The result was rather good but not what was needed. I like it but it will stay out of public sight.
Walking down in to the valley below the main house, the lighting was absolutely amazing. The density of light installations and the use of color was really impressive. The use of trees and plants to catch the light was great as was the use of some of the surrounding rock. They also had some streams of blue lights to give the effect of flowing water.
We had arrived at the gardens before the sun went down and we got in very quickly. There was no traffic. As a result, we had seen the whole display after dark relatively early in the evening. We were able to head back to town and, as we started to drive out, the traffic coming in was awful. We were sailing out but the cars were backed up the hill. I imagine it would take a long time to get in. I think our timing worked well.
Suffolk is full of castles. A lot of groups fell out with each other and figured that castles were a necessary way to make sure you could take care of yourself. Framlingham is one of the more substantial ones that I have seen. There are multiple towers that surround the top of the hill with stout walls between them. It would be interesting to see what it looked like when the castle was the center of the community.
It dominates the surrounding area as you would expect of a castle. You can walk all along the top of the walls to complete a circle of the fortress and check out both the surrounding countryside and the large interior. I’m not a huge fan of heights so wandering around on the top of the walls is something I do with some trepidation. However, you go to these places to see everything so I’m not going to wimp out because of a little vertical drop!
