Tredegar House, Newport

This was the first stop on a road trip south to visit my wife's family. We've driven past Newport countless times over the last decade, but somehow never realised that one of the finest brick houses in Britain was sitting right there, barely a minute off the M4. We headed down in the morning and arrived at Tredegar House just before lunch. Access here was easy, with no single-track lanes to negotiate! The junction getting back onto the M4 west afterwards is a slightly odd one though. We started with a wander around the gardens. They are lovely, with formal walled gardens sitting beside the old stable block. We found a bench, ate our packed lunch and took our time before heading in. Tredegar House is a magnificent red-brick mansion and was home to the Morgan family for over five hundred years. From the front it is perfect symmetry, the state rooms upstairs are suitably grand and the below-stairs rooms give you a completely different and rather more atmospheric view of the house. What…