I’m going to tell you something that might sound odd: the National Trust membership is one of the best things we’ve ever bought. Not because we’re particularly into heritage architecture or Victorian walled gardens. Because it gives us posh service stations.
Let me explain. When you’re travelling with Kya, motorway services are a nightmare. Bright lights. Crowds. Hand dryers that sound like jet engines. Queues for everything. The smell of five different fast-food places hitting you at once. For Kya, walking into a motorway services is like walking into a sensory ambush. We’d go in needing a toilet break and come out needing a full recovery session.
Then someone mentioned that National Trust properties are dotted all over the country. Hundreds of them. Most have clean toilets, a decent coffee shop, big open grounds, and – crucially – calm. So we got the membership, and now whenever we’re on a long drive, we don’t look for a service station. We look for the nearest National Trust.
Pull off the motorway. Five minutes down a country lane. Park up. Let Kya out. She has a stretch, a wander round the gardens, uses the loo in peace. We grab a coffee and a slice of cake from the tea room – which, let’s be honest, beats a petrol station sandwich any day. Then we get back in the car, everyone calm, everyone reset. Posh service station. It’s genius.
But here’s the thing – what started as a practical pit-stop turned into something much bigger. Because Kya loves these places. Not in a way I ever expected. She doesn’t care about the history or the roped-off rooms or the information boards. She cares about the staircases.
The staircases. Every single time. The moment we walk into one of those grand old houses, her eyes go straight up. She finds the staircase – and they’re always enormous, sweeping, dramatic things with carved banisters and worn wooden steps – and she just stands there, looking up. Then she grabs my hand and pulls me toward it.
“Up.”
She walks up slowly, one hand on the banister, feeling the wood under her fingers. At the top, she stops. Looks down. Takes it all in. Then she turns around and does it again. Up. Down. Up. Down. Sometimes four or five times before she’s satisfied. I don’t know what it is – the height, the grandness, the echo of her footsteps, the smooth polished wood – but something about those staircases lights her up.
The gardens are brilliant too. National Trust gardens are sensory playgrounds for Kya, even if they don’t know it. Lavender she can run her hands through. Gravel paths that crunch underfoot. Water features with that constant, predictable trickle she finds so calming. Open lawns where she can bounce and flap without anyone batting an eye. Walled gardens that feel enclosed and safe but still have sky above. It’s like someone designed them for her.
The National Trust didn’t know they were building autism-friendly spaces three hundred years ago. But that’s exactly what they did.
And they’re aware, too. That’s the bit that really matters. Most of the properties we’ve visited have been brilliant with Kya. The staff don’t flinch when she flaps. They don’t mind when she goes up the staircase for the sixth time. They smile at her, give her space, let her be. Some places have visual guides and quiet rooms and sensory maps. Others just have patient, kind people who understand that not every visitor experiences the world the same way.
The coffee shops are a bonus. Kya does her thing – scans the room, watches the plates, makes her decision. I have a flat white and a scone the size of my head. Sarah reads a leaflet about Victorian drainage. Everyone’s happy.
We’ve done dozens of them now. Some are favourites – the ones with the best staircases, obviously – and some are just useful stopping points on the way to somewhere else. But every single one has given us something: a calm half hour, a safe place to stretch our legs, and usually a really good cake.
Last month we were driving to the Lake District and hit that point about two hours in where everyone needed a break. I checked the app, found a Trust property ten minutes off the route, and pulled in. Kya went straight for the garden. Found a lavender hedge. Stood there running her fingers through it with her eyes closed for a full five minutes while I drank my coffee on a bench nearby. The sun was out. A blackbird was singing. And I thought: this is a million miles from a service station.
That membership card is a lifeline. Not because it gets us into stately homes – although Kya would happily live in most of them, provided there’s a good staircase. It’s because it gives us safe places, everywhere, whenever we need them. Calm in a card. Best thing money can buy.
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