I can see that the National Trust have some great places, but it puts years on me whenever I visit one.
They always try to flog you the annual membership. When you suggest you may not get the value out of it (because believe it or not you have other things to do and places to visit of a weekend than just National Trust places) they look at you like you are stark raving mad. And people with National Trust memberships do the same. It's like a cult.
They have complicated pricing systems based on which bits of the place you want to visit. How do I know which bits I want to see, I've never been there before. 
The cafes are always expensive.
Whilst you often go for days out to entertain/educate the DCs, and they often have activities/packs aimed at children, they seem to tolerate children rather than welcome them.
They must also think the children of today are some sort of alien species, judging from their '50 things to do before you are 11 3/4'. I mean, do we have to be told the DCs would enjoy making a daisy chain, climb a tree or run about in the rain? I know kids like to play computer games these days but do they think we are so so removed from doing this kind of thing with our DCS? It's condescending.
They are full of performance parents with massive great big picnic baskets (which is probably understandable given the prices in the cafes I suppose).
Although they are knowledgeable, they often just seem to sap the life out of the very things they want to show you, and could do with taking a leaf out of places like the Black Country Living Museum, which has amazingly enthusiastic staff.
So go on, National Trust members, do your worst. AIBU?
AIBU?
To be put off visiting National Trust properties because they are National Trust properties
Growlithe · 03/08/2013 18:55
We got membership a couple of months ago, and have just broken even, although we have just been away, so use is likely to slow down now. Locally we've been to Croome, which I had terrible memories of from a year's membership the year DD was born - February, heavily pregnant, bleak grounds and no facilities. The house is open now, it has a genuinely lovely tea room with a brilliant kids' lunch, and we visited on a lovely day. DD and I have to go back because while she finished the trail in the gardens the house shut before she could finish the house trail. Then we went to Dunham Massey while visiting the in-laws, which was brilliant just by virtue that we never DO anything while visiting them (and was genuinely good, although I got bitten by a horsefly), and to Wray Castle and Fell Foot Park (just saved on parking there) in the Lake District on holiday. Volunteers at the three actual houses were lovely. DD likes trails, and if she's got one is slightly more likely to listen to me pontificating about something historic (they make DH happier too, tbh). She likes the 50 things, as she likes ticking off lists, although her definition of some of the activities is 'interesting' - "camp in the wild" is either Camp Bestival or a big Outwell tent on a nice site. 
There's another point about the houses, which means we shouldn't be too reverential.
The way people are using them, by dropping in, having something to eat and mucking about in the gardens, is one of the things they were meant for. While they are indeed 'historic' and part of our national pageantry, ultimately they were designed to:
Display wealth and status
Employ masses of local people and craftsmen
Act as playgrounds for the upper classes and nobility and people they wanted to impress.
If we want to hang on to such heritage, and indeed it is amazing we are in a collective position to do this, we should continue in the same vein. That means letting people get married in bits of them, or hire them for events, keeping up with maintenance and using local people to help, and developing facilities there that allow people to enjoy their leisure time whilst appreciating the beauty around them.
It is irrelevant whether the National Trust or English Heritage or established families are acting as guardians to these properties, they all need loads and loads of interested people engaged in keeping the properties alive, and part of that is, in my view, allowing (some) visitors and enthusing them as well. Only the worst kind of historical snob would say that they should be kept in a kind of intellectual aspic, as though time had never moved on. Nobody ever intended the life of such houses to remain static.
I don't think tiptoeing around lots of gilding and marble is much use in this regard, or barking at visitors. Obviously it's a problem if 5000 people a season all feel the need to touch some fragile bit of something, and that needs to be carefully screened off. And things like dust and daylight are also problematic, which means in some cases you need to control visitor numbers a bit indoors, as well as the timing. However it's a very sad house indeed that doesn't hear the sound of laughter and parties and merriment, and instead is reduced to the awed hush of people being overawed by the nation's past. It's perfectly possible to let a house live a modern life, with largely reversible additions or adaptations, whilst acting as good custodians for future generations.
And yes, I speak as one who has shagged completely surrounded by priceless paintings and vaulted ceilings, who has partied like the Georgians never knew how, and who has teased paying visitors with 'find the BBQ' treasure hunts. I did it for Britain 
Flirt with these houses, help with these houses, play around these houses, but always, always, always have fun.
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The pp who asked why so many of us don't take the children into the houses - I would happily take the older 3dc but dc4 (just 4) is the one who would slip under the rope and jump on the 390yr old bed! Give it 12mths and we might start taking them all inside 
Fwiw, if my mum is with us, she will slope off with dc1 and they will go for a sneaky peak around without the rest of us.
We are in Cornwall but had membership before we came down - each dc's first 'day out' after being released from hospital was a walk (well push) round Stowe Gardens.
My most favourite NT place at the moment though is near Cambridge - Wimpole Hall. I love going there when we are in that part of the world.
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