Pitching the idea of an overnight excursion to look at some Alice in Wonderland-themed installations to Gloria, aged four, is easier than expected. A trip to Cornwall with her mother is an exciting prospect and she wonders whether we will be taking our pyjamas. But when it comes to explaining what exactly we will be doing in the garden of Antony House, where scenes from Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland film were shot and where the National Trust has just embarked on a season of Alice-themed entertainment, I am at sea.
I am unsure whether the "Mad Hatter's Tea Party" booked for Saturday morning will meet my daughter's expectations of a "show", and my attempt at a lively gloss of the term "exhibition" falls flat. I have no answer to the crucial question, "Will Alice talk to us?" In fact, since I am expecting the installations, built by Newcastle theatre company Dodgy Clutch, to be stationary models, a 21st-century trail of garden follies, I fear that Alice may not speak at all.
The age guide for the tea party is five-plus, but any doubts that Gloria may be a bit young for this outing, and for Lewis Carroll, are squashed by a chance discovery before we set out: in the window of my local bookshop is The Nursery Alice, a shorter, simpler version of the classic story, written by Carroll himself. Out of print for years, it has recently been reprinted.
On the train to Plymouth we read about the White Rabbit, the bottle and the cake labelled "Drink me" and "Eat me", the smoking caterpillar and the crazy Caucus-Race. At bedtime in our holiday flat, after a supper of fish and chips, we meet the Duchess and her monstrous pig-baby, the Cheshire Cat, the March Hare, the Mad Hatter, and the red-faced Queen of Hearts. I had forgotten how much bad temper there is in Wonderland, but Gloria is primed and I have been reminded that an aristocratic garden is the perfect setting for our Alice adventure.
It is drizzling when we go to sleep and drizzling when we make the short ferry trip across the Tamar river from Plymouth, in Devon, to Torpoint, which is in Cornwall. At Antony House, just north of the town, our first glimpse of Wonderland is the caterpillar, a model about six feet high, gaudily resplendent on his mushroom on the lawn, with the blank grey face of the 18th-century square stone house behind him.
More impressive in Gloria's eyes, once we pass through a door in the wall and enter the landscaped gardens, are the pink, blue and yellow fabric butterflies that cling to every available surface: walls, trees and hedges. The organisers have missed a trick by not making a game out of spotting and counting these, but Gloria races along, shrieking every time she spots one, the hours of anticipation finally finding an outlet.
In a field of daffodils we find a model Alice and take photographs. There are chess pieces who will, when the grass grows long enough, have their own specially mown chess board. On the main lawn is a giant mechanical clock with white rabbits that run around on the hour, though sadly the damp weather means they aren't working today. The rabbit hole is a slide, entered through a dark corridor and emerging into a garden of model mushrooms. Since this is where Alice's adventures begin, the ideal visit would start here. But best by far is the Cheshire cat, hidden in the branches of a hollow yew, who appears on a timer to chant riddles in a musical drawl.
On dry days the Mad Hatter's tea party is a promenade performance, an anarchic, roving children's party that moves around the grounds. In the wet, we are inside a tent, where the children are asked to keep lookout for Alice, the White Rabbit, the Dormouse and the Hatter as they arrive one by one.
The five girls at our party barely outnumber the actors but for Gloria, this new combination of party and show is pure delight. Ingenious games include inventing rhymes, putting up paper roses, and matching missing gloves. In the land of the jabberwocky, Gloria's nonsense rhyme, of hedgehog with bedgehog, is just right. (A bedgehog, says Alice, must be a hedgehog who is always in bed.) When another girl doesn't want to wear a blindfold to pin the crown on the Dodo, the Hatter says she can do it without. Quite so!
Wet feet and crushing disappointment that the fun is over mean that Gloria's blissful hour of holding her own with the big girls ends, just like Alice's experience of being a giant, in a pool of tears.
I only wish we could have gone indoors to warm up. The only day you can do both the tea party and see inside Antony House, with its collection of paintings, furniture and textiles, including the rooms where the film was shot, is on Sundays, as the tea parties are weekends only and the house is closed on Saturdays. This is curious, given the money and imagination that have gone in to boosting visitor numbers. I would advise Sir Richard and Lady Mary Carew Pole, whose home this is, to rethink.
• The gardens at Antony House are open from 11am to 5pm every day except Friday until 31 October. The house is open from 12 noon to 5pm Tuesday-Thursday, Sundays and bank holidays until 31 October. Mad Hatter's tea parties (ages five-12, £5) take place on Saturdays and Sundays at 11am and 2.30pm. Book on 01208 265269 . Holidaylettings.co.uk has a choice of accommodation in the area, including the Water's Edge apartment from £369 a week (sleeps two). First Great Western has advance tickets to Plymouth from £17 one way..
