Bakewell is famous for its sweet and tasty tarts as well as being the gateway to the Peak District National Park. Fresh from our day in the rain at Chatsworth, we booked into our hotel in the village, enjoyed a night of great French food at Piedaniel’s and drank far too many bottles of Prosecco. Fortunately…
Category: United Kingdom
Chatsworth: A day out at a Derbyshire country house
It must be tough being a duke. There’s the grand country house to call home, no end of properties to rent out to the peasantry, stunning artworks to hang from the walls, acres of land to farm and gardens to landscape. Chatsworth, the spectacular Derbyshire estate of the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire, has all…
Polesden Lacey – in the heart of the Surrey Hills
I’ll come out of the closet and admit to being a fan of country houses. I always have been. So it’s not just grannies who spend their leisure time nosing around mansions and palaces. Deep in the Surrey hills is a house with beautiful views and real style, now in the possession of the National…
The Cairngorms: A visit to Craigievar Castle
If nothing else, my first visit to Scotland in years confirmed that the weather can never be relied upon. One day we were hot and bothered in the sun on top of a mountain, the next waking to drenching rain. At least we had Craigievar to visit during the couple of days we were spending…
Scotland in the spring: To Cawdor Castle
It’s surprising what gets classified as a tourist attraction in some parts of the world. How about a shop? That’s where we found ourselves on a wet morning on our last full day in the Scottish Cairngorms, guided by the local tourist board’s ever-optimistic marketing blurb. It was billed as the Scottish Heather Centre but…
Scotland in the spring: To the top of Cairn Gorm
We’d exhausted ourselves on our Rothiemurchus walk but we didn’t sleep well afterwards. Perhaps it was the light, for the sun sets late and rises early during summer in the Cairngorms. So neither of us had the energy for anything too exhausting, despite a much better weather forecast. After another ample breakfast and a gossip with…
Scotland in the spring: A walk around the Rothiemurchus estate
Aviemore proved a disappointment but a walk around the Rothiemurchus estate restored us on a grey day in the Cairngorms. Fortified by a delicious breakfast of porridge and a fry-up, we left the four West Midlanders talking politics in the hotel restaurant to plan our itinerary on a day that threatened both rain and shine….
Scotland in the spring: Rain at Brodie Castle
The number one challenge of holidaying in the UK is the weather but the Cairngorms in Scotland had been good to us on our first visit. Would we be lucky a second time? Stepping off our dinky British Airways Embraer 170 at Aberdeen, to the soundtrack of helicopters heading for the oil rigs, the drizzle was…
Walking in the hills at Braemar, Scotland
With our much-discussed British weather being so hopelessly unreliable, it’s easy to make an excuse and head abroad on holiday. But on our visit to Braemar and Ballater in Scotland we found the sun and fell in love with Royal Deeside. Braemar was stop number two, nestled in a landscape so spectacular I defy anyone…
A return to the Cutty Sark, London
The Cutty Sark is one of the most famous ships in the world. I first visited her as a boy on an outing to London and although I’d lived not far from her over the years, it wasn’t until the ship had undergone a multi-million pound restoration that I returned. The famous tea cutter has been…