One thing I love about my notepads (and their illustrations!) is how much detail they retain of events (far more than I’d remember with a good memory); and recently, I decided to have a browse of the ones now with the big zero by their age. This was one of the outings documented…

When I went downstairs in this little B&B (on the Chatsworth estate) that we’d stationed ourselves at on this trip – for breakfast (and waited a while before going in – as the owners V and M were having a little (and reasonably humorous) argument) – and found V perched on a chair, wearing an apron and holding his walking stick. He said good morning, and when Mum came in, V told us about a ‘weeping willow sculpture’ (made of something I forgot) made so every leaf weeps water, we were told that the butter on the breakfast table was Welsh, and he has 2 steel knees and worked in a coal mine for 6 years (when he was 14->20). Another mother and daughter came down for breakfast and gave us some recommendations on Chatsworth House, we chatted about the Scottish tradition of Burns Nights, and about Highclere Castle (used in the Downton Abbey TV series), Mum brought up my Gold Duke of Edinburgh award (I finished it in 2012 – shortly after the encephalitis), and Beatrix Potter and Winnie the Pooh were vaguely mentioned before we went back to our room.

We found a map of the land round Chatsworth House, and M gave us directions there using an aerial photo of the land around the B+B that they had on the wall, she gave us lots of recommendations as well, and said something about an ancient pagan custom of well dressings (an ancient tradition of decorating water wells – it’s thought that the custom may have found its start in a pagan ritual of leaving gifts thanking the local water gods for the continued supply of fresh water); so after grabbing our waterproofs and the camera, we set off out with our ordinance survey map and compass.

We passed a café called ‘The Old Smithy’ – with a sign outside saying ‘the dog friendly café’; I was told (by Mum) several times to watch the poo on the pavement, and was also asked (by her) several times which way the compass I was holding was pointing; and then we went into a field with lots of sheep and sheep poo in it – including lots of plain white sheep (and 1 that started sneezing as we passed), some plain black sheep, 1 black sheep with some brown-y patches, and another white sheep with enormous wobbly udders that Mum thought were testicles (and she kept attempting to make sheep noises).

We emerged onto a bridge on the Chatsworth estate – where some sort of staff person in enormous wellies was on the river bank below the bridge collecting crayfish; and I saw a group of people in their 70’s trekking across the landscape with their walking poles.

We reached the house at 11am; I took some more photos, and a man did a little introduction talk about a woman (Bess of Hardwick – 1521 ->1608) who became the richest woman in England after all 4 of her husbands died, and the 4th Earl of Devonshire who started plotting to overthrow the King. Someone built the west side of the house 9ft longer than the east side; a big restoration project costing £32.7 million was going on; the route around the inside of the house is 1/2 a mile long; and something called ‘The North Sketch’ has the family’s DNA expressed in ceramics in it.

The welcome/ticket buying area had a big painting of what looked like a poodle (surrounded by several other dogs) with its paw on a big book; there were giant Bourbon biscuits for sale in the café/snack buying area; I saw what looked like a cross between an Airedale terrier and a poodle by the massive gate in front of the house, and spotted a child in a pram wearing 1 small boot and clutching/waving the other 1 around before we entered – via the gift shop: there was a cushion being sold for £45, and a tea towel being sold for £27.99; an ostrich feather duster made in South Africa was £20; there were lots of teddy bears labelled as ‘Duke Bear’, and several tartan male flat caps (1 man in his late 60’s was looking very keen on them and said to his companion that he couldn’t make his mind up). While Mum was looking at a board showing the history of the Cavendish family, I was sniffed by a white poodle-y type dog (about as tall as my knee) called Ollie who tried to climb up my leg; the board Mum was reading said that there are 3500 sheep in the grounds; a staff member outside the house seemed to be talking to himself; and inside, there was a toddler rolling along the edge of a sofa.

Apparently it took 110 years (1688 -> 1840) to complete the paintings all over the walls and ceilings; another room called ‘The Grotto’ contained a fountain designed so that 2 stone fish sculptures had water coming out of their mouths; the following room (called ‘The Chapel Corridor’) had a ginormous stone foot (4->5ft long ish) (which Mum said had lost its talus (the bit of bone that sits on top of your heel bone) and part of its calcaneum)…

The Green Satin Room was covered in green and gold stripy wallpaper; a painting of a heavily moustached man on the wall of another room (with all its walls covered in 485 year old tapestries) was labelled as the 800th Earl of Cumberland. A room called ‘The Great Chamber’ had a painting/optical illusion of a violin in it (painted to look precisely like a violin hanging on the wall would look)…

I spotted a very large painting of a horses back end; a long corridor called ‘The North Sketch Sequence’ had lots of knobbly rectangular/square bits of ceramic all over the walls on 1 side (it looked like an attempt at a pattern), lots of mirrors on the other side (I thought it just looked peculiar); a short corridor running along the end of a suite of guest bedrooms that had a lot of rifles and swords in glass cabinets, as well as a painting of a rather overweight nun on the wall; and 1 bedroom called ‘The Leicester Bedroom’ had a really odd (small) statue of The Laughing Buddha sat at the end of the bed.

The library included various volumes of something called ‘Cohn’s Hexalot Bible’ and huge numbers of volumes of law books and philosophical books; ‘The Great Dining Room’ had excellent reproductions of the original paintings hanging on the walls; 1 statue in the sculpture gallery was of a naked woman cuddling a falcon; another 1 was of a naked man (with a gladiator helmet 1/2 on his head) being gazed at by a cherub; and after that room, we emerged back into the gift shop, and out into the grounds (where it was drizzling a bit), and decided to have an early afternoon tea.

In the café, I saw a toddler with chocolate ice cream all over his face; a boy of about 4 who was being fed some soup started whimpering while trying to avoid the spoon; his younger sister was licking a butter wrapper; the mother of these children had a chat to us while the girl was trying to pull her own sock off; and I dropped a bit of chocolate cake in my tea.

Out in the courtyard, there was a bloke sat down with his Sheltie dog (and he looked just like the dog); we headed down into the gardens, where I saw a boy sticking what looked like a small rolled up piece of paper up 1 of his nostrils; and it was at 3.55pm, just after passing an enormous orchestra practising for a concert on a huge pop up stage in the middle of the grounds, that we entered a garden that I would describe as a big rock garden (it had lots of wide rocks and lots of tall rocks – and this bit of it is meant to resemble a flowing river…)

I spotted a huge stone statue of a naked man with a small stone sheep draped round his shoulders as we continued on past the orchestra; and just as we exited the grounds at 4.15pm, we were passed by an incredibly muddy curly haired brown dog (plus owners). 15 minutes later, while starting off across the fields back to the B+B, Mum started singing ‘You take high road and I’ll take the low road’ – followed by an operatic attempt at ‘Land of Hope and Glory’; we spotted some ducklings having swimming lessons on a particularly soggy patch, and I forgot when we made it back to our accommodation, but by then, we both had very soggy toes due to the squelchyness of the fields.