Saturday, June 22, 2019

Little Lost Lambs

Oh oh, not a great beginning to our day at Devonshire Arms. Breakfast is scheduled from 8am til 10am, we came down to find all the doors locked.
At 8:40 one of the managers hurried in apologizing profusely, he made an excellent recovery. It seems that someone did not show up for work.

Another beautiful summer day. An English woman that I had met in 2011 on A Walking Women hiking trip in Turkey joined us this morning.
That is Julie in the middle and her friend Maria who is in training to walk Kilimanjaro next month!

We walked for a bit along the River Derwent.
Julie and Maria continued on with their hike while Spring and I crossed this lovely old bridge into The Chatsworth estate.
Spring and I have 2 manor homes on our itinerary, this is the first one. This property is over 100 acres.

Spring is standing on the lhs.

An attentive momma with her sweet twin lambs.

Just as we were crossing the bridge a herd of sheep ran past.

Unfortunately these 2 sweethearts were left behind. They were bleating for their mom and we could hear the ewe answering but they could not figure out how to reach her. Spring and I attempted to help but it seems we may have just made it worse. We gave up and just hoped either mom or lambs would stumble upon the solution.

Chatsworth manor is huge. Unfortunately my phone battery died (it goes from 100% to 0 in a very short time .. very frustrating!) before I could get a photo of it.

So here is a photo from Wikipedia.
The seat of the Duke of Devonshire it has been home to the Cavendish family since 1549

Some interior photos
The entrance hall.
Wow factor.
Part of me admires this opulent display of wealth but mostly I find it shockingly irresponsible. But here I am, basically a peasant, donating my 22£ for the maintenance of this place.
On the positive side, the history is being preserved
 and it provides employment to many local folks.... 
as it has done for hundreds of years.

A very bizarre piece of Bartholomew holding his skin.

The collection of Delft pottery was very popular with this set.

There were 2 libraries.
Chatsworth is celebrating Dogs this year so there was historic dog art and statues throughout the manor and the grounds.
Oh and a meeting of about 100 fox terriers took place on the grounds.

Dining Room
Room for 45 around this table.
It is topped with a beautiful Irish linen table cloth.

Chip, I will be home soon.

In one of the green houses.

Passion Flower in the green house.

This is unfortunately when my phone died.

The grounds were beautiful, I especially liked the rockery. Well, you have never seen a rockery like this one, for one thing the rocks are gigantic boulders, it takes up a huge amount of space with a deep pond in the centre and flowing water. There are flowers blooming throughout and they are all my favourite colour -- purple.
Gorgeous!
After dinner Spring and I took a stroll around Baslow. We met few people but many friendly cattle who all came running as we approached.

The perfect days just keep coming.
Feeling very grateful.
Great fun to reconnect with Julie again.




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