On the Road Again

It has been several days – several very busy days – since I was last able to blog. While in Chesterfield we stayed at a very real English working farm (bed and breakfast 25 GPB per person) with no internet access. None on the train to London, either, and no time after that in the flurry of departure. So I will try to go back and recapture a day-by day account.

We had a bit of a scramble getting out of Glasgow on Wednesday, Oct. 29. Since we were staying at the Millennium Hotel directly next to the Queen St. station (and I will NOT miss the 6am launch of station announcements waking me out of a sound sleep), I had booked online the tickets from Queen St. station to Chesterfield. And that’s what the tickets said obligingly enough, but it turned out the first leg was on foot to Central station. Right then – we were off on foot dragging our bags to Central but made the train with time to spare.

It was a nice, long, five-hour trip back through Edinburgh and down the North Sea coast. Wonderful scenery, and I have a zillion blurry pictures of ocean, fields, sheep, crags, medieval towns, church spires, marinas, etc., etc. We were in first class, and was it ever. The trains have been uniformly clean, modern and comfortable with very friendly staff, but this one was exceptional. Well done, Cross Country Rail! Free food, even, and as much tea as we could consume thanks to Gary, our trolley dollie ("Good morning all you lovely people...").

When we arrived in Chesterfield, we were met by Anne-Marie Knowles, director of the Chesterfield Museum. She had enlisted the aid of two very nice ladies who work in the museum – Helen and Carol – to take our suitcases and assorted bags to Stainsby Mill farm (our B&B) while we made a mad dash for Hardwick Hall to fit in a tour before closing. Hardwick Hall was built in the 1590's by Bess of Hardwick (Elizabeth Countess of Shrewsbury) as a replacement for the Old Hall, the ruins of which stand nearby. Bess was a truly remarkable woman, outliving four husbands and amassing much wealth and power.

Almost every inch of wall in the stately old hall was covered in huge tapestries – and that is not an exaggeration. We had a personal guided tour by Assistant House Manager Elena Williams. The late afternoon sun produced a golden glow throughout the house, even though the massive windows that blanketed the outside walls were lightly draped. The formal and state apartments were grand, but probably my favorite part was the interpretation of the last rooms that Evelyn, dowager Duchess of Devonshire, had occupied. They had left them as she lived in them, and the more modern, homey aspects helped you to understand what it would have been like to live in such a grand manor.

A quick turn around the gift shop, a cup of tea and we were off down the now-dark lanes to try to find our B&B. We drove round and round as the lanes got tinier and muddier. Stainsby Mill Farm is a tenancy of the estate, so we knew we couldn’t be too far away. We finally found it, met our hosts John and Charlotte Hitch, and relaxed a bit in our rooms. We had one room with two twin beds and an adjoining room with a double and two twins. Can you say slumber party??! I brought out a little mini bottle of 17 yr old Glengoyne scotch to toast our arrival, and we all had the wee-est of drams in teacups.

Anne-Marie then took us to a beautiful old pub and restaurant on the Hardwick estate called the Hardwick Inn. We ate from the Carvery, which is like a buffet or smorgasbord, with roast turkey, pork and beef and a broad array of various vegetables and Yorkshire pudding. The aroma was tantalizing and the taste even better. (I had always thought English cuisine lacked something to be desired, but this was delicious and plentiful. In fact, we have eaten very well this trip, as my tightening waistband can attest.)

We adjourned to the pub-side for a pint and poured over the map of Derbyshire and the Peak District to plot the next day’s sightseeing.

Anne-Marie dropped us back at our rooms and we snuggled into our beds with hot water bottles and blankets and comforters piled high. It had gotten very cold, and the room was warmed by only a small space heater. But a very long day meant that even the mooing cows just outside our windows did not keep us awake.