Bakewell Tarts & other things...
We started the day with a visit to Bakewell - a town well-known for its tarts & puddings. We tried a famous "Bakewell Pudding" (although it looked like a tart to me) from the Original Bakewell Pudding shop (apparently). We actually weren't very impressed - they were very greasy, and they had almond essence in them, which frankly I hate. But when in Bakewell...
Then we headed across to Chatsworth, which was... just... fabulous (Genna & I really began to run out of words to describe everything we saw on this trip).
Chatsworth was not only used for Pemberley in the recent P&P movie, but was an estate than Jane Austen loved & visited, and it's believed she actually based Pemberley on Chatsworth.
The inside of the house was amazing, and although much of it is filled with original furniture etc, it was quite interesting in that the family (the Duke of Devonshire) still live in part of the house & they've kept up family traditions like collecting art, so there was an interesting collection of both modern & older artwork.
We were also very excited by the sculpture gallery - if you've seen the P&P movie you'll remember that Lizzy walks through the gallery and (rather than being fascinated by a portrait of Mr Darcy, as in the book) is captivated by a marble bust of Mr Darcy. So the sculpture gallery was interesting in itself, but down in one corner they still had the marble bust of Matthew Macfadyen as Darcy!
Chatsworth also has the most fabulous gardens & park, and the weather was fabulous, so we wandered around, basically never wanting to leave.
We had a couple of other houses on our list for the day, but had already realised they weren't open on a Monday, so we just stopped & wandered around the outside of Hardwick Hall before heading to a hostel in the tiny little thatch-cottage village of Thurlby.
