mybigadventures.com

Having bought Audrey a ticket for Christmas, we had booked to visit Harry Potter world today! It's been 4 years since we last went, and it has changed quite a bit since - and for the better! Besides the usual displays of stage sets and accessories, there was the 'Forbidden Forest' - the huge trees, complete with giant arachnids, that you could walk around - and, the best thing of all... the Hogwart's Express in all it's glory!

You could even walk on it, seeing the compartments where the students travelled, with lots of different accessories from different films.

We spent all afternoon there, taking it all in and admiring the sheer artistry on display. A highly recommended activity!

Wow September has flown by! After the first week back at School we decided to book a weekend away at Chastworth. We found a Premier Inn that was only a few miles away and headed there on Friday. Traffic was pretty bad, but I guess fairly standard for a Friday night, after about a 4 hour drive, we arrived just before 8. The hotel is next door to The Highwayman Beefeater so we headed there for tea having paid for an evening meal and breakfast deal. We both had a starter main and drink and had nothing more to pay which was great. Tea was nice and feeling fairly stuffed and pretty knackered we had an early night. 

Breakfast in the morning was particularly impressive with a full range of continental options, and hot food cooked to order. Again feeling pretty full we made the short trip to Chatsworth, in reality only a 10 minute drive! The weather was amazing, with blue skies and bright sunshine and after initially joining a queue for the house, we changed our minds and headed out to the garden entrance instead. There was no queue for the garden, so we picked up tickets for the house and garden (using our handy 2 for 1 treasure houses voucher) and also picked up free tickets to go up the Belvedere tower. We had a quick scoot around the front of the house to take some pictures before heading back to go up the tower. The views out across the 'Capability' Brown landscape were stunning and the clear skies meant you could see for miles in all directions. 

We spent quite a few hours enjoying the sunshine, wandering around the garden. We came across the maze which I don't think we had seen before and stopped for some drinks in the Orangery. We had a walk around the house admiring the veiled lady statue once again amongst many of the other works of art and furniture before heading outside for an ice-cream on the grass. We picked up a new sheepskin rug from the shop before heading on to mums for tea.

Today we all went to the Arrow farm market craft market, that me and mum went to last year. There was a good range of stalls with a variety of crafts, this time Dani and I bought a couple of knitted brussel sprout Christmas decorations (Simon and Simone the sprouts). Mum had booked a table for us at the rather splendid Beehive in Harthill for Sunday dinner. It was as ever lovely, Dani and Mum both had beef whilst I had the lamb, allserved with huge yorkshire pudings and all the trimmings. Definitely worth a visit if you're in the area. All in all, a great weekend!