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Following the usual Christmas rush, we decided to have a little break, and so, now we find ourselves in a nice flat in York. We're actually right in the thick of it, only a few minutes walk from the town centre and pretty much opposite the Minster. We arrived on Sunday, just at sunset, and had a lovely sunset view of the minster from the lounge windows. Having settled in, we moseyed around York city on Monday, walkign around the city walls and pottering in the shops. We then went in the minster itself, a superb architectural construction - there was a short queue to get tickets and then we had a good wander round, taking lots of photographs and utlimately treating ourselves to a splendid replica of a gargoyle in the shop. It's hilarious!

Tuesday dawned a little cloudy. Ben went out quite early to catch a view of the minster in the frosty morning, and then cam back for breakfast. By the time we had got ourselves organised, the sun had come out and it was really quite a lovely day. We decided to head over the the castle area - we went up Clifford Tower for some views of the city and then went across the square to Fairfax House, which was really interesting, with glorious ceilings!

After a quite stop at Caffe Nero for a drink and a cake, we went over to the National Railway museum and were almost blown away by it - I'm not sure why, buut I'd anticipated glass cases full of memorabilia, but in fact, there were lots of actual trains! Amazing! There was lots that were only there to look at, but there were also many that you could go in. It was superb, and - for a free museum - absolutely superb!

And then, it was new year. Happy New Year, everyone!

Mery Christmas

Another, grand house, another Christmas. Today we went to Christmas at Castle Howard, after stopping nearby at the rather fabulous Durham Ox. When it came to it, we decided that Castle Howard was a little better than Chatsworth.

The decorations and rooms seemed a bit more emersive, there was a particularly crazy room with an upside down Christmas Tree. The weather remained much better today and we had a good walk about outside with some blue sky and sunshine before heading on to mums to finish off the long weekend. All in all nice way to get started with Christmas!

We found ourselves with a three day weekend just before Christmas and decided to make the most of it with a trip north. The plan was a drive up to Derbyshire on Thursday night before visiting Christmas at Chatsworth. We bought our tickets a few weeks ago and the drive up was fairly straightforward. We were booked into a Permier inn, which is only about 10 mins away from the house, making the journey in the morning pretty easy.

We arrived for opening just before 11 and were suprised to see how busy it already was with the main car park already close to full. There were a lot of people about, we think perhaps there were earlier tours before the pblished opening time of the house? Our tickets were timed for 11.30 so we started to head in, before being asked to check the camera bag. The cloakroom is fairly straightforward with lockers taking a £1 deposit, so we dropped off the bag and headed back towards the entrance.

There was a short queue to get in, but  the tented area in which we were waiting was decorated up with model planes and hot air balloons, so there was plenty to look at. The theme this year was "around the world in 80 days" and as travelled between each of the rooms in the house, they were decorated to represrnt a different country. The decorations were very impressive and emmersive, with particular highlights including the Moroccan room and the Chinese and Japenese rooms. There were some really pretty decorations which we had hoped to find in the shop, but although they stocked some, they didn't have some of our favourites. We managed to have a bit of a walk around the outside, down to the bottom of the lake to see the house and fountain and through the grotto. The weather initially was nice with some blue sky and sunshine, although as we started to get back towards the house, it did start to rain a little.

We stopped in the cafe for a bit to eat and a drink before heading off towards our next stop, just outside York for a visit to Castle Howard tomorrow. We're stopping in a place called The Durham Ox, which is really nice, we have a nice little room that forms part of the old barn, but is only marginally smaller than you might expect a holiday let to be. We took advantage of the large selection of te and coffee and had a little scoff of the free Yorkie bar. We had a very nice dinner in the restaurant before calling it a night. We woke up very early this morning (5am) to were ready for bed by 9pm.