Cavendish Enterprises

Lucy had been asking for a couple of days if we could go to "that English farm, you know the one in the video from six years ago". After only a small amount of interrogation we established that she meant Chatsworth's children's farm. So we circled our wagons around Tesco, bought sandwiches then headed into the wilds of Derbyshire to give money and tug forelocks (notional forelock in my instance) to the Cavendish family.

Susan had said as we set out, "we're only doing the farm and the garden" but by the time we got there Lucy had made it clear she really wanted to see he house as well. The Cavendish family happily obliged with a "complete estate" pricing that was obviously better value than any other entry package.

I have mixed feelings about the House of Cavendish, one part of me admires the fact that as an old noble family, they have got their business act together to really prosper in the modern age, and make their bit of heritage self supporting; another part just looks at the centuries of very conspicuous consumption and tut-tuts in a half arsed vaguely political fashion.

Lucy had so much fun running around patting shire horses, counting piglets and chicks (not unhatched), then working her way to having fun in one of the best kids' adventure playgrounds around. Susan had to join in as part of her close supervision parenting. Then it was off to the garden.

The valley that Chatsworth is set in was landscaped by Capability Brown, so it is the most perfectly natural looking farm you could imagine, I have fantasies that the Cavendish family has a well paid retainer whose job is to remote control the grouping and movement of the sheep on the hills.

The garden is huge, we spent two hours in it and we saw less than half of it. Sotheby's were setting up for a sculpture auction, so there were interesting large pieces dotted around, including fifteen hares. Lucy spent a lot of time following water courses, culminating in climbing the grand cascade. The lawns either side were covered in families sunbathing, while their children frolicked in the fountain, Lucy took great delight in joining them.

Finally we explored the house, just before it closed for the day. We were just about the only tourists left, so it was great to be the only ones in each room, although a little challenging occasionally to see the doors of a room be closed, locked and alarmed behind you as you leave it. Understandable though, when you consider the treasures there. A darkened room contains original sketches by Raphael and other artists bought in each artist's life by the Cavendish family. The day after we were there, the family announced they were selling one at auction, to raise capital for posting up the state even more, expected price above £10 million.

Lucy had a wonderful time taking photos and is keen to return, next visit....

Posted from deepest mobility....

The Little Crooked House

 

 

After a day recovering from driving through picturesque traffic jams, we decided last night to visit one of our chocolate box favourites, Little Moreton Hall. This was on my must see list ten years ago when we first came over per Lucy, we didn't actually get there until the next trip when Lucy was nine months old. That first expedition involved a false start where we got lost and discovered a marvellous old half timbered church at Marton. Eventually, another day, when we found the right place at the right opening hours, we found the same delight that so many others have in this remarkable place.

It's odd how even though it is so fine, it also became something that I had ticked off my must see list, and I had many more to go. It has not been on my list since and was not on my radar at all this trip until Susan pointed out that Lucy hadn't seen it to remember. I was still ho-hum, but hey we are chilling out in Cheshire and the afternoon looks as though it should improve from being in a cloud, why not?

The first thing was go to Macclesfield railway station to observe Tony and Margaret buying their Eurostar tickets, this was needed so we can do the same thing at Norwich, when we leave for Paris. After confusing the helpful station staff with my accent ("which county you from then"), the Oz nuclear family set out solo across Cheshire with only Google Maps and bad 3G to guide us.

Astonishing ourselves we arrived at a full car park only twenty minutes later, managing not to bog ourselves in, we trotted happily off to join the queue at the ticket counter.

A large lawn at the edge of a moat, with picnic tables, perfect for pork pies and houmus! Next thing, Lucy is at the side of the moat, "have you seen the size of these fish"! Seriously large gold fish, at least 440mm, follow us along the moat to the bridge into half-timber world.

Ther was a tour just beginning which I wanted to follow, Susan and Lucy just rolled their eyes and headed off after the first room, so I will never know all the details of each piece of plaster... heartbreaking.

The amazing thing about the Hall is that it hasn't fallen over, it is England's Leaning Tower of Pisa, slowly sinking sideways into the marsh it is built on. It's also a McMansion of its time, one family adding more and more show off fashion bits to their house until it really does start to bend and sink under the weight of their ambitions. Then it's a hay barn for 250 years, after the family find they are on the wrong side of the English Civil War. Somehow about six or seven pieces of original furniture survive in the house throughout, which really does make a great 15th C House & Gardens display home.

After Lucy has learned about roof joining, run around the undulating Long Gallery, played Goe Fishe, Goose and checked the Garderobes, not to mention Susan beating me at Nine Man's Morris, we repaired to the garden for afternoon cakes and wine with the other punters and a quackering chorus of cheeky ducks.

Susan and I then bored Lucy rigid by discussing the garden planting with the chief gardener, however Lucy was then able to roll down a small hill in the garden several times. Finally back to the entrance kiosk, where I photographed all the books that would be too heavy to carry home and consoled myself with a marzipan treat.

After stopping at an wonderfully fine church up the road we went on a mystery tour of the back lanes, through dense little woods and steep climbs and drops via Wildboarclough, back to Kettleshulme and dinner.

 

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Lyme Park in Sunshine

Perfect sunshine all day today, so we scooted off to Lyme Park, a trip we were going to do with the cousins yesterday if it had not rained. Lyme Park, gentle reader is a whopping estate just over the hill from Susan's village. The family that manicured it, owned it from the 1300s until the 1950s. They dropped it on the National Trust to maintain so they could pay death duty, keeping the family farm down the road which they have been working since the 1100s.

So, the National Trust has this enormous deer park with a show off house in the middle of it. Just wonderful to walk around, look at quirky things like the giant Coolgardie safe pictured above. It also has a fantastic adventure playground that Lucy really enjoyed, even if she found some of the equipment more challenging than she wanted. Eventually she found she enjoyed climbing fallen trees the best. She also enjoyed being given the basic rules of croquet and playing against Mum and Dad.

 

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Landing Early

We didn't realise until the boarding lounge that our flight was stopping at Munich on the way to Manchester. We stayed on the plane while the German cleaning crew came through and then took off at dawn for an hour and quarter hop to England. As there was hardly anyone left on the plane we whizzed through immigration and were standing bleary in the arrival lounge waiting long before we were supposed to be. Car hire complete we drove off in an overpowered shoebox to the magical world of the High Peak, land of the second highest (above sea level) pub in Britain.

It's late summer so all the hedges are wildly overgrown, five metres high instead of the usual three, so visibility is reduced but the mad jumble of paddocks with sheep in the middle of suburbs both posh and poor is as delightful as last time.

Tony and Margaret (Susan's parents) have a small cottage halfway up a hillside outside Kettleshulme, the village where Susan grew up. The village is set halfway down a long narrow valley, you can walk for miles up and down the valley without hitting another village, but the nearest town of about ten thousand people is three miles away, and the closest city is seven miles with about three villages in between.

Susan, Lucy and I all struggled to stay awake until late afternoon, then the lag got us....

 

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Acclimatising to Travel

 

 

Well this is hard to take! Blogging poolside below the apartment in Singapore. no gin sling in hand yet, that is later today in The Long Bar of Raffles Hotel. if I am going to explore ritual and cliche I shall do it completely, maybe this morning I can find myself a pith helmet and swagger stick, goodness knows I left my swagger behind a rubbish bin after realising age twelve, that playing schoolboy rugby was life threatening.

We are staying with Susan's cousins who are working here on contract, they live on the twenty seventh floor of a tower over a shopping centre. The apartment is bigger than their Melbourne house, but there is no backyard for their two boys to run around in.

Getting here was remarkably smooth, the departure process from Melbourne much smoother than I remember it three years ago, entry to Singapore was virtually transparent. It probably helped that we spent time in toilets changing from Melbourne winter layers into Singapore flimsies that we were the only ones in the room at passport control. We had a chatty taxi driver from the airport who recommended local cuisine and things to do, it's interesting that of all the taxi drivers we have been with since arriving, his taste is the only that has matched ours, the others have been far more "international" rather than local.

The thing that you you notice of course about Singapore is that at least a third of the population are in uniform. Not just police, or security, but shopping centre cleaners, taxi corallers, slushy makers, all have a definite official feel, not officious, everyone is very friendly and helpful, everyone just wants to appear as an official.

Lucy has fallen in love with Hainan chicken rice as well as dim sum dumplings. The shopping centre below our apartment has a food court that is hawker style cooking with Gordon Ramsey cooking school franchise at one end and a "fresh food people" supermarket at the other. The food is wonderful in range, price, presentation and taste. We may well have been able to eat better elsewhere but this was good, so we couldn't be arsed.

The old warehouses along the river are now trendy bars, the river traffic has vanished and most of the city is vertical. There are places wher you can see clusters of the old city holding on, apparently there is beginning to be an appreciation for heritage. I observed myself being a cultural curmudgeon, sniffing at the temples of shopping that surrounded me, hectares of superbrands...

The Botanic Gardens are vast, well laid out and well serviced with fresh water bubblers, which you need to use walking around in the heat. We focused on the Orchid Garden, which delighted at every glance. It also had a cool room with mist sprays that we didn't want to leave. In the orchid garden is the former garden director's house a fine example of colonial tropical mock Tudor.

Lucy has now taken over the blog ... "The next garden that we went to was the ginger garden. It was full of different ginger plants and some other plants that weren't gingers but were related to them like the bananas. What we came to next in the ginger garden was the lily pond. Next to the lily pond were two wooden totems, I liked them because of the funny paintings on them. The lily pond looked a bit like Monet's pond. I took a photo of one of the water lilies

On the other side of the path was a waterfall.Next to the water fall was a bridge.I walked onto the bridge and was shocked ,I was behind the waterfall. Mum took a photo of me behind the waterfall.While mum was taking the photo I was getting hypnotised by the water falling down from the waterfall."

Thank you Lucy.

I hit the wall halfway around Singapore Zoo, stuck panting in the jaguar enclosure with all these other wild tourists, while Susan and Lucy viewed the Naked Mole Rat. Nothing would revive me but a Singapore Sling in the Long Bar of the Raffles Hotel. A bad mistake, Raffles is elegant, but it's "cost plus plus" tourist not a real pub anymore. The Sling was ok but not at $26 plus an unannounced 17%, an unpleasant taste after what started as fun...

The last day we walked from Chinatown to the Gardens By the Bay, four and a half hours in the midday sun, mad dogs and an Englishwoman...

Palaces of excess proudly showing the skill of Singapore's ability to buy what it wants, everybody reduced to the size of insignificance, whether in the shopping vaults, the hotel with the cruise liner on top, the sustainability gardens.

I think this is my departing impression of Singapore, pleasant and helpful people in a space that daily reduces them.

Posted from deepest mobility....