Saturday was mostly devoted to taking care of travel business:  the bike had to be disassembled and packed for our journey back next Wednesday and the remainder of the day was taken up by metro, train and bus rides getting us and Jon’s relatives up to Nottingham.

 

What a joy to know a local!  Marci and Angus Brown are wonderful hosts, guiding us to Nottingham, feeding us, and carting us about.  While it is possible to use public buses only to get to Wollaton Park and Chatsworth House, everything was so much easier because of these two delightful people.

 

Wollaton contains a large stately home converted to a natural history museum.  We skipped the museum part and strolled about the parklands, watching the many deer and enjoying the first reds and golds of autumn.

 

Chatsworth is an amazing place, even after all we have seen on this trip.  While the house itself is quite fine, the 36,000 acre grounds outdid anything we had yet visited.  There are numerous fountains (all gravity-fed), a rock garden formed by boulders, a maze, a curving alley of hedge, broad expanses of sheep-covered lawns, etc. etc. etc.  If you go, bring a lovely picnic lunch and allow the full day for exploring. 

 

If you see the remake of Pride and Prejudice coming to theatres soon, you’ll also get to see a number of scenes filmed at Chatsworth.