mybigadventures.com

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.