Chatsworth House

I have to confess I'm a bit of a sucker for a nice posh house and my love for period dramas and films does nothing to help that.  In November I finally went to visit Chatsworth House, which is one of England's best-loved stately homes (and star of 2005's Pride and Prejudice and this Christmas's Death Comes To Pemberley).

I actually did the unthinkable and travelled there on public transport.  At the time I was coming from Nottingham, so my journey involved a half-hour train journey to Chesterfield, a bus journey from Chesterfield to Baslow and then a slightly muddy walk along the public footpath leading through the park. For me, navigating all this on my own was quite an achievement, particularly when hampered by my terrible sense of direction.

The Painted Hall

For Christmas the house was decorated in a Narnia theme, including wardrobes and Mr Tumnus's house.  The Painted Hall was the palace of the White Witch, which you might just be able to see despite my slightly dodgy phone photos.

Poor Aslan...

The attention to detail was pretty great - I liked the mechanical mice nibbling at Aslan's ropes but I'm not sure what visitors who hadn't read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe might have made of it!

More decorations!

I loved these multi-coloured bunting decorations streaming down from the domed ceiling. Simple but effective.

A lovely Chatsworth view

It's impossible to visit Chatsworth without mentioning the beautiful gardens.  As you can probably tell from my photos, the weather was not the best and made for a slightly overcast day, but the autumn colours were gorgeous.  This is the view over the Canal Pond.

Autumn trees

Unfortunately I couldn't spend as much time looking around the gardens as I would have liked to (thanks to buses being fairly infrequent) so I chickened out of getting lost in the maze and skirted around it instead.  Still, this gives me plenty to do next time I visit, which I definitely want to do in the summer.