What to Do? Tip Top Tips for Our Guests and Others

There is so much happening always, it is hard to pick out the top top tips. However, it is really important to point out that this Saturday, 9.30 – 5.00 it is the Manifold Show at Ilam. This is our really favourite show, and conveniently very local. It is small, friendly fun and not too commercial although of course there are stalls selling everything from Barbours to pots of honey. There is also a slow tractor race, lots of vintage tractors, carriage driving and racing terriers! A couple of years ago we took Liza and Harry, some very great friends of ours, there and before we knew where we were Liza had bought two rare breed hens and a cockerel which also came to spend the weekend with us and woke all and sundry at dawn the next morning.

Next Saturday, 18th August, it is the Ashbourne Show which we also love although it is much much bigger and slicker, but not too much so. At the end of the month – the weekend beginning Friday 31st August is the Chatsworth Country Fair which is very big and slick – ‘one of England’s most spectacular annual outdoor events’, full of wonderful events from the Red Arrows to sheepdog trials, ferret racing and parachuting – very well worth a trip if the weather is good.

Not until next month but I have to put it in, Robert and Alice Shields are opening their gardens at Parwich Hall in aid of the Friends of the Peak District which should be a lovely event especially if the weather is good and if you’re staying here it is only a few hundred yards away so not far to go.If all this activity has worked up a bit of an appetite, a real top top tip is to book yourself in at Fischer’s for their 20.12 Luncheon. We can vouch for this personally and cannot recommend it too highly. You can of course add another course, and wine…but you need not if you wish to keep to budget. Needless to say we did not. Afterwards you can stroll in the lovely garden and admire their organic veg patch or if the weather is obliging, just sit in the sun and feel happy that you came! The offer goes on until the end of November. We shall certainly be returning, several times.