Romantic cottages for two in the Peak District
Romantic cottages for two in the Peak District
We are fortunate enough to belong to the Peak District Premier Cottages group – the very dynamic regional section of the national Premier Cottages cooperative of holiday cottage owners. You can see many of our jolly group in the ‘team photo’ taken on the steps to the Hall (no John of course, because he as always was behind the lens.)
Premier Cottages prides itself on the quality of its holiday accommodation, only accepting what we think/hope are among the finest Four and Five Star self-catering cottages in the country.
Anyway, Haddon Hall obviously rates us pretty well too and we are delighted that we have been selected as their preferred holiday accommodation owners. Unlike Chatsworth, Haddon does not have its own cottages, so is glad to have cottages that they can recommend with confidence.
To cement our new relationship we were invited today to have a private visit before the hall opens to the public in April. We were welcomed by Lord Edward Manners himself, then shown around by an impressively informative guide and we ended with a wonderful lunch laid on in the restaurant.
Throughout, the sun shone and Haddon looked stunning. It certainly was a day to remember. We shed jackets and jerseys in the March sunshine and John took masses of photos which you can see by logging onto our Haddon Hall Gallery.
Meanwhile, when the latest version of Jane Eyre hits these shores (apparently it is already going down a storm in the USA) we can all see how many of these views we can recognise in the film. Jane Eyre was shot entirely at Haddon. Judi Dench is Mrs Fairfax; she herself had made a big impression on our guide who said how courteous and charming she was at all times (and of course we all know what a wonderful actress she is!).
We have some guests’ recommendations, and John and I have been doing a little sampling of local eateries, too.
Firstly, a joint one. Sam and Gary, who were here on their sixth visit very recently (they first came for their honeymoon, several years ago now) arranged for our next door neighbour, Val Kirkham, of TopNosh Catering to bring them a meal. Sam was warm in her praises, and wrote in the Visitors’ Book and in an email after they returned home, how much they had enjoyed it.
Val has done several parties for us, but we’d never had a private meal brought to the house, so we – never to be outdone – promptly decided to have a lazy night in with a friend from a nearby village and asked Val to bring us a casserole, new potatoes and salad. It was comforting, nourishing and delicious, and lasted us for another meal as well! So, there is one recommendation…
Guests in Douglas’s Barn last week went to the Druid; this pub has had slightly mixed reviews lately but keeps getting the Michelin ‘Bib Gourmand’ award. Anyway, these guests said they had an excellent meal, although they felt the menu was limited – no bad thing we reckon (as long as you like what’s there!). When a restaurant has dozens and dozen of choices on the menu, you know they can’t possibly be doing more than re-heating something probably mass-prepared many months previously.
Our great favourite (we like the Gate at Brassington too) The George at Alstonefield goes from strength to strength. We were lucky to get a table (already reserved for later) for a bowl of soup there on Saturday and only because we were very early and weren’t going to linger.
And finally, I don’t think we’ve mentioned this before, but we recently had a really lovely long and delicious Thai meal at the Basement Thai Restaurant in Ashbourne. It is tiny, more or less underground, and John and I didn’t even know it existed until we were taken there by friends a couple of weeks ago. They don’t appear to have a website, but the telephone no. is 01335 300 305. You can order a take away but not a home delivery even if you live in Ashbourne. The address is Middle Cale, St John’s Street, Ashbourne DE6 1GP
And a certain future career on the stage for J and MF-S…!
Well, perhaps not the last bit but just see the photos…
As you may remember, John had early on established an apparent inability or perhaps unwillingness to learn words; his three parts involved a lot of action but no spoken words so he was very happy with his various roles. Here he is Fred, in the song ‘Seven Little Girls’ sitting in the back seat kissin’ and a cuddlin’ with Fred. Plenty of action and he didn’t even have to sing!
In our joint skit I had to do all the talking (glad to say we had survived the probationary period) and actually although I say it myself it went OK, raising lots of laughs. These I suspect were mainly due to John’s raised eyebrows, sighs and horrified looks as he non-verbally played his part.
The most fun of all as far as I was concerned – apart from the Master of the House at the end that the whole cast joined in – was four of us doing a ‘synchronised’ almost wordless mopping routine, dressed as caricature ‘Mrs Mops’ despite the fact – as we all admitted – that anyone we knew who really did clean was invariably smarter dressed than the four of us ever are. Actually, my chosen role necessitated a trip to the £2 and £3 sale rails at one of the less smart outfitters for young girls in Derby!
We don’t yet know how much the evening raised for the DRCS but we do know that everyone in the audience seemed to have enjoyed every moment, with comments like ‘How wonderful to spend all evening laughing almost non-stop’… And all the lovely people in the cast who had given up such a lot of time also thoroughly enjoyed themselves so it would be safe to say it was a total success in every sense of the word.
The final performance is on Friday 26th at Ashover Village Hall. That is a much bigger venue than the Medway in Bakwell where last night we sat about 160 people which was apparently uncomfortably close to being too many.
Tickets are already sold out for that (seriously!). Val Kenning has suggested that anyone that would still like to see the revue but has left it too late could come to the dress rehearsal at Ashover on Thursday 25th. She stresses that it really is a dress rehearsal and because it is in a new venue she may well have to interrupt proceedings from time to time but actually (I’m saying this, not Val) that could be part of the fun.
Entry will be free but we would ask for a donation. There will be no bar or snacks, just pure entertainment.
The two big DRCS fundraising events I mentioned in the previous post are planned for later in the year. You can find out a bit more about them if your click the link to DRCS above; both events will really be very well worth attending if you are anywhere in the area. (For those many of you that aren’t I am sorry to tantalize you – maybe better luck next year.)
Firstly there is our annual DRCS Shopping Fair on Wed 6th and Thursday 7th October at the Maynard Hotel, Grindleford. Last year I did my entire Christmas shopping in October, in very congenial surroundings, buying most unusual and very attractive presents that one wouldn’t normally be able to find at all. Even more to the point, I spent rather less money than I usually end up doing when panicking into buying unsuitable gifts at the last moment (although of course as a member of the fundraising committee I should be encouraging not economy but massive overspending!).
The second event is the DRCS Comic Revue. There will be two showings: the first on Saturday 13th November, at the Medway in Bakewell and the second on Friday 26th November at Ashover Village Hall. This no doubt will be another sell-out. When we did the last one several years ago tickets were like gold dust, and we ended up having to put on another evening as so many people were disappointed. The revue is a very jolly evening with a large cast singing, ‘dancing’ and doing skits; it is very skilfully produced by Val Kenning, a member of the DRCS Fundraising team, who runs her own drama school and is a genius at extracting previously unsuspected and untapped acting ‘ability’ from all sorts of unlikely characters including John and me…
John has established he cannot learn lines, so has to have a part which involves speaking entirely from behind a newspaper. He also is lined up for one other major non-speaking role, more to be divulged later. My role is very much the side-kick, the foil who – when there are only two people on the stage at the time – is not granted the luxury of hiding behind a newspaper, but in fact has just as much difficulty as John with memorising words.
Another busy week in the Orchard Farm household, but the business mainly very pleasurable.
Friday is usually a very full day here, with the changeovers, and getting anything else done that needs to be done in the way of repairs and maintenance in the five hours that we have. It was as full as any yesterday but John held the fort with Janet and Carol and everything went so smoothly I begin to wonder whether perhaps I should plan more Fridays away.
Anyway, I hardly spent the day relaxing but was equally busy but in a very different way and not returning home until quarter to 8 in the evening. I was interviewing (with four others) four of the five short-listed candidates for the new manager for DRCS, the Derwent Rural Counselling Service, the Bakewell-based charity that I was manager of for ten years and am still heavily committed to as a trustee and as a member of the Friends Fundraising Committee.
Advance warning about two great DRCS fundraising events John and I are involved in.
More about the latter later – I suddenly realised I should make public for local readers and our guests who may be staying here then the two big events we are planning for later in the year and which are taking up some time at the moment, and which I can unashamedly say should be well worth coming to. You’ll have to read the next blog entry for that but the basic facts and details can be found on the DRCS website link above.
Another Buxton Festival has come to an end. It was unfortunate for us that our Cornish/Devon trip took a whole week out of the programme but we ended well.
Yesterday, Roy Hattersley, who had done so much as chairman earlier on to develop the festival by attracting excellent speakers and events spoke movingly and very entertainingly about his view of England (as against Britain), and being English. He is not blindly patriotic or claiming being English confers any sense of superiority; rather he is just quietly proud to be English, admiring Shakespeare’s ‘modest stillness’, the emotional reticence which he feels is the defining English characteristic.
The fitting grande finale of the festival for many was the Dowager Duchess of Devonshire in conversation with David Blunkett this morning. A possibly unlikely duo but they are actually good friends with amongst other shared experiences so we were told, that of both having been brought up in estates – he in a council estate in Sheffield and ‘Debo’ – the last of the Mitford sisters – in an estate even if a rather different one – in Oxfordshire!
At 90 the Dowager Duchess is still full of life, quick-witted, warm and amusing but always self-deprecating, never flamboyant or boastful – perhaps a perfect example of the natural reserve that Roy Hattersley had described yesterday.
Many more excitements at the Opera House since the last post…no less than two operas followed by Cherie Blair this morning, being interviewed (I think the expression is ‘in conversation with’ ) Dame Janet Smith, who is chairman of the Buxton Festival, and like Cherie Blair a barrister.
Starting with the last, we were both surprised at how much we enjoyed listening to the conversation. Mrs Blair has had a bad press, on the whole, but she came over as very warm, humorous and charming, and obviously highly intelligent; the Buxton audience was very restrained and there were no questions about some of the more sensational of the stories about her, but she did admit that there were times when Tony Blair might have wished she had not done or said what she did, personally. However, she was very clear that, professionally, as a barrister she had to represent her client, regardless of the client’s stance and whether she therefore appeared to be ‘agin’ the government and her husband.
Still moving backwards, we went as guests of some very kind friends to a performance on Wednesday night of Verdi’s Luisa Miller. John and I weren’t the only ones there who hadn’t up until now ever heard of it, but that is our ignorance. It was charming, the music delightful, the singing wonderful; the ending rather Romeo and Juliet like with both hero and heroine dying, so no happy ending to lift one’s heart there, but in spite of that it was a wonderful evening.
Finally, last Sunday we went to the Barber of Bagdad by Peter Cornelius. As can be assumed, the story is about complicated infatuations, and this time apparently based on the Arabian Nights! The Barber was rather Mr Toad like in a weird outfit complete with goggles, and he appears on stage astride a comically adorned three wheeler tricycle/barber’s chair. The barber is meant to be rather long-winded, and comically so; in the first half John found this all too successfully achieved, but fortunately the second half really livened up and was thoroughly, totally, enjoyed by all.
We are so lucky to be able to enjoy this all, so easily. Buxton is a pleasant half hour’s drive, parking is easy, and free after 6pm, and the atmosphere both outside and in the theatre is wonderful. Until today, the weather has smiled upon us, but today poor Cherie was rained upon.
The morning talks are great. The speakers are inevitably very experienced, often amusing entertainers, and the hour passes only too quickly; yet afterwards in the sunshine outside they will linger and chat as they sign their books and everyone mills around wondering where to go for a quick bite of lunch, often before scu8rrying off to the next event of the day – or perhaps as in our case, back to the real world.
Since the Three Explorers we have been to listen to Alastair Sawday talking – not on travel books and websites – but on the global food crisis. We were all thoroughly depressed by the message at the beginning – daily as a nation we are all getting fatter and less healthy, manipulated as we are by the supermarkets and the food industry generally to consume yet huger quantities of junk and unhealthy food…
To everyone’s relief (he was preaching to the converted) here is a chink of hope… the growing interest in organic food, in growing one’s own vegetables and in buying local produce. John and I felt unreasonably smug when he praised the Riverford Farm box organic fruit and veg scheme, which we use (we have a weekly delivery from their Riverford Stockley Organic Farm in nearby Staffordshire which guests can also make one-off use of while they are here).
The final surge of second hand pride was when he singled out the George at Alstonefield as being a wonderful example of a pub producing excellent food cooked on the premises from first class local produce. Emily, the owner of the pub, look rather embarrassed when she was asked to stand up and be recognised but as all our guests who have been to the pub will agree, the praise is due!
“Absolutely shattered!” “I feel so stressed!” Work has been a nightmare!”
See how Richard and Joanna enjoyed relaxing with their two Cairns last week:
“How hard it was to leave Orchard Farm, Toms Barn was everything we had hoped for and much more.
What a fantastic location, buttercup meadows, wildflowers and peace. Great walks of course and great pubs especially the Old Gate at Brassington, The George at Alstonefield, both happy to accept dogs… “.
“And now we are simply going to chill out, relax and do nothing.” When our guests arrive here they often confide how exhausted they feel, how stressed and overworked, how in need of a complete break from all outside pressures.
Their dream is to completely switch off , with time miraculously theirs to do with what they will. And this is surprisingly easy to achieve. Both our barns have a delightful aura of calm where it is all too easy to forget that any other world exists.
After a few days doing nothing much in the peace and quiet surrounding them it doesn’t take long usually before they start feeling a bit more energetic and keen to explore the area, take a few walks, sample a few local pubs.This is all part of relaxing.
We are always glad to hear from our guests about where they’ve been and what they have enjoyed – or not, as the case may be. It helps us when we are recommending to new guests before they arrive, and also, we know that many others log onto the blog to see what’s new and what people have enjoyed doing.
Even having lived in the area some time now, we are still constantly amazed how much there is to do locally and end up wishing we were permanently on holiday ourselves so we could spend more time following up some of the recommendations guests make; perhaps we’re not so keen on the gliding lessons someone recommended earlier but hiring a boat and having a picnic on Carsington sounds just the ticket!
The 2010 Buxton Festival season has begun. It opened with an opera last night – Luisa Miller by Giuseppe Verdi; we didn’t go but are being taken by some friends next week which is a treat to look forward to.
The festival for us therefore started this morning with a most stimulating, interesting and amusing ‘conversation’ between Matthew Parris and ‘the Three Explorers’, Ranulph Fiennes, Robin Hanbury-Tennison and John Hare.
The Festival programme explains:
Ranulph Fiennes is holder of several endurance records and the first man to reach both Poles by surface travel. Explorer and conservationist Robin Hanbury-Tenison has been on over 30 expeditions, and spearheaded the international concern for tropical rainforests. Founder of the Wild Camel Protection Foundation, John Hare was the first European to travel into the wildest parts of the Chinese Gobi desert.
The very entertaining hour of ‘conversation’ mostly involved their answering some excellent questions from the floor. Matthew Parris was hoping to discover what motivates men to tackle some of the most physically demanding journeys in some of the world’s most inhospitable regions.
If I can dare to sum up, the answers were: excitement, relishing a certain level of danger, scientific research and seeking to find out more about – and to protect – endangered and rare species and indeed the climate.
All three of the guests were extremely entertaining, very quick and amusing and not in the slightest arrogant about their successes and physical triumphs; not surprisingly Matthew Parris very ably managed, as always, to get the best out of everyone, including the audience.
One of the lovely things about the Buxton Festival is the atmosphere and the intimacy: the Opera House is small by modern standards. I can’t find out the exact number it seats but it must be in the very low hundreds. The excitement is infectious, the guest speakers are always very approachable; this morning – as always – we almost felt we knew our speakers at the end of the hour.
After the event his morning many of us, including Matthew Parris, sat at tables outside the pub opposite the Opera House, enjoying a coffee or beer while the three explorers signed books for a long queue of people anxious also to have a quick word with the authors.
And now we look forward to Alastair Sawday talking tomorrow, not about holiday destinations or ‘Special Escape’ self-catering cottages but about ‘Slow Food Britain’ and the global food crisis…
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