Mumsy and Guvna take on Europe: A 2016 Europe Trip Report! updated 5/29/2017

[Chicago Mo]

So sorry it didn't go as planned!! but i have to say i am just craving all your adventures here.

My favorite part of the house....
The Dining Room- where they did most of their writing

You can see where he was in the middle.

OMG.

But we couldn't get in.

This is the pits!!!

It was nice to remember where we were and take it all in for a few moments.

Just beautiful!

 

[mariezp]

I'm on a mini vacation of my own right now so I finally made it back to look over what I had missed of your report. Loving it all! The cathedrals and castles are glorious and the English countryside is so beautiful! Planning to make it back to the UK some day and hope I get to see even a tiny bit as much as what you and your mom were able to do. Bummer about crowds and getting sick but I bet it just adds to the memories now that it is all over and done. Plus makes for a good excuse to go back for a redo trip! lol!
I'm anxious to see what happens next!

 

[annegirl]

I'm sorry the Bronte house experience was a little disappointing, but I'm sure you were glad to be there!

I can't imagine how stressful the driving was. What a nice little spot you stopped at though.

Lake Windermere looks beautiful.

I'm sorry you weren't feeling well and missed out on dinner I'm sure relaxing was just what you needed.

Yes. It was disapointing but in the big picture not as big of a deal. So glad we got to see it!
Lake Windermere was so beautiful!

I'm on a mini vacation of my own right now so I finally made it back to look over what I had missed of your report. Loving it all! The cathedrals and castles are glorious and the English countryside is so beautiful! Planning to make it back to the UK some day and hope I get to see even a tiny bit as much as what you and your mom were able to do. Bummer about crowds and getting sick but I bet it just adds to the memories now that it is all over and done. Plus makes for a good excuse to go back for a redo trip! lol!
I'm anxious to see what happens next!

Exactly! I so hope to go back again someday!

 

[annegirl]

So sorry I have been MIA!
I swear life just gets busier and busier.
One cool thing- we have been doing a lot of family history over the past few year. My family has been excited to find our ancestor that was a signer of the constitution and some members of the family on the Mayflower. Recently we found out we were related to Mark Twain.
But then, Doug's sister started working on his side and we found out that he is related to WALT DISNEY!!!!!
So exciting.
I think we should get in free now.

So, back to the trip....

The next day was one of my favorite days of the entire trip.


We woke up on Monday, April 11th full of expectations.

I was worried as today would be one of the things I was MOST looking forward to.

We had pre-ordered breakfast at our B&B (they leave a paper in your room to do that) and we did not do a good job of it. I ordered poached eggs thinking they were fried eggs (duh) so they were so runny I couldn't eat them. My mom ordered salmon thinking it was cooked salmon. It was raw. Yeah, we felt extremely picky this morning as neither of us could finish our food. I wish I had a picture of it but I don't. It was completely our fault and I have no doubts that if we would have ordered something else we would have loved it. We had some toast and fruit and then grabbed some Zone bars from our room on our way out afterward.

We decided to take the small car ferry across Lake Windermere (only a few pounds) to Far Sawrey.
It was pretty fun. It was a short ride but cool to ride across the lake.

At Far Sawrey we drove off the ferry and made our way to Near Sawrey to visit Hill Top Farm, the home of Beatrix Potter.
We got there early so we sat in the car and just got more and more excited while we waited for the ticket office to open.
When it finally did open we were only behind one family that got there while we were waiting and stood in the rain by the ticket office until it opened - we didn't want to do that. It was quite cold.
We were able to get a 10am tour time.
You walk down the street from the parking lot to get to the entrance for Hill Top Farm.
It was a wonderful walk.
So beautiful and so peaceful.
At this point my worries started to fade away. It was no where near as crowded and it was so quiet. Just what I imagined it would be like.

I've always thought sheep were cute... but after this trip I love them.
Sheep, like daffodils, were everywhere in England.

On our way down the road we passed the Tower Bank Arms. It makes an appearance in Jemima Puddle Duck.
I love that about Beatrix Potter's art. Everywhere we went here we saw scenes from her books!

I was keeping an eye out for Castle Cottage. It is where Beatrix lived after marrying William Heelis. It is across some fields from Hill Top.
I found it!

the little babies...

Soon we walked through a little gate to the pathway past the gift shop and up to the house.
We were so excited!

We couldn't believe we were here!

We went right in and explored this wonderful house.
I couldn't take pictures inside unfortunately so I will just have to say we loved it.
This house had a special feeling in it.
It felt happy. It felt calm. It was amazing. You could feel her there.
We were able to see so many of her cool things and the spots she painted into her books.
There was a wonderful doll house that some children were playing with.
It was just a fantastic experience.
After touring the home we spent some time in the garden and took more pictures of the outside.

I took the bag I got for my birthday the year before with me to use this day.
I had to get a picture of it in the garden.

The gift shop was small but so much fun and I bought a lot there!
I got the two postcards to frame and put on my book shelf next to my Beatrix Potter books.
I got a Peter figurine and a Mrs. Tiggy Winkle figurine to match them. They look great on my shelves!
I also got a little Lilliput Lane figurine of Hill Top itself.
I bought a pencil for each of my daughters- blue for Maddy, pink for Abi. And I also got a leather bookmark.

We started out the day worried but were quickly so calm and happy.
This experience was exactly what I needed at this moment.
We went on to have such a wonderful day which I will write about more in the next post.
Hill Top Farm is still one of the best things we did on our trip.
I will always love this place.
Next up: Grasmere


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[Lynne G]

That stop with Potter is so nice. My mom would have liked to visit there too. She is also such a fan of all BP stuff. I pick up hard copy books of hers at yard sales when I see them. I love the English countryside.

Great report.

 

[Chicago Mo]

This is so beautiful.
I could sit in that garden and write all day. SHEEP! They are really cute.. American sheep aren't as cute

 

[missangelalexis]

What beautiful pictures! I'm so glad this was everything you wanted it to be!

 

[annegirl]

OKay I have not been on here forever! I will try to get back into the swing of things over the next week or so!

 

[scrappydew]

OKay I have not been on here forever! I will try to get back into the swing of things over the next week or so!

Yeah! Can't wait to read more!

 

[annegirl]

I was just planning on getting on here this week to update about our Europe trip but I have some exciting news! We just spontaneously decided we could make it back to Disney this year! So this morning I jumped on the computer as soon as free dining showed up and we are booked for November!! I am SO excited! So, today will be crazy busy but I will try to get on later this afternoon or tomorrow to update everyone on what has been going on in our lives and to get going on this trip wrap up!

 

[annegirl]

OK! Back to this trip report! When last I wrote, we were visiting Beatrix Potter's Hill Top Farm. It was one of my very favorite stops of the entire trip and one of my favorite days.
So, next.....

After our wonderful experience at Hill Top Farm we drove to the little village of Grasmere.

As we drove we went through a few small villages, all lovely.

I would love to go to the Lake District again someday and if I do I know for sure we will be staying in one of these small villages. There was such a different feel to this day and to these areas. I'm sure they get busy too but they were wonderful during our stay.



Grasmere ended up being one of my very favorite spots.

We parked in a nice, big car park and then walked through the village looking for the famous Sarah Nelson's Grasmere Gingerbread shop.

There it is!

We went in to the small, quaint shop and bought a package of gingerbread.
I wish we had bought more of it!
Then we took our gingerbread around the corner to the grounds around St. Oswald's Church.
At the start of the path there was this lovely William Wordsworth quote:

"I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;"

As I have mentioned, daffodils mean England to me now and so this poem, which I have always loved, meant a lot more to me now.
To wander this path near the churchyard where Wordsworth is buried looking at all the daffodils was an amazing experience.

We wandered the path for a while and then found his grave and those of his family.

We found a bench to relax on and enjoyed our first piece of gingerbread.
I like gingerbread. But this was amazing.
It was by far the best gingerbread I have ever had.
The hype is deserved.

After enjoying our gingerbread and the beautiful nature surrounding us for a while, we kept strolling.

We went through the shops on the main street and then decided to stop for lunch at this restaurant, Pottered Out.

It was a really nice place with really good prices and we got a cute booth with a view of the front door and the street.
We both ordered the Goats Cheese sandwich on Warm Ciabatta Bread with marinated red pepper, sun blushed tomato, and pesto. It came with the salad.
This was delicious.
It was one of the best meals I had, I think

After lunch we walked back past the car park and down the road a ways to visit Dove Cottage.
It was just so beautiful and quiet here.

​

 

[annegirl]

Dove Cottage: home of William Wordsworth

Wordsworth moved into Dove Cottage with his sister Dorothy in 1799.

He would live here for eight years.

In 1802 he married Mary Hutchinson. Three of their five children were born here.

He wrote many of his best poems here and his sister Dorothy wrote her Grasmere journal which would also become famous.
It was a really cozy place.

Wordsworth's letter making him the Poet Laureate in 1843.

After exploring the inside of the cottage, we explored the garden

At this point we went back to the car and began to make our way toward Scotland where we were going to visit Hadrian's Wall and the border.
But the road we were going to take was closed because of recent flooding.
We were disappointed but decided to drive back toward Bowness-on-Windermere to our B&B.
The other routes would have taken a lot longer and we just weren't sure we would have the time.
The drive was beautiful.

As we got closer to our town, we pulled over to an overlook of Lake Windermere and enjoyed the view for a while.

We settled back into our room and then walked down the road looking for a place for dinner.
We decided on Rastelli's.
It was a nice little Italian place.

We ordered garlic bread that came looking like a pizza and a pepperoni pizza.

We enjoyed it.
After dinner we went back to our room and had a nice evening of reading.
This was one of our favorite days!

At Dove Cottage I bought this really cute illustrated version of some of William Wordsworth's poetry.

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[annegirl]

Tuesday, April 12th we decided to skip the breakfast at our B&B and just have zone bars as we left early on our way to the Peak District.
We stopped in Chorly along the way to make a visit to the Preston LDS temple.

I was kind of mesmerized by the trees in the parking lot...

We wanted to visit Stanadge Edge on our way into the Peak District (the place where Elizabeth Bennet stands on the cliffs in the 2005 Pride and Prejudice) but there were some roads that were closed from flooding and our GPS wouldn't give us an alternative route. So we just went straight to Lyme Park.
Lyme Park was the setting of Pemberley in the 1995 Pride and Prejudice.
We parked in the very muddy parking lot and walked up some stairs up a big hill to get to the house.
It was so exciting to walk up to it!
We had decided we would only go into one "Pemberley" since we didn't have a ton of time. So we decided to tour Chatsworth inside and out because they actually used the interiors in the movie but to only tour the gardens of Lyme Park because they didn't film in the house.
If I ever go back I would love to tour the house as well.

We walked through to the courtyard and showed them our tour tickets.
Mom found the restroom while I spoke to an older gentleman that worked there. He was a lot of fun to talk to and asked all about our trip plans.

Then we went to walk around the pond.
I was a little worried that it would be packed because there were so many cars in the parking lot, but we only saw two other people on our walk.
It was so peaceful and felt kind of magical.

We really enjoyed taking a slow walk around the pond and taking it all in, imagining Mr. Darcy showing up.

After touring the grounds we went into the gift shop.

It was a lovely little gift shop and hard to not buy everything!
I ended up getting this Usborne History of Britain book to share with the girls, a Mr. Darcy bookmark featuring Colin Firth, and an I love Mr. Darcy book bag similar to the one in Austenland.

Next up: We drive to Chatsworth!
​

 

[missangelalexis]

Beautiful pictures! Sounds like more amazing times for you and your mom!

 

[bookgirl]

I had to laugh at the sheer amount of sandwiches...I was in Europe last fall on a solo trip and didn't want to waste time in restaurants and literally snacked my way through London and France. It was always so easy to just grab a sandwich or something pre-made at Marks and Spencers or just bread and cheese at the farmer's market.

PS I also had a few McDonalds moments just for the speed.

 

[annegirl]

​

Beautiful pictures! Sounds like more amazing times for you and your mom!

Yes! So much fun!

 

[annegirl]

I had to laugh at the sheer amount of sandwiches...I was in Europe last fall on a solo trip and didn't want to waste time in restaurants and literally snacked my way through London and France. It was always so easy to just grab a sandwich or something pre-made at Marks and Spencers or just bread and cheese at the farmer's market.

PS I also had a few McDonalds moments just for the speed.

Exactly! We did a few McDonalds too.

 

[annegirl]

After leaving Lyme Park we drove through the Peak District toward Chatsworth.

The roads were pretty good and the scenery was some of the prettiest I have ever seen in my life.

I drove right past the entrance to the big house so we had to turn around but not before going over a cool one lane stone bridge. As I drove back up the hill we were able to get a better view of Chatsworth house.

We turned down the drive and made our way toward the house.

They have a really big parking area so we were able to quickly and easily find a place to park.

We were still in our church style clothes and were quite cold and our dress shoes were really muddy and wet. So we took a minute in the car to change into jeans, socks, and our Converse.

So glad we did that as it was still cold and damp outside.



Chatsworth, as I said before, is the location used for the 2005 Pride and Prejudice Pemberley. It has also been the setting for a lot of other movies, including The Duchess which also starred Keira Knightley.

We were pretty excited as we walked through the gate and up the lane to the entrance.

Then we started our tour of the house.

This place is massive and there wasn't one inch of it that wasn't ornately decorated.

The grounds were massive as well. They say the estate is the size of Washington D.C.

You could spend days exploring this place.

We had a few hours.

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[Chicago Mo]

Im still reading along and the pictures are just stunning!!

 

[annegirl]

The 17th century chairs in the chapel ...

Every ceiling was painted. It was quite incredible.

The above picture shows something I thought was quite cool..

It looked like a door was open into a hallway showing a violin hung on another door.
But it is actually a painting of a door with a violin on it.

The hallways were lined with sculptures, furniture, and artwork.
This house felt more like a museum than a house.

We found my mom's favorite statue from Pride and Prejudice in here...

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