Buxton, Bakewell, Chatsworth, Baslow and back

Surprise! Another side trip!
So this past Saturday Elise (one of the other girls from API) and I took a little day trip to the Chatsworth House. The reason we chose this out of the many stately homes was because it was use as Pemberley during the filming of Pride and Prejudice.

Brace yourself, the tail of our journey turned adventure could take a while, but before I do that I must preface the adventure with the fact that due to a misunderstanding the night before, both of us had only had 3 hours of sleep. This meant that the whole day it took a long time for us to process and we both felt like we had jet lag.

Where we live is about an hour walk from the train station and while buses are supposed to come often, on Saturday mornings they are more unpredictable. That being said the day started out with a nice run to catch the bus. While riding the bus, it became clear that while we had left enough time, we were just barley going to make our train.

We got to the train station and discovered that, of course, of train was leaving from platform 12. This meant more running; however we discovered that the time on the board in the lobby and online were wrong and we actually were 20 minutes early. After catching our breath, we took the train to Manchester where we had to change. Once again we had about 5 minutes to run from platform 1 to 15, but this time we had to run through policemen and big crowds. Since we were going to the end of the line, we both took naps on that train.

We then arrived in Buxton, a cute Spa town.

Buxton

It was on the websites suggestion that we picked this little town to arrive into. We come to find out two very discoursing things from the tourist's office, first we are going to have to take two buses to get to the house, second the house is closed for cleaning until March 15th. However, we decided that while the inside was going to amazing, it was such a wasted to come all this way to just go back.

We then took a bus to Bakewell, another small little town, and then caught a bus to Chatsworth. While on the bus from Bakewell to Chatsworth we met a very nice old man and woman, without their help I am not sure we would have ever found the house.

When the man motioned that it was our stop, I thought he was kidding; he had basically pulled over to the side of the road in the middle of nowhere. We then walked down the road, with the man guiding us.

Walking on the road to Chatsworth

The entire time we were walking I thought we were going to die. As you can see from the picture, we were walking down a 'sidewalk' alongside a road with a 50mph speed limit.

Once we got to the village, the man took us up to the church to show us the grave of JFK's sister. The strangest part of the graveyard was seeing people that died over 400 years ago next to people that died in the past year. After walking around the graveyard we went to this cute little tea room. I had wonderful portobello mushroom soup and a pot of tea and we just sat for a bit, enjoying ourselves. I think the best part about this tea room was that we were the only ones that were not locals. Because it is off season, all those who were out were people who were just out for a Saturday stroll.

After tea we started our journey to the house. It was surprising how green everything was, but how there were very few trees.

Before we started up the path, I pulled out my iPod and we started listening to the soundtrack to the movie, it made it more specular. We then rounded the ridge and there it was! After all the traveling, it was amazing to finally see it.

Even though we were not able to go inside the house, we were able to walk around the grounds. My gosh there were so many sheep! And they weren't little fat things that we have at home, these were tall sheep, that were also not fat; there were tall, lean sheep everywhere!

However, after about 1 and a half miles of walking, we were ready to be back in civilization. To make sure that we could catch the bus, we had to walk to Baslow.

Baslow

From here we caught the bus back to Bakewell. If you can believe it, we had the same bus driver and the same old women was on the bus, back from getting her hair cut. Once we got to Bakewell, we had a few minutes and so we decided to get a little treat, a piece of Bakewell tart. Apparently I am the only one that has ever heard of them, and I am not even sure where I have heard about it from, but it seemed appropriate.

It was interesting, super buttery so I could only handle a few bites, but like I said, it was the experience that was important.

We then took the buses and the trains back, thankfully there was only a one time where we had to run to catch the train.

I am not sure what my next adventure will be, but I am planing my Spring break, so far it includes Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and the Netherlands. It should be exciting!

That's all for now! See you!