This June, boyfriend's family rented a cottage on a farm just outside Chester for a week, and we went up to join them for a holiday. Last year I only managed to join them for four days of the holiday, because I was away at a conference in Cyprus the rest of the time (hard life huh?) so this year I was looking forward to the full range of activities for the week.
I met boyfriend after work on the Friday, complete with a bottle of wine for the train (I had just been called back to another job interview and was in the mood to celebrate). We made it up to Chester in a few hours and were picked up to get to the cottage in Dunham-on-the-hill, which is about 15 minutes out of Chester. This place was really cool - it had a hot tub outside, which made me extremely happy - and the inside was very old-fashioned, with low hanging ceilings, stone walls and an attic bedroom which was all mine. Happy days!!!
It was the first week of the world cup, so you can imagine that a cottage full of boys (boyfriend, his two brothers and dad) would have two priorities: drink beer and watch football. That was fine with me...I had the hot tub, a case of strongbow and my kindle. I spent quite a few nights that week whiling away the football games from the warmth and bubbliness of the hot tub :D
The weekend was pretty low key in general. On Saturday night we went for a big dinner at a local pub, the Wheatsheaf, and on Sunday some more of boyfriend's family members came over for lunch. There were loads of games and lots of food, and just general relaxation for the day. In the afternoon we headed over to the Dunham Arms for a few drinks, and then of course football took over for the rest of the day.
 |
| Look how close I got!!! |
That Monday we went on a day trip to Dunham Massey, which is a National Trust Georgian house in the centre of a deer park, and in honour of 2014 being the World War I centenary, it has been reset up as it was back then as the Stamford Military Hospital. The grounds at this place are absolutely huge and, as I mentioned, set in the middle of a deer park. We didn't quite realise this at first, so when I saw a deer standing near a tree as brazen as anything, I went up close to take a picture. It was only after I spent about ten minutes doing this and moved on that I realised that there were actually tens of deers around. I had just happened to come upon my first one on its lonesome!
You can easily spend a full day at Dunham Massey and not run out of things to do. You are given a time on your ticket to enter the house itself, because it's so busy at the moment. The Sanctuary from the Trenches exhibition on at the moment is designed to show you how the hospital was set up, including the operating theatre, the ward and the recreation room. One of the little touches I really admired was the personal information attached to each of the beds in the ward, including medical charts, letters written to and from home, and personal artefacts belonging to the wounded men. It made it seem more real. There was also a lot of information about Penelope Grey, who was the widow of the 9th and the mother of the 10th Earl of Warrington, and who founded and ran the hospital in her home during the War (It all kind of reminded me of Downton Abbey and their military hospital really). Aside from the hospital, many of the house's rooms and treasures were available to look at, so it made for a really interesting look around. And you should have seen the size of the kitchen mixer....amazeballs!!!!
 |
| Sitting in the rose garden (photo by Brian Maxwell) |
We spent a fair amount of time walking around the garden, which is kept in beautiful condition. They have a massive rose garden, which was all in bloom when we were there, and there must have been hundreds of varieties of rose. There is also a Victory Garden and a Herb border, and these have both been recreated as they would have been during the War. These gardens contain a mixture of vegetables, fruit and herbs, especially herbs with medicinal properties. And of course there were all the standard gardens with trees and more plants than I could ever learn the names of.
After all this walking, we stopped for lunch at the restaurant set up in the 18th century stable (the food thankfully did not reflect this), and then set off back home. A lovely day in amazing weather :D
On Tuesday the boys went off to do a bit of pitch-and-putt, and I went with boyfriend's mum to Cheshire Oaks Retail Outlet. We picked up a few bargains, which I always enjoy, and then we went to meet the others at the National Waterways Museum at Ellesmere Port for some lunch and a look about. I really enjoyed this museum - it was based around the banks of the Mersey and the Manchester Ship Canal - and I learnt a lot about the different types of canal shipping boats and I was especially interested in learning about the locks used to ascend and descend the water traffic, and also in that fact that they used to use horses to pull the shipping boats along the canals!! Mental!!
 |
| One of many canal boats (photo by Brian Maxwell) |
There was also a massive historic boat collection, and we really enjoyed walking along and checking out all the different types of boats. It's quite sad to see that a few of them have fallen into serious disrepair, and they don't have the funding to properly restore these boats.
On Wednesday we went for a day trip to Chester Zoo. The only other zoo I've been to in recent years was Sydney Zoo, which was an absolute marvel, and so I was a bit sceptical about how much I would enjoy this day out. However I was very pleasantly surprised: the zoo is beautifully laid out, with a huge range of animals kept in a very natural way. The weather was perfect for such an outing and the picnic in the sun halfway through the day was definitely one of the highlights.
 |
| Meerkat!!...I want one!! (photo by Brian Maxwell) |
 |
| Komodo dragon (photo by Brian Maxwell) |
 |
| Ant eater (photo by Brian Maxwell) |
 |
| A crash of rhinos (seriously) (photo by Brian Maxwell) |
And that brings us to our last day in Chester, when we actually decided to go into Chester town itself! Even though we had lived so close to the town for so long when we were in Preston, we had never actually been to visit, which is quite a shame. It's a beautiful old town, and very similar to York actually. There are fantastic old walls circling the town, which you can actually walk on in some places. We visited an old Roman amphitheatre, which was full of school kids carrying little shields and swords. We also went to look at an old church by the amphitheatre, where boyfriend bought me an old copy of the Silmarillion, one of my favourite books. We wandered around for ages, just looking at the amazing old architecture and other sights. It was the perfect last day, very easy going and relaxed. A great end to the great British holiday.
Comments
Post a Comment