Chatsworth House

Today’s our last day in Yorkshire, since tomorrow we’ll head out to London. So, to end our week here, we drove down to Chatsworth, which is where they filmed a mini-series version of Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice”. When we arrived, we paid for entry to just the Chatsworth gardens (we opted out of entry into the house itself). We were looking forward to a relaxing afternoon in the outdoors.

The garden was expansive. Walking just a few minutes in, we were greeted with a wide panoramic view of the infamous ‘rolling hills’ of the English countryside. The kids proceeded to run around the grounds, and we were comforted that no matter how far they ran, they were still within our sight.

We spent several hours just walking around and taking pictures of the scenery. There were many statues and ponds. They even had a rock garden. It’s no wonder we they had to charge for entry. The maintenance costs for such a place had to be astronomical. One of the main attractions at Chatsworth is a garden maze. We were fondly reminded of Harry Potter - Goblet of Fire, where in the final challenge, Harry wonders through a maze for the Tri-Wizard Cup. All of us started with high spirits to find the center of the maze, but in the end, only Mak Long and Andak made their way there. Tired from the maze, we stopped for lunch, before starting our walk back.

On our trip back, we stopped by this cascading stream. People took off their shoes and enjoyed the water. It was a spectacular view. At the bottom of the stream, we stopped for ice cream, made on the grounds. And that was pretty much how we ended the day. We spent the evening packing for tomorrow’s journey to London.