Sunday 8th June LINCOLN -
CLUMBER HOUSE - LOCKTON
We slept well in our lovely Lincoln bedroom, and I was woken
up this morning by the wafting smell of croissants through the building. Our
accommodation offered a basic breakfast, delivered to our room, and included in
the cost warm croissants with butter and jam, and two tubs of yoghurt. Ours
arrived as we were talking to Danny, who was eating his dinner – he was quite
intrigued to watch as I took the bag of goodies off the doorknob where it had
been left!
These and a banana
each made quite a reasonable breakfast, so then we finished packing up our
overnight bags, and made a start at about 9. It was another travel day, this
time to our house in Lockton, Yorkshire. The sun was shining in Lincoln, so I
was able to take a lovely photo of the Lodge, and also of Lincoln Castle. We
would have loved to visit it, but like most British attractions, it doesn’t
open until 10, would cost us nearly $80AUD and we only had parking until 12, so
decided that just wasn’t going to happen! Instead, we decided to visit Clumber House,
a National Trust property rather near Sherwood Forest, where we’d been
yesterday, so we did retrace our steps a bit.
Lincoln Castle
It was worth it, however. Clumber House was built by the Dukes of Newcastle in the 1700s, and extended onto over the years. Unfortunately, it had two massive fires over the centuries, and although rebuilds were done, a lot of its art collection was lost. Throw in a Duke or two who spent madly, and by the early 20th century, it was in big financial trouble. Clumber House Estate actually doesn’t have a grand house any more – that was demolished in the 1930s by the Duke of the day, as he just couldn’t afford the upkeep after paying death duties. The last Duke died in 1988, and the Dukedom is now extinct (though the peerage of the Earl of Lincoln from that title is now held by a bloke living in Alice Springs!) What’s left of the estate was given to the National Trust, and they run it and the little village of Hardwick, which is included.
It was lovely to wander around the estate buildings – first
of all, we took morning tea in the Duke’s study, the only room remaining from
the house. It’s attached to a new café complex, and stones show the outline of
where the original house stood, with gardens sweeping down to the lakes. The
estate geese have been breeding, and there are so many half-grown goslings! The
stables are a big complex, there’s a beautiful church (the Dukes were
Anglo-Catholic so very ornately decorated), parsonage, various cottages and a massive
greenhouse and walled garden. The gardens are very much functional – we’ve
never seen so many apple trees. They also grow a huge range of fruit and
vegetables and herbs for use in the café. We had a lovely chat to the Churchwarden,
who was born on the estate, and he told us a lot of the history. It really was
a most enjoyable couple of hours, and a good walk around for us. It was cold
though, with an icy breeze whistling around at times. We were grateful for all
the layers we had on! (Though I did vow to dig out my furry hat; it would have
been just the thing.)
Now the shop, cafe, book shop, offices etc.
So many geese and goslings at the lake!
Massive greenhouse and walled gardens
We then realised we could head for our rental, as check in time was 3, and we needed to buy groceries in Pickering on the way, as Lockton is too small for a grocery shop. The trips today were almost all on the A roads, so quite luxurious, and fast, for once.
We reached the Lidl at Pickering just after 3. To our
amazement, everyone in the district seems to do their shopping on a Sunday
afternoon! We couldn’t get a park in their free car park, so had to park at the
Pay & Display across the road – 2 pounds 20 pence for an hour. Ouch.
Anyway, off we went to get our food for the next four days. Lidl promote
themselves as one of the budget chains – in fact they advertise that they are
cheaper than Aldi. We found most things we wanted, but I was sad they were out
of strawberries. The British strawberries are much sweeter than the Aussie
ones, I must say, and they are my favourite dessert at present. I did buy some
Cadbury’s chocolate to do a taste comparison to the Australian product, though.
After we’d got our groceries, we headed off again and it was
only 6 minutes’ drive to Lockton. The road into the village is temporarily closed,
so we had to divert through some tiny lanes, but with a bit of backing up to
let locals through, we managed to find our house. Lockton looks like a very
typical Yorkshire town; lots of stone buildings right up to the street. If you’ve
ever seen All Creatures Great & Small, you’ll know what it looks like.
5 Church View is in a row of old terrace houses, unsurprisingly looking across at the church. It has 3 bedrooms upstairs plus a bathroom, and a big kitchen, second toilet and two living areas downstairs, so very roomy and extremely comfortable. After a cuppa and sandwiches (late lunch at 4pm!) the first thing I did was put on two loads of washing. There’s no drier, but fortunately they have 3 drying racks which are now all covered with damp clothes. Hopefully they’ll dry over the next day or so. It is supposed to warm up this week.
We do indeed have a view of the church!
It's showered on and off all afternoon; Lex went out for a
walk around 4.30, but was back about fifteen minutes later. A thunderstorm
swept through and it poured for a while, but now it’s clear and sunshine again.
The weather is very much hour by hour here.
I’ve cooked tea – Lidl’s Chinese chicken stir fry, which was actually delicious. Tomorrow we will head out to see more of Yorkshire. It's now 8.20pm, and it's still very light outside. Sunset isn't until after 9.30, and sunrise will be around 4.30, so as we are going north, the days are getting even longer!
No comments:
Post a Comment