Christmas at Chatsworth House
On Friday 19th November, Tom and I booked a day off work to spend the day with my family: my mum, my dad, my sister, my brother and his girlfriend. My brother and his girlfriend live in Wales so we don't get to see them very often - another reason why it was so important to us that we booked the day off to go out with them all.
We decided that we'd all take a trip to Chatsworth House, just to look around the garden as the family have been inside the house before. What we didn't realise was that there was also a Christmas market in the grounds of the park, which was a pleasant surprise. So we made the most of everything Chatsworth had to offer that day. The weather was beautiful, the sun was out and the skies were blue, but it was pretty cold.
We arrived at around 12:30 in the afternoon and mused around the Christmas market for a bit, looking for something to have for lunch. We had a German sausage in a pretzel roll which was delicious. I completely forgot to take a picture for you, but it wasn't very interesting to look at, so you didn't miss much, haha. But it was lovely and filled me up for the day!
We then entered the gardens and had a good look around. It's one of the most beautiful stately homes and gardens I have ever seen, reminding me, almost, of some of the architecture you'd only see in the Capital. Not to mention the dog statues scattered around the perimeter of the house, almost as if they were put there to guard the place. The attention to detail is impressive and there's even a fountain and man-made body of water to the rear of the house, adding extra wow-factor to the place.
Chatsworth were even all set and decked out ready for Christmas, hence the fairy lights and huge white bauble that's featured further down. But before we went down there to take a look, we ventured back out into the Christmas market on the lookout for some mulled wine. We found this little van that was selling mulled wine and mulled champagne, but it was extremely disappointing, especially for the price. The wine was flavourless and almost like drinking blackcurrant Lemsip. Needless to say I only drank half of it and threw the rest away, it was that undrinkable.
After that, we ventured back into the grounds of the garden and bought a coffee to get rid of the taste of the mulled wine, haha. It was decent to say it was just a takeaway cafe. We then took that around to the outdoor maze, which was actually extremely entertaining to walk around. It looked rather small from far away, but it was actually very tall and it took us a short while to find our way to the middle, but we eventually did and then remembered the way back out again, haha.
We then made our way to the gift shop where we bought a red wooden Nutcracker that stands at around 50cm tall and a wooden hanging decoration for the Christmas tree. That and my dad treated us to a jar of orange marmalade which I am yet to try but I'm really looking forward to it.
We then headed out and had another look around the Christmas market as it was much quieter than it was when we first got there. We each sat down and had a cup of hot chocolate then we decided to walk back the car. We had booked a table to go out for some dinner so it was a very chilled out evening filled with good food and a few tipples when we got back to my parents' house - a wonderful day that I'll remember for a long time to come :)
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I hope you enjoyed this blog post. Let me know in the comments whether or not you have ever been to Chatsworth. What did you think to it? I'll see you again soon with a brand new blog post :)
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