Glassy eyed

We meandered back home today, after our mini-break in Yorkshire, both of us hoping that we'll make it back there before too long.

We'd decided to break the journey at a National Trust property that would provide us with a parkland walk and some coffee and cake, and we selected Clumber Park in Nottinghamshire because it lay more or less on our route, but I wish we'd made a different choice: the coffee and cake were fine, but the estate is rather depressing and the walk was quite boring. Neither of us had ever been there before so we couldn't really have known this, but now that we do know I don't expect ever to visit the place again.

Having said which, there was one area that we did like, and which I would recommend you to check out if you're ever in the vicinity. The walled kitchen garden is absolutely massive - four acres, according to Wikipedia, which is big enough to contain a small housing estate - and it has the biggest glasshouse I've ever seen. This is a three-shot panorama, and doesn't cover much more than the central third of its one hundred and fifty yard length. You can't go inside the glasshouse, sadly, but you can see from the outside that it's still used for growing plants by the staff who maintain the walled garden; with the underfloor heating no longer in use though, the exotic ornamental and food plants that were once grown for the house and table of the Dukes of Newcastle are probably a thing of the past.

By the time we eventually made it back home, R and I were both glassy-eyed and tottering - we're out of condition for the kind of rushing around we've done over the past couple of days. It was fun though, and with luck (that is, pandemic restrictions permitting) this won't be the only break we get this year from our normal everyday routines.