House Hunting and Meanderings

Well. That was quite an exciting weekend. We've been house hunting *and* meandering.

We started with the house hunting. I had found a place in a village called New Tupton, south of Chesterfield which looked promising. Large front garden and a redbrick house in the photo on the estate agent's webpage. Off we trundled on Saturday morning, and it's not a huge time distance from here. It's a 1950s former council house with large gardens back and front. Two bedrooms. Lounge/dining room. Small, dire kitchen. Absolutely nothing done to it since it was put up, I reckon. A renovator's delight!!!!! Well, it quite delighted us. It needs completely decorating. It needs a new bathroom, a new kitchen and possibly an extension to the kitchen. The garden needs replanting. It's a project! But it's in a nice little village with a proper butcher shop and regular buses to Chesterfield (where there are regular trains to Sheffield). It has loads of potential. The gardens are very large by local standards. And I know a reliable builder who can probably do most of the work that needs doing! This morning I made an offer to the estate agent which was very very quickly rejected. I made a further offer of an extra 2k and have heard nothing since. I assume they are considering it. The sticking point may be the brother in Wolverhampton (it's a deceased estate) who sounds a bit -- grasping is probably unfair since I don't know him but he did sound from his sister as though he was expecting the full asking price, which we haven't even remotely matched! Anyway. I'll let you know. Not prepared to offer very much more, despite the unusually large gardens. The house really does need a huge amount doing to it.

So, having inspected the house and bits of the village (There's a school? Good. But who needs a school? More importantly, there are pubs!!) we trundled off down the A61 towards Derby. Moving onto the A38 we realised that it went all the way to Exeter. Not that we needed to go as far as Exeter but it did mean that we could do some exploring rather than just heading to Salisbury on the motorway. And we passed through some lovely countryside. We saw a steam engine in full steam pulling railway carriages in a valley near Derby. We saw some very sweet villages. We drove through Birmingham (something I have never done before. Bits of it remind me quite strongly of Melbourne -- as we came in to the city centre I really expected to see Melbourne Central to the right!) We also drove through Tewkesbury, which several people have told me quite strongly we should go and inspect carefully. I can quite see why. We will! We saw a barn owl flying in and landing on a fence on the road from Marlborough to Durrington. It really was quite a fantastic drive.

But the find of the day was Lichfield. As we were driving along it crossed our minds that we were hungry. Well this would be because we had eaten nothing at all all day, and house hunting and exploring are hungry activities! So we decided to call into Lichfield since we were more or less passing. I believe there is quite a nice cathedral in Lichfield. Lichfield itself turned out to be quite nice too. Old. Really quite old. We had lunch in the Pig and Truffle then went to explore. I kind of wanted to get to the cathedral which I could see tantalisingly on the other side of the market. And the duck pond. Quite a nice cathedral? It's an absolutely stunning cathedral. With an equally stunning choir practising as we were mooching about. We had a potter and a poke around, then went and pottered and poked around the town a bit (Just who was Erasmus Darwin? Apart from an evolutionist, a scientist, a poet, a botanist ... He had a fantastic house which now has quite sumptuous herb gardens open for the public. He also turns out to be Charles' grandfather). Weather reports from Sheffield indicated that it was snowing there. The skies were dark and threatening in Lichfield. We decided to bet a retreat and continue Salisbury-wards. But a weekend for Lichfield too, I think.

We were staying in the Old Mill in Salisbury. We've been there once before, just for a drink, about 18 months or so ago and decided that it would be a pleasant treat to stay there when we came down for The Builder's father's birthday. And it is very lovely indeed. It's built over the river Nadder. The restaurant was built in 1150 or some such and became the first paper mill. We had a room overlooking the Nadder mill race. The hotel too was quite old, but not as old as the restaurant. We dined in. And the food was fantastic. I had the nicest piece of roast turbot, preceded by smoked salmon and a salmon mousse. The Builder had a wild mushroom tart followed by duck in a cherry sauce. We shared a plate of cheese and biscuits. We polished off a couple of bottles of French white wine. Then we went back to the room and I went almost immediately to sleep -- a dreadful combination, large dinner, much wine, lying on a bed to watch telly if you ask me. Never works! And I must have been tired cos I didn't really wake up until time to get up in the morning!

Breakfast. A quick visit to the supermarket and to the farm shop in Britford (we're coming to Britford for a week in December, all being well) then we wandered off to collect The Builder's parents. It's his father's birthday on Monday 13th and his mother's on April 1st so it was a double birthday lunch really. We went to the Ship Inn in Burcombe, 17th century hotel with fantastic food. Large, large plates of fantastic food. Scarily large. Had we realised that they serve child sized roasts we would have got the AP's children's portions. As it was The Builder ate most of his father's side of beef (not that it really was a side of beef but it was an enormous portion). I had a butternut pumpkin, sweet potato and zucchini bake which wasn't quite as scary but which also roundly defeated me!

And so home. We came back along the Fosse Way, which I've never done before. It was fascinating. Very Roman (oddly enough!) I want to do it again, but in a more leisurely manner. I'd quite like to look at some of the Roman villas and wotnots along the way. And there are villages to explore.

Perhaps we shouldn't buy a house. Exploring is so much more exciting than renovating!

Today I woke up with no voice. No voice at all. I do, however, have a temperature and a coff and sneezles and wheezles and achey legs and an achey back and sore eyes and a runny nose :-( It's all that Builder's fault. He had a cold last week and seems to have given it to me. In rather stronger form than he had it :-(

Spring is on the way.