On Saturday mostly it rained. And rained. And then it rained a bit more. And then it became misty and drizzly. Then it decided to rain again.

We took ourselves off to Chatsworth to the shop. I wanted the makings of a large vat of vegetable stock and various other bits and pieces.

We called at the Post Office and then made our way along a back route. It’s a bit longer than the regular way but very pretty and I enjoy going that way. It was particularly challenging on Saturday. The hilly roads had decided that really they wanted to be rivers or waterfalls. The bits at the bottom were pondering the notion of being ponds or, if they had ideas of grandeur, lakes.

The car park at Chatsworth was worryingly full. I’m not sure where everyone was, though because the shop wasn’t horribly full. And it was about 11 when we got there, which is too early for lunch and a bit late for breakfast. Perhaps people were having morning tea.

Anyway. We did the shopping, came home via the garden centre and the supermarket and trundled on home to sort everything out.

What shall we do for lunch?

I know. Let’s head back out through Littlemoor and try The Nettle – a pub we drive past every time we take the back route to Chatsworth and occasionally think we ought to visit. It looks cute and advertises home cooked food and log fires.

So we did. Back along roads that were even more determined to behave like rivers.

The Nettle is a lovely pub. Really lovely. It has lots of little, dark rooms with open fires and braziers. It is enticingly decorated for Christmas. There is an incongruously placed VR post box built into one of the pillars (I wonder if the postman collects from it – the slot isn’t taped over). And the food is absolutely lovely. I had a beef and mushroom pie with caramelised onion mash and winter veg. It really was very tasty. We must go there again. It is well and truly on my list of places to go for lunch. There’s a restaurant at the back. Perhaps we might try it for dinner one evening.

I spent the afternoon making a Vast Vat of Vegetable stock.

I spent Sunday morning preparing a vat of vegetable soup, a pot of beef and bean casserole and a slow braised belly pork. Right. Everything in the oven or on the stove. What shall we do now?

It’s still grey and misty, but it’s not actively raining. We could go out somewhere.

Yes. But where.

Let’s go to Twycross Zoo, which we’ve driven past a couple of times but never been into. It’s about 20 miles from Derby, a similar sort of distance from Leicester. About an hours drive from home. We know it has flamingos because we’ve seen them from the road. We don’t know very much else about it.

So we kitted ourselves out with snug coats and scarves and things and went out to find out about it.

It turns out that it’s a primate centre for the captive breeding program. There are grillers and chimps and lemurs and monkeys and lots of very cute primates. There are also elephants and camels and a couple of lions. It’s quite a big zoo by country standards . Here it is: http://www.twycrosszoo.com/

Then we went home and had roast beef and Yorkshire pudding with all the usual things for dinner. I don’t know what it is about Yorkshire puddings. Their finished state appears to be almost entirely random. Sometimes they rise, sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they’re light and fluffy (regardless of whether or not they’ve risen), sometimes they’re hard and leathery (ditto). This time they rose and rose and rose and rose, and were magnificently fluffy. A mystery, I tell you!

The roast beef was, fortunately, also quite magnificent. I had bought, at ruinous expense, a piece of roasting sirloin. It would have been most unfortunate had it been horrid!! It is now serving a second manifestation as a lunchtime sandwich filling.

The Builder is very happy. I bought a Winter Casserole Pack from the people in Scotland I get meat from over the internet. In the pack came bags of lambs kidney and lambs liver. These are things that he loves and which I do not routinely buy. Anyone got a magnificent recipe for liver and onion?