Memory Lanes

I was very tempted to entitle this "Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again".  Except I wasn't dreaming.  And it wasn't Manderley.  But we did go on a trip down many memory lanes.

It was all slightly enlivened by Flynn, who was quite happy about the idea of going out with Mamma, Gamma and Grandad Jim - until he went outside and realised that we weren't going in his car, but in Gamma's very scary hire car. (It doesn't scare me, although I don't like it very much.  It's quite uncomfortable to sit in and it doesn't seem to have much oomph, although it is considerably bigger than Ziggy)  He had a full on melt down, flatly refusing to get in, to sit in his car chair, to have his seat belt done up.  Eventually he was persuaded (possibly by me yelling at him to sit down and behave :-S  and then pacified by Thomas the Tank Engine games and a granola bar ) to buckle up and off we set towards Chesterfield.

For the proper mooch around that I had said we would do this week.

Out we went to Tupton to look at The Sidings.  It has a new front door.  And it could do with a coat of paint.  Otherwise it doesn't seem to have change much.

Neither has Tupton. Everything is still where we left it when we departed three and a half years ago.

We drove out towards Ashover to look at what they had done to The Nettle.  It is now a rather nice looking residence with a number of modern town house style buildings in what had been the car park.

We drove out past Marsh Green, which is closed.  I know the previous owners had sold up but it doesn't look as though the new people have opened it again.

We headed out through Beeley and the Chatsworth Estate.  On to the Farm Shop, where we laid in provisions.  We had intended to have lunch in the cafe, but it is closed for renovations and doesn't open again until next week.  So we went to the Devonshire Arms in Pilsley and had lunch there instead.  It was very busy. No pandemic worries evident in the pub yesterday.

And then we came back to Taffa and Gaz's house.  Flynn still doesn't like my hire car, but at least he got back into it for the trip home.

The Australian government hasn't yet closed its borders to non residents coming in from Western Europe, but it has issued a travel advisory suggesting that all overseas travel should be reconsidered unless absolutely essential.  The British government is advising against travel to Spain.  It looks as though we made the right decision cancelling the European train trip. I don't think that it could possibly be called "essential" travel.  I am not sure that a trip to Devon is really essential but we are already in England so might as well do something. And Tabitha and Gaz weren't expecting us to be here for three full weeks.  They may have plans for next week (such as sleeping in their own bed and having unlimited access to their kettle and fridge).