Guest blog entry #2 from Delle: A very mild obsession...

Okay so now we're going a long way back to the day after the London adventures – the story of my first weekend in England.

After a long, deep, blissful sleep, I awoke on Saturday morning (5th July) incredibly excited about the day’s events. We were going to visit Pride and Prejudice (often abbreviated to P&P) filming locations – more specifically, two Pemberleys (home of the gorgeous Mr Darcy – eeeek!) – ‘eeek’ ‘eeek’ excited screaming, jumping etc...

But before I run away with my feelings on that subject...

Before we began our day indulging our P&P obsession (well my obsession; Anna & Dotti’s high levels of excited interest; and the boys’ less significant levels of interest), we had to wait for Dotti’s English friend Joe to arrive. Joe arrived, we met him and then we were off!!!! YAY YAY YAY 'more excited squeaking and jumping’. (NB. Accuracy note. Jumping in car is quite restricted by roof so really more like very enthusiastic bobbing.)

Our first destination was Lyme Park – filming location of the exterior scenes in the 1995 BBC version of P&P starring Colin Firth. Any residual tiredness was completely compensated for by the extremely high levels of adrenalin coursing through my veins (dramatic I know but I was rather excited!).

We visited the gardens first. Much jumping and squeaking excitedly followed – by this time all the guys had started to pay out on my expressions of excitement but I was WAY too ecstatic to even be bothered in the slightest…

I eagerly pointed out the patch of grass where Darcy and Elizabeth first met at Pemberley, the stairs that Darcy runs down in his haste to stop Lizzie leaving, the view of the house that Lizzie first sees of Pemberly, and of course the driveway where Lizzie looks longingly back at Darcy at the end of Episode 4... not to mention the famous spot at the lake’s edge where Darcy jumps in and gets his shirt delightfully wet.

Yes I am tragically obsessed, I know. :P As you can possibly imagine, my levels of excitement and rapture were increasing rapidly with the discovery of each new delight. I did manage to stay still long enough for a couple of photos. :D



















Well I could rhapsodise all day, but to cut an obsessive girl’s story short… we also explored the inside of the house and had a quick picnic before heading to the second Pemberley location – Chatsworth (from the 2005 movie version starring the equally adorable Matthew McFadyen). More rapture, jumping, squeaking etc etc etc followed.

In a summary of two sentences, this place had amazing water features, a cute little maze and an awesome rockery. The house was incredible, with detailed painting all over the ceiling and walls of the big important rooms, and the statue gallery was beyond description – marble is VERY beautiful.

















After spending the second half of the day at Chatsworth, we headed back to Dotti’s where she made us a delicious dinner and we all got a (relatively) early night. :P

Sunday we went to Dotti’s meeting which was really special, and then after the typical ‘English Pub Lunch’, Anna, Ben and I headed back to Crawley – via Cambridge.

Cambridge was absolutely adorable... we explored around the streets and then hired a punt (Editor's (i.e. Anna's) note: punt = a flat-bottomed boat propelled using a long pole). Our punting guide was very cute and kept us entertained with stories of the various exploits of past Cambridge students.

Our favourite was the story of the witch’s hat on the right steeple of King's College Chapel (Editor's note: witch's hat = traffic cone). Apparently some student climbed to the top and left the witch’s hat up there to prove he’d done it (Editor's note: see tall building on left in photo of Delle below). The university then hired a crew to get it down – and was told it would take 4 days to put the scaffolding up to reach it. On the third night the climber climbed back to the top, removed the witch’s hat and put it on the opposite steeple. :P We assume that at some point they got it down, and now there are spikes around the edges of the steeples further down to prevent any more adventures of a similar sort.









After our relaxing cruise down the river, we headed back to the car and drove leisurely home – Anna and Ben ready to face another week of work and me… well, adrenalin can only get you so far… I had some serious sleep to catch up on. :P

An eventful weekend

Last weekend was a rather eventful one! Here goes...

On Friday night (28th March), I went to Cathy's bridal shower in north London. Cathy is the one we had the wedding planning girls' night for a couple of months back. Her wedding to Deva was yesterday, so the bridal shower was 8 days before the big day. Before I arrived at the Indian restaurant where the party was held, I only knew two of the other attendees: Cathy, and Mel, who organised it! Anyway, it was great to meet some new people - some had travelled from overseas for the wedding - and we had a fun, girly night of games, gifts, good food, and great company! :D

That night Ben and I stayed nearby at a cheap (for London) guesthouse, as the following morning we would be continuing north to Cambridge... for Malcolm and Esther's wedding! (Yes, a very wedding-related weekend for me!) In the morning, after having breakfast, getting dressed for the wedding, and getting packed up, Ben went downstairs to load our gear into the car... only to discover that our car was not there!!!

As it turned out, we had been towed away... not for parking in the wrong place at the wrong time as we'd been worried about the previous night, but for parking with our left wheels on the footpath - an English habit we've picked up to take up less of the road! So, getting our car back involved Ben running to the nearby police station, finding out where our car had been taken, calling a taxi to take him there, and parting with £250 to get our car back (£50 fine and £200 recovery fee). Yep, that's AUD $545 on last week's exchange rate. :Z To make this hurt even more, the only other parking fine we've had in England was earlier that same week... £30 when we were in Hastings with Dotti - and we'd thought THAT was expensive!!

Thankfully, we'd been organised enough to start with that we still made it to the wedding on time. The ceremony had already taken place with just a few guests (as you can't just get married anywhere over here the way you can in Australia), but the reception was in Little Thetford, which is just north of Cambridge. It was beautiful! Malc and Est looked gorgeous and they were just SO visibly happy! We had a delicious lunch, enjoyed some excellent music by a string quartet and also a lady who sang a few songs, and then had great fun watching the kids (and Malc and Est) trying to break open a colourful piñata. Esther is Mexican and had made it herself - it was so well-made that it took ages to break open! It was a wonderful day!

That evening we wandered around Cambridge, an amazing old city with a university dating back to 1200. We stayed overnight at a nice B&B in the city. Thankfully we made it back there for some more exploring the following afternoon, when it was daylight and we could see the incredible buildings properly and take photos, so I'll tell you more about Cambridge later!

The next morning we went to the meeting in a nearby town, and afterwards went back to some friends' place for lunch - Steve and Rach and their two little boys, whom Trev and Sharon were staying with. Unfortunately, as our three cars were travelling in convoy en route to Steve and Rach's, Trev and Sharon were rear-ended by a hit and run drunk driver right in front of us... :S Thankfully they were ok - although some whiplash later manifested itself - and Trev even managed to catch the guy and get his insurance details. But it was a big shock and a dramatic few minutes. Anyway, their car wasn't driveable, so they left it there and we gave them a lift home that night.

After all of that, we continued on to Steve and Rach's where we had a lovely lunch. That afternoon, Trev, Sharon, Ben and I went into Cambridge for a few hours of sightseeing. It was a really lovely afternoon - nice sunny weather, and lots of people out enjoying the parks and riverside. We walked along beside the River Cam and saw lots of lived-in canal boats moored at the edges, and people making their way along the river in hired punts. Punts are little flat-bottomed boats that are propelled along the canal by someone standing on the back of them pushing against the riverbed with a long pole.



Realising that no visit to Cambridge is complete without going punting, of course we didn't stay spectators for long! We did a 45-minute tour with a young guy on his gap year doing all the hard work, and we learnt all about the history of the university as we passed its amazing old buildings all along the river. We even saw a guy - who was self-punting his female friends in a hired boat, something we'd elected not to do - fall into the river and leave his pole floating behind as he clambered back in - Ben passed it to him as we went past! Punting was very relaxing and peaceful (except if you fall into the river, of course) - highly recommended! We've decided that Cambridge is our new favourite town/city in England. :)



Afterwards, we spent some time walking around the city admiring the old buildings, and had dinner at a noodle bar. Then it was time to drive the couple of hours home, and that was our weekend - like I said, eventful!!!