Chatsworth

With a few days off after the SWLRC 2014 road run we headed north to Derbyshire for a few days to wind down from a period of very hard work for us both 

The first nice thing that happened to us was when we pulled in to the car park of our first stop and found this Locomotors 127 parked in the car park. if you look carefully you can just see Katy on the left hand side of the picture with the back door open. 

It was according to the sticker on it's back door sold/converted by foley, but from the brief chat with the current owner it's had a series of ongoing changes and has just had a wood-burner removed to make it a bit more child friendly. This one also has a 300Tdi replacing the original V8 petrol engine

I left that note on the windscreen and the owner called me when we were wandering around the gardens .. so you are wondering where we were... This famous fountain was one of the reasons for going.

The fountain is powered by the pressure of the water dropping 122 metres, through a 40 centimetre iron pipe made from a man-made lake. The fountain can reach a height of 90 metres although it is usually to half that height to conserve water (as in the picture)

So for those who don't know it's the Emperor fountain in the grounds of Chatsworth House

And just to prove we were really there in Katy

The interior is just as wonderful as the gardens with many works of art. One of my favourites is the Crouching Lion (by Francesco Benaglia) in the Sculpture Gallery. It is a copy of the one by Canova, which forms part of the Rezzonico Monument in St. Peter's, Rome. It weighs 3.5 tons which is just a bit more than Katy fully laden and probably just as tough if you run into it.

Oop North

After our mini disaster with electrics it was good to be on the road, but to be honest we'd lost most of the day with the problems so our idea of getting up to Derbyshire by early afternoon and having adventures was abandoned.

The new plan was to simply drive to the Bakewell area and find a campsite. Nothing much to report except she ran well and we made it in good time

After purchasing some of the authentic Bakewell puddings (not pies or tarts) we headed up to Yorkshire in driving rain and reached there on a single tank of diesel meaning we had done over 350 miles (some of it quite twisty). mind you the £105.00 to fill the tank back up again was a bit painful

We settled on the drive at my sister's house and there she stayed for a few days as a spare bedroom whilst we visited family. The first night was the windiest we have spent in her and there was definitely some movement so we were glad to be in a sheltered spot.

We did some sightseeing including a wonderful day out at Whitby which was simply wonderful to walk around in the sunshine as you can see