Travel: Short Break in Yorkshire & Derbyshire

Hardwick Hall

How lovely it is when a week off from work coincides with a work trip that my husband has to Yorkshire. It's a bit too far for us (in Somerset) to ordinarily take a short break there, but it would be silly not to take the opportunity when I can. I do have to do quite a bit of occupying myself whilst he is in the school visits, but I am more than happy to do that.

Old Hardwick Hall - not currently open

My first stop was the National Trust's Hardwick Hall. What a beautiful property. The Wintertide festival was on and not only is the house lit up by lanterns, you also get given a little (battery operated) lantern to take round with you.

After visiting the house, I went on one of the longer walks around the estate. It was one of those days where the sky was dark and wintery all day.

I'm not sure what breed of cattle these are but they were completely uninterested in me, which is just how I like it!

We stayed in Beverley for a couple of nights, which is a really pretty Minster town, and which I appear to have no photos of!

The Deep with the Humber Bridge in the background

On the second day, my husband was working in Hull. I may be doing Hull a huge injustice, but from the brief time I was there, I didn't like it all that much. However, I did visit the large aquarium, The Deep which was really interesting.

The penguins were pretty epic. I actually thought they weren't real at first until I saw one scratching!

I learned a really interesting fact about the anglerfish. The male anglerfish becomes a parasite to the female and bites on to her. What then happens is that his body starts to become absorbed by hers, so that the last thing that remains is the testes. How fascinating is that!

Our final day in the North, was spent in Derbyshire, and we visited Lyme Park (aka Pemberley in the BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice).

If you are old enough, you must remember the iconic scene when Mr Darcy goes for a swim in his underwear! Maybe not on this day though, where there was a layer of ice on the lake.

There are some beautiful estate walks around Lyme, and I feel that we barely scratched the surface of what we could have done there.

That night, we were staying in a lovely pub called Pack Horse Inn at New Mills. I would really recommend it and the food was really good. The pub overlooks a valley, and we were privileged enough to witness the moon halo, which is a phenomenon which occurs when there are ice crystals in the air.

Love Mrs Jones x