Always take the weather with you

Today we woke up to this beautiful day.

Would you call this ‘cloudy’?

Last night we made a spur of the moment decision that we would visit the Waddesdon Manor to see how the other half live. This enormous estate is owned by the Rothschild family and it was quite spectacular.

Sitting high up on a “slight incline” as we were assured by the young chap at the ticket booth – “it’s about a 20 minute walk, but more like 15, and there’s a ‘slight incline’, so you can walk up the path or there’s a shuttle bus.

We chose to walk. We should have chosen the shuttle bus.

As you can see from the photo above, the manor sits up on a hill, and as we’ve bought a walker/wheelchair situation for Jen on this trip, we thought it would be easy. Jen could walk with the walker for as long as she could, then I’d push her.

This plan worked great and then we got to the ‘slight incline’ – people, it was a 45 degree uphill battle with me walking on the same 45 degree angle and my arms stretched out in front of me.

There are no photos of this as both my hands were in use and I’m not sure I’d like to think about where Me Jenny would have ended up if I’d let go to take a selfie, but when we finally got there, it was ALL worth it…

The manor is filled with all sorts of amazing treasures…

You weren’t allowed to touch anything!

Until this one spot where you were actually encouraged to touch something… Me Jenny could hardly contain herself…

There was all sorts of art on the walls. Apparently when they built on yet another room to this palatial abode, Baron Rothschild called Sotherby’s and asked if they had an auction on that weekend… when they said they did, he told them to cancel it and that he would ‘take the lot’.

This was one of the pieces – could this be the first mullet?

The manor has 3 floors to peruse, all accessed by a lovely staircase, but having Me Jen use a walker got us some quirky perks. We got to ride the 104 year old lift.

There was art all over the shop – even on the ceiling in one of the rooms…

And a loo with a view is surely art in itself…

Most of the art and furnishings were from a certain 100+ year old era, but then there was this modern piece…

It’s the chandelier that we’re looking at here… notice anything ‘quirky’ about it? Have a closer look.

The pic below shows a flower that has slightly faded to show a different pattern in the blue… I’ll tell you why once you’ve had a look…

These rugs below were made to be identical – commissioned by French royalty. There is one difference between these two… when the revolutionaries got hold of these rugs, they didn’t like that they had the Fleur de Lis on them, so they unpicked it and replaced it with a flower… however they couldn’t sell them and it was suggested that they could sell them easier and for more money if they had the Fleur de Lis on them, so they changed them back. It was obviously important to them at the time.

This is Queen Victoria’s room. I’m not sure why she has her own room. It’s likely that she may have visited once. Very cosy.

This has inspired us to mow our names into our front verge at home… thoughts?

There is no shortage of art works around the grounds either…

Then after admiring the art, the gardens, the architecture, the old fashioned lift and the perfect day…

It was time to say goodbye to our new best friends, the Rothschilds.

We caught the bus back down the hill to the car.