LITTLE MORETON HALL and BIDDULPH GRANGE GARDENS ..... finally !!

About this time, last year, the sun was shining so, Mr. Home and I thought we would go and visit Little Moreton Hall in Cheshire.{ All will be revealed later as to why it's taken me a year to post this !!!! } It's a three hour journey from where we live but, it was a lovely day so we jumped into the Audi TT Roadster, down went the hood and off we went. Wind blowing through our hair, sun on our faces .... all was well with the world.

We arrived at Little Moreton Hall { considered one of the finest Tudor timber framed houses in Britain } and, it was a joy to behold. Stepping back in time, over 500 years, we marvelled at the delights of the picture book moated manor house. The South Front reels drunkenly because of it's Elizabethan Long  Gallery. I won't go on about the history of the house ....... I'm sure that you don't want to read reams of facts !!

Mr. Home and I both had a camera and, in a jokey way, I kept nudging his arm and stepping in front of his camera when he was taking a photograph ....... all day I did this { so annoying !!}

This piece of information is relevant as to why it has taken so long to do this post !

Crossing the moat, you enter the cobbled courtyard .....

..... the timber Manor House surrounds you, throwing it's  arms around you in a wonderful homely hug !! 

It has been suggested that this heavily decorated fireplace is the only true vertical in the house !!

 ALLEGEDLY, there is a grey lady who likes to stun visitors by drifting slowly past them before disappearing ! ..... and, there are also uncontrollable sobs to be heard from a child in and around the chapel...... I didn't hear or see them !

Here is the ' Privy ' ........... a bunch of thyme and lavender provide a natural air freshener !!!!

Pretty much all of the leaded and stained glass remains intact and .....

..... the carpenter, Richard Dale, is immortalised with an inscription on the bay windows.

There is a delightful historic knot garden together with traditional fruit trees of apple, pear, medlar and quince, which are used in delicious cakes and scones, served up in Little Moreton's renowned restaurant.

Just up the road from Little Moreton Hall are Biddulph Grange Gardens so we drove up to take a look at them.

These amazing Victorian gardens were the creation of James Bateman for his collection of plants from around the world. I took photographs and, Mr. Home tried to take photographs while I still jogged his arm and generally made a nuisance of myself !!

The garden takes you on a global journey, from Italy to the pyramids of Egypt, a recreation of a Himalayan glen and,

what was to be my downfall, a Victorian vision of China.

See that bridge ? ....... well, I sat down on it and was about to take a really artistic photograph through the wooden balustrades when .......... I dropped my camera in the water !!!!!!!!!!
I saw it glug, glug, glug to the bottom but could still see it. Mr. Home thought it was hilarious and my come-uppence for messing around earlier. I laid myself prone and put my arm in { up to my shoulder } but, no joy. It was just out of reach. Biddulph is a very large place but, luckily, one of the gardeners was in the Chinese garden and managed to get a net onto the wrist strap of the camera and, just as he was fishing it out, the battery fell out { in slow motion !! } and fell into the deepest part of the little lake.
We glossed over that and went back to the car to make the three hour journey home. It was early evening and the sun was still hot so, the hood went down again and off we went. Just before we hit the motorway we decided that it was time to put the hood back up ........ but the hood decided that it didn't want to go up !! We rang the RAC and he suggested that we get home and they would sort it out then. There was obviously a way of doing it manually but, nobody seemed to know { the manual was back at the house of course !! }
It was just a good job that it was a lovely evening and that there weren't any downpours.

When we got home { roof sorted by lovely Mr. RAC man }, I put the camera's memory card into a bowl of rice to dry out. I'd just read that a scuba diver had found a camera a few hundred feet down and after a bit of drying out, the photographs were all there.

Well, after a few weeks .... NOTHING ..... after a couple of months ..... NOTHING . I threw a couple of those silica gel packets into the rice to see if that would help ..... NOTHING.

..... and then, about a month ago, I found the bowl with the rice, silica and memory card and thought I'd give it one more go and, 

VOILA ..... there they all were.

So, that will teach me not to be so horrible to Mr. Home when he is doing his David Bailey thing !!

I think that's called ' Getting your just deserts ' !!

All images by me !