Donna Maree Hanson, Author and PhD Candidate

Sorry life intervened since the last post. Too many hassles, work, family, you name it I dodged it not so successfully. So where were we? York I believe.So in York we went to Leeds, to the Royal Armories, then  Nottingham and Bath. It was not much more than five weeks ago and now it’s minus temperatures and lots of snow. The poor peeps.

So to the Armories. Lot’s of armour and stuff, lots of photos.

Nice little archer there on display

Inside the caves under the city Nottingham.

Nottingham and caves.

A cave tannery-Nottingham caves

Mathew and James with the lovely Marc Gascoigne

Dirt layers under the mall where the caves exist

Then a quick trip to Chatsworth House where the camera had a dead battery. Lucky I had an iphone.

Baby carriage from inside Chatsworth House

View of the ground from within Chatsworth House

That famous veiled statue.

You would have seen this in the Keira Knightly version of Pride and Prejudice. I had a nice fanish ooh moments all over the place.

There was also lots of statues, Greek, Roman and Egyptian.

One of the Eygptian statues on display Chatsworth House

Georgiana Duchess of Devonshire as Diana, portrait from Chatsworth House

The Grand Staircase Chatsworth House

Oxford. We stayed in Woodstock, right next to Blenheim. No pictures of the inside of this palace was allowed but I have a few of the outside and the town of Woodstock and the bloody noisy carnival that was outside our room at the pub!

Exterior shot of Blehheim Palace Oxfordshire

Another frontage of Blenheim Palace

A couple of statues just hanging about on Blehheim Palace's outer wall

That’s Matthew and James gasbagging in front of the palace. This was my second time to Blenheim Palace. I am fascinated by Consuelo Vanderbilt’s story so this time I bought her autobiography. There is also a lot of Winston Churchill paraphernalia here too as he was born here, proposed to his wife here and was related to the Duke of Marlborough family. The grounds are lovely too.

Lovely shot of the lake and the bridge Blenheim

There was a film crew there at the time of our visit. No intelligence on what they were filming nor any famous actor spotting. We did visit a film set in Leeds, but that’s another, damp story.

More countryside porn coming up as we did a walk around the gardens, got lost a bit and then took the side entrance out to Woodstock.

Statue in garden

A tree I liked

Too many photos. Next one is the detail from the arch on the way out.

Gate to Woodstock

Street view and that darn carnival which played very loud 80s music till late.

A narrow lane Woodstock, Oxfordshire

Carnival glare

Matthew and his slice of coffee cake at Blenheim Palace