Xmas Cruise, Nottingham, and Derbyshire

So I've been informed by v. influential sources that my last post covered a bit much, so I'll try to simplify this one. However, that last post just did have so much to cover!

After returning from the Leeds weekend, I began yet another week of work that started off with me still being exhausted from the weekend. And instead of taking it easy at night, we still managed to get out and do something every night of the week! One night in my and GP's show oddessy, we saw the Agatha Christie murder mystery "And Then There Were None" (including in the cast the actress that played Bridget Jones' mother in the movie), a v. good play that actually scared GP. Also, Wednesday night was the BUNAC Christmas Cruise on the Thames. Our little boat had music and a dance floor, but also sitting areas and a deck that you could just hang out on and watch the sights go by. However, it of course chose that night to spit some v. cold rain, so not many people hung out outside. Another night Trace, Kate, and I thought about going to a couple different Christmas Concerts (one at Westminster Abbey, one at St. Martin's), but decided against it. In our quest of deciding what to do, we happened by yet another movie premeire, this one for King Kong. It was nowhere near as crowded as Harry Potter, but there always seems to be one going on somewhere. That night we ended up heading to Bayswater for some cheap nachos that supposedly were really good, which they were, but their cheapness made them even better.

Saturday, Trace and I headed to Derby to go to the peak district and Nottingham for the weekend. I was v. excited, since ever seeing the BBC "Pride and Prejudice," I'd wanted to go to the Peak District (a humungo national park!) and the Robin Hood part of Nottingham was also v. inticing for Nottingham. We caught an early train, though we missed the train we'd aimed for, and were on our way. We spent the morning in Nottinghamm wandering around and taking in the city. We had "breakfast" at Ye Ole Trip to Jeruselem, supposedly the oldest pub in Britain. It was built in 1186 (or similar) and was built partially into the sandstone caves under the large outcropping on which Nottingham Castle was built. A bit touristy, though the pub didn't have that feel, and the bangers and mash were excellent!

We then headed back up past the statue of Robin Hood to Nottingham Castle. Besides the cheap admission, we decided to go on a Cave Tour, only costing a single pound!!! The museum at the castle wasn't fantasatic, but the near hour-long guided tour through the caves, old dungeons, and the Castle Grounds was probably the best pound I've spent yet in the UK. We saw where this guy was held prisoner, where this guy was tortured, where another snuck into the castle to capture his mother's lover, where they sent the people with the plague, all the really fascinating stuff, of course. We headed then back through town to the train station to head to Derby. (photos: me at the street of a character supposedly based on a weirdly and v. distnatly-related ancestor; the Robin Hood statue next to the bluff with the Castle; the old pub (please note how it butts right up against the bluff with the castle and actually uses the tunnels as part of the pub); and one of the tunnels that someone famous was dragged down years ago.)




Getting to Derby, we of course hadn't figured out where to stay yet, since none of our tour books were v. helpful in this area. Eventually, we found a B&B, a bit more than what we wanted to pay though still average for the town, dumped our bags, and headed to dinner at the oldest pub in Derby (Ye Ole Dolphin). The city was neat as we wandered through since it, like all the other's we'd visited, was decked out for Christmas. Derby even had a small German Christmas market, complete with a sausage vendor. We spent most of our night wandering around town, but turned into bed early since neither of us had had a good nights sleep in a long time.

The next morning, we were up early for breakfast before heading to the station for our train. This was where our luck kicked in that Saturday had only been hinting at. We got to the station and had to wait an hour for the bus into the Peak District, since we had just missed an earlier one since our breakfast took forever in coming. Once on the bus, we had a delightful trip towards Matlock with incredible scenery. However, we a huge traffic jam outside Matlock, arrived late at the station, and missed the bus we wanted to change to by only five minutes. Seeing that the next bus didn't arrive for another two hours, we wandered around town and even did some hiking on the hills outside of town. Upon return to the station, we then realized that the bus we were waiting for would really not come for another hour since the one we'd hoped to catch was in v. small print half obscured by an ad that it was a summer only bus. Realizing it would be too late to try to go to Chatsworth House, a huge estate (kind of like Blenheim) as used in the new Pride and Prejudice as Pemberley and the house Jane Austen supposedly had in mind while writing the book, we decided to just head further into the District and stop at some of the cute towns to explore. However, while waiting for the bus to Chatsoworth and before realizing it's downfall, we missed the bus we would have needed to take further into the district and had to thus wait another hour. Ugh. Once finally on the bus, the scenery was great. The photo's that I'll post with this won't do it justice since they were taken through a v. dirty bus window. (photos: Trace on the hill overlooking Matlock; fields, hills, and a castle near Matlock; sheep and the rolling hills of the Southern Peak District via a dirty bus window; cute streets in Buxton; Trace with our gingerbread cookies (he already started to eat his; and me leaning causally against a certain wall...)






We explored Buxton and Bakewell (home of the Bakewell pudding and pie), before heading back through the district to Derby. We almost had another long wait at the station, but caught a different train instead and were soon headed back on a v. crowded train back to London. Arriving back at St. Pancras Station, we popped back in to check out Platform 9 3/4 (the actual platform loctaion with the luggage trolley half-disappeared through the barrier) and then the platform they used in the movies (Platform 4, or something like that) before heading home.