(There should be photos in this post, but I don't have time to locate and add them just now. Please just imagine what should go with the captions for the time being)
Where was Bertie? He spent two nights at the Caravan & Motorhome Club Site at Chatsworth.
Weather: Cold but nice on Friday, increasingly rainy on Saturday
The Caravan & Motorhome Club’s prices for its club sites used to be very reasonable in winter, usually beating independent sites. In 2021 they were still remarkably affordable, helped in part by the Covid reduction in VAT on hospitality. Then last year they rocketed to the point that we were priced out and it was looking like we weren’t going to get a single stay to offset out membership fee of £58.
As well as the fees increasing beyond affordability, the Club also implemented deposits on bookings advertised as ‘fully refundable’ but in reality only refundable up to 3 weeks before. In our case the deposits weren’t an issue (because we don’t tend to book in advance), but I think both things have hit the number of nights stayed on their sites quite significantly. By the end of the year they were advertising that deposits had been halved to 10%, and every member was given a voucher for a free night between Jan – March.
That’s the long-winded explanation as to how we came to be at Chatsworth this weekend. With the voucher effectively making a two-night stay half-price, that’s what we went for.
Friday
Arriving a few minutes after the earliest arrival time on Friday, a quick lunch preceded a foray onto the Chatsworth Estate. I had expected to be limited to the footpath that runs through (that Mick, and my blog, tell me we used on our way from Dover to Cape Wrath in 2010), but not only were we able to access the estate via a gate in the back wall of the campsite, but the ‘welcome’ leaflet also told us we were free to roam the estate at large.
Nice day, if a bit parky.
Big house.
The sun was nearly at the horizon by the time we got back to Bertie.
Saturday
Before choosing a campsite at which to spend our voucher, I’d checked the parkrun map, and thus this morning’s first entertainment was set. Four weeks after returning to running post-surgery, today I was only ten minutes slower than the PB that I set last August, and it didn’t feel anywhere near as hard as last week’s 5k had. Progress in clawing back some fitness, I hope.
Somehow, neither of us (at least to our recollections) had ever been to Bakewell, and having read that the town car parks get rather busy, even mid-week in winter, we made haste in getting there before it got too busy. A good move, and the car park marshall greeted us by moving a cone to give us access to the only Bertie-sized space (there being no overhang behind any space, but this one had a bit of space in front due to a protruding wall).
We wandered. We went for breakfast. Breakfast was disappointing. The teapot held only two and a half cups (between the two of us), but at least they topped it up when asked. Breakfast took about a week and a half to arrive, and then Mick’s was luke warm. Objectively, mine was probably fine, but I should have paid more attention to the mention of ‘truffle’ in its description. Had it been a plate of smoked salmon and scrambled eggs I would have devoured it. As it was, it tasted of nothing but truffle oil and I disliked it to such an extent that I was only able to battle through half of it. This is unheard of, in that I cannot remember the last time I left half a plate of food – and certainly not when I’m paying good money for it!
My consolation prize was the browsing of a wool shop and then the impulsive purchase of a top in the Inov8 shop (the latter made Mick jealous, as the women’s model in the girly colour was discounted from £75 to £30; the men’s was full-price).
It’s a very pleasant town for a wander is Bakewell, with lots of old buildings. I’m sure that on a warmer, less rainy day we could have spent longer in its backstreets. As it was, after three hours we headed back to the campsite, just beating the 1pm rush of arrivals.
(Post blog note, 6 months later: it seems that I didn’t write anything about our final night and Sunday morning. I seem to recall that we went for a longer walk on the Chatsworth Estate before vacating the site by noon.)
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