![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kittiwakeYesterday I took a rare day off work, and went on a trip with my my mum, dad, sister & niece to Kedleston Hall, an 18th Century stately home just the other side of Derby.
It is one of my favourite stately homes, as it is is grand, but not on such a huge scale as somewhere like Chatsworth, which I always find rather too full of cold marble. I know I'm inconsistent here, as Kedleston isn't short of marble either, but it has some tables and fireplace surrounds in a nice golden marble which don't give out marble's usual cold hard aura. One thing I really liked, is that in the last few years the National Trust have redecorated one of the rooms, so that instead of the walls and sofas being covered in ancient, fade, water-damaged damask, they have dark turquoise on pale aqua damask (in the same pattern of urns and swags as the original). It gives you a much better idea of what it actually looked like when it was new.
We also went for a walk in the grounds, through a very muddy field and along a wooded track between two ha-has that was even muddier in places; it has rained almost every day recently - but not yesterday, so we were lucky. We must have seen about three dozen different types of fungi, including some very poisonous-looking bright green bracket fungus, which looked like this, but an even darker and brighter green. We also picked up some nuts (horse chestnuts, sweet chestnuts, hazel nuts and acorns) and nut-cases, and some cedar pine cones for my mum to paint in her watercolour class, which has an autumnal theme next week.
My 9-month-old niece was carried in my sister's back-pack baby-carrier, which she likes a lot as she is high up and can see everything. Back-packs aren't allowed in the house, but we left it at the front desk and borrowed a hip carrier, which is something I have never heard of before. It is a wide canvas belt with velcro and a rucsack-type fastener, which goes round the parent's waist, and it has a flat topped bulge on one hip, so the parent carries the baby on their hip, but the baby has a seat!
It is one of my favourite stately homes, as it is is grand, but not on such a huge scale as somewhere like Chatsworth, which I always find rather too full of cold marble. I know I'm inconsistent here, as Kedleston isn't short of marble either, but it has some tables and fireplace surrounds in a nice golden marble which don't give out marble's usual cold hard aura. One thing I really liked, is that in the last few years the National Trust have redecorated one of the rooms, so that instead of the walls and sofas being covered in ancient, fade, water-damaged damask, they have dark turquoise on pale aqua damask (in the same pattern of urns and swags as the original). It gives you a much better idea of what it actually looked like when it was new.
We also went for a walk in the grounds, through a very muddy field and along a wooded track between two ha-has that was even muddier in places; it has rained almost every day recently - but not yesterday, so we were lucky. We must have seen about three dozen different types of fungi, including some very poisonous-looking bright green bracket fungus, which looked like this, but an even darker and brighter green. We also picked up some nuts (horse chestnuts, sweet chestnuts, hazel nuts and acorns) and nut-cases, and some cedar pine cones for my mum to paint in her watercolour class, which has an autumnal theme next week.
My 9-month-old niece was carried in my sister's back-pack baby-carrier, which she likes a lot as she is high up and can see everything. Back-packs aren't allowed in the house, but we left it at the front desk and borrowed a hip carrier, which is something I have never heard of before. It is a wide canvas belt with velcro and a rucsack-type fastener, which goes round the parent's waist, and it has a flat topped bulge on one hip, so the parent carries the baby on their hip, but the baby has a seat!
