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Derbyshire 2026 - Enjoying the Grounds of Pemberley (Day 2)

The second day of our trip took us to two grand houses situated within the Peak District. The first was Chatsworth House, which is well known as the filming location of 'Pemberley' in Pride & Prejudice. It turned out that we were visiting just out of season for some of the main attractions in the area, therefore the actual house was closed to visitors until the last day of our trip. Therefore, we decided to make the most of the free parking to enjoy a morning walk around the estate. We opted to follow a marked route through Stand Woods, which starts from the farmyard and takes you past the Hunting Tower, around Emperor and Swiss Lake and back down through the woods providing views of the side of Chatsworth House. This was a fairly relaxed walk taking approximately 2 hours, and gave us a chance to enjoy the spring sunshine. From here, we visited the gift shop which had a vast array of different gifts (we managed to get ourselves a Jane Austen board game and an escape room!), and then took a short drive to Chatsworth Estate Farm Shop to pick up a snack for the afternoon and some freshly baked sourdough for tea. Before coming on our holiday, we had been a bit undecided as to whether we would want to go into Chatsworth House, particularly as the tickets are quite expensive. However, after being emerged in the beautiful surroundings of the estate we are definitely going to plan to come back. 




Once we left Chatsworth House, we headed back into Matlock for a quick pit stop for lunch. We had spotted Spuddy's online which was a jacket potato shop and decided it seemed worth a visit. Shannon opted for 'The British One' which was sausage, beans and cheese, and Nicole ended up with just cheese after them not having the vegetarian option she was after. We both chose to have garlic butter on top which was a fantastic addition and one that we would definitely recommend.

After lunch we headed to our second grand house of the day, Hardwick Hall. This house offered a pleasant surprise of an amazing collection tapestries. Finding out about the hard work that goes into preserving them was fascinating and it made for a very interesting trip. The house itself is also spectacular. We didn't have chance to explore the grounds on this occasion as, after our long walk around Chatsworth in the morning, we were both exhausted, but it is definitely somewhere to consider going back to. 



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