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Home , Hardwick Hall, Kedleston Hall

MARTIN RANDALL TRAVEL

ART • • GASTRONOMY • ARCHAEOLOGY • HISTORY • MUSIC • LITERATURE

Walking to Houses Magnificent countryside and great country houses

14–19 June 2021 (mh 788) 6 days • £2,270 Lecturer: Anthony Lambert

Daily walks over hills, dales and landscaped parks followed by visits to country houses. A mixture of grand stately homes and smaller : Kedleston, Haddon, Tissington, Casterne, Chatsworth, and Hardwick. Stay throughout in a comfortable hotel on the Chatsworth Estate.

One of the joys of a walk in the English countryside is glimpsing a great house in the distance. At first just dimly perceived chimneys and roofs, the rest screened by trees, but as the walk continues more is revealed, and beauty beckons. But after further progress along the View of , engraving. path, foliage and land mass reassert themselves and the passes from sight. Unless the house is the goal of the walk. quest for works of art, / Or scenes renowned Day 3: Tissington. An easy walk along an Then it continues to grow in size, in detail, in for beauty, I explored / That streamlet whose enchanting rural route to Tissington from magnificence, until one is examining it from blue current works its way / Between romantic the village of Parwich (2½ miles, 1 hour 30 the front lawn. Maybe next one mounts the ’s spiry rocks’. minutes). Tissington is an extraordinarily steps and passes over the threshold; or peels pretty village, and the largely Jacobean Hall is a away for refreshments or lunch – on this tour Itinerary delight; Georgian interiors, family documents the more frequent course, given that arrival and terraced gardens. After lunch, there is Day 1: Derby, , Baslow. Leave an easy, guided walk through the estate (c. 2 follows a country walk of an hour or two, or Derby Station at 12.30pm for the 20-minute three. miles, 1 hour 30 minutes). The landscape is drive to Kedleston. Starting at the Doric enchanting, quintessential Derbyshire, the hills This tour includes some of the greatest gateway to the estate, there is an easy stroll houses in the country, outstanding gentle, trees plentiful, fields bounded by hedges (c. 1½ miles, 40 minutes) through meadows, or stone walls. representatives of their period, laden with woodland and the ‘Capability’ Brown park to treasures – Haddon, Hardwick, Casterne, one of the supreme monuments of Classical Day 4: Dovedale, Casterne Hall. The River Chatsworth, and Kedleston. Tissington also architecture and decoration in England. Inside Dove has carved a spectacular limestone gorge features, for contrast but also for its intrinsic and out Kedleston Hall has hardly changed which has delighted walkers for generations. delight. since the 1760s. There is a further easy, optional Our route leads up Hall Dale and out into the Famously, the Peak District offers wonderful walk of 1 hour through the grounds. Continue open countryside where livestock graze and walking country, and all but one of our walks to Baslow where all five nights are spent. the views stretch for miles across Ilam and the are within the boundaries of this, the oldest Manifold Valley. This challenging walk shows National Park in Britain. Most consists of Day 2: Bakewell, . Drive to the all the diversity of the White Peak (c. 5½ miles, rumpled hills and their covering of little green lovely historic town of Bakewell. A moderate 3 hours). Built in the 1730s, Casterne Hall is fields, dry stone walls, deciduous trees and a walk out into fields and gradually up through a manor house rather than a stately home, dense population of cattle and sheep. There are farmland leads to the village of Over Haddon a perfect Classical structure rising from a only occasional hints of moorland. (c. 2 miles, 1 hour.) After refreshments, descend farmyard. We are entertained for lunch in the Landscaped parks are another feature, with through fields, gently at first, with views of the dining room by the owners. their carefully composed arboreal clumps hillsides beyond the Wye and Lathkill Valleys, syncopated with grassy hillsides, serpentine with tantalising glimpses of Haddon Hall Day 5: Chatsworth House. An easy walk for lakes and grand avenues. River valleys provide in the valley (c. 2 miles, 1 hour 15 minutes). half an hour from the hotel along the valley to another pleasure. Romantic poets delighted Late medieval and Tudor, and with exquisite Chatsworth House. Dating largely from around in Dovedale, for over two hundred years terraced gardens, Haddon Hall is for some the 1700 and the 1840s, Chatsworth is not only one of the most famous walks in the world. most arrestingly beautiful and atmospheric one of the grandest country houses in Britain Wordsworth explored the valley as a young house in England. Return to Baslow by but also an extraordinary treasure-house man and crystallised his recollections many coach. Dinner at Michelin-starred restaurant, of art and furnishings, brilliantly presented years later in The Prelude: ‘In summer, making Fischer’s. as refurbishment continues. A tour in the morning is followed by about three hours of book online at www.martinrandall.com Telephone 020 8742 3355 MARTIN RANDALL TRAVEL

Walking to Derbyshire Houses continued

free time, to revisit the house and to explore the step stiles require walkers to raise the foot as gardens. Leave for a moderate afternoon ascent high as their knee. It is essential for participants (2 miles, 1 hour 15 minutes) to an inhabited to have appropriate walking footwear, be in Elizabethan tower before descending back to good physical condition and to be used to the hotel. country walking with uphill and downhill content. Average distance by coach per day: 47 Day 6: , Derby. The final, easy miles. walk (45 minutes) is another which begins at the edge of an estate and winds through varied Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. terrain to reach the house, which sits atop a high scarp. Features include two magnificent Walking tours avenues and a woodland walk laid out by Lady Spencer, mother of Georgiana Duchess of This is a walking tour.Our walking tours Devonshire. Built in the 1590s by the richest require a different scale of fitness and agility to woman in England, Hardwick Hall ranks our other tours. You should be used to country among the greatest Elizabethan architecture walking and have a good level of fitness and and most memorable interiors in England. balance. There are ascents and descents, climbs Visit where over stiles and terrain which can be uneven, is buried. The tour ends at Derby station by loose, slippery or muddy. Appropriate footwear 4.30pm. and clothing are essential. Only in weather conditions which are so extreme as to be dangerous would a walk be cancelled. Lecturer Please attend to the walk descriptions for Anthony Lambert. Historian, journalist and details of the distances covered, lengths of travel writer. He has worked with and for the walks and type of terrain. in various capacities for almost 30 We also grade both individual walks and tours years. His books include Victorian & Edwardian as a whole using the following system: Country House Life and he writes regular profiles of country houses for the Historic Houses Easy. A short and mostly flat walk lasting Association magazine. He has written numerous 1–2 hours, on well maintained footpaths or travel and guide books, including over twenty on roads, perhaps with short periods of gentle railway history and travel, and contributes to a ascent or descent. An ‘easy’ tour will consist wide range of newspapers and magazines. of mostly ‘easy’ walks, perhaps with a couple of ‘moderate’ ones. There might not be a walk Practicalities every day. Moderate. A walk of 2–3 hours’ duration, with Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,270. significant elevation gain, or stretches of rocky, Single occupancy: £2,740. gravelly or slippery paths. A moderate tour will Included: hotel accommodation; private coach consist mostly of moderate walks, perhaps with throughout; breakfasts, 3 lunches and 3 dinners a couple of easy or challenging ones, too. There (including 1 Michelin-starred) with wine, is likely to be a walk every day. water, coffee; admission to houses and gardens; Challenging. A walk that is longer than 3 all tips; all taxes; the services of the lecturer and hours, has steeper, longer or more frequent tour manager. episodes of ascent and descent, or is tricky Accommodation. The Cavendish Hotel, under foot. Tours graded as ‘challenging’ will Baslow (cavendish-hotel.net): located on the consist mostly or entirely of this level of walk, Chatsworth Estate, it has been an inn for perhaps with some moderate or easier walks centuries. All bedrooms have good views and too. elegant décor with original artwork. (4-stars.) Single rooms are doubles for sole use. How strenuous? This is a walking tour, graded easy. There are 9 walks of which 6 are easy (1 is optional) and around an hour in length, 2 are moderate and 1 is challenging. A feature of the Peak District are the squeeze stiles – gaps in drystone walls too narrow for livestock. Some book online at www.martinrandall.com [email protected]