Seemingly our first visit to Chatsworth since we started our diary blog - which is quite surprising, but there you are. I think this is perhaps the fourth time we've been to Chatsworth and even though it's been at least four years, it seemed a little stale somehow. It's still one of the best Stately Homes in the country, and some of the rooms are magnificent. But this time there was some distracting (and completely out of place) modern art additions which did absolutely nothing for us. These included some brightly coloured 'stones' in one of the bed chambers, some bullshit ceramic pots in the library and a corridor 'decorated' with small pieces of porous stone and mirrors (which looked shit).
The violin 'trompe l'oeil' is still staggering every time we see it, and is worth visiting for alone. It beggars belief that you are looking at a two dimensional object when it looks so real, and that you also realise that the wood panelling must be painted as well makes it even more remarkable.
In the grounds the cascade is still impressive, but the 'Revelation' fountain is long since gone, which is a shame, but at least we have it on video.
The fountain in front of the house is still very impressive as well, although I can't help thinking that Mr Capability Brown's genius is slightly overstated, but I digress... the fountain give a nice cooling mist which was quite welcome as the temperature and particularly humidity was quite high and unpleasant.
We seemed to get around the garden in no time at all really and decided that we would come home via the Mansfield shopping outlet. Last time we visited we found quite a few of the shops were closed as it was Easter Sunday, and this time it re-affirmed it's place as the least impressive of all the outlets.
We were there about an hour, which is about par for the course, and means it's really only somewhere to go on the way to (or from) somewhere else. One recent positive improvement is the arrival of a Lindt shop and we did buy a nice bag of Lindor pick and mix, including the new citrus one (very good) and the new almond one (not good at all).
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