Saturday October 9th
We left Markfield at around 9am, although we were planning on leaving a little earlier, but we had to re-pack the food because the base of the crate broke when Mathew lifted it to put it in the boot!! Fortunately it wasn’t far off the floor when it happened, there was a loud crash as everything fell to the tiled kitchen floor, but nothing broke! It didn’t take too long to re-pack it in bags though!
After we checked we had everything, we set off. We’re so used to returning home 10 minutes later because we (or rather I…!) usually forget something, but this time we headed straight off to the M25, then onto the M20 southbound. The traffic was fairly light and the weather was very misty which was not exactly forecast! Where was the sun?!
We reached Down House - Charles Darwin’s home - at around 11:30. We started the tour of the house upstairs, which was a series of rooms which told Charles Darwin’s story, laid out like a museum with exhibits of his notebooks, and photographs of his family and people who were important to him. The last room was full of fun interactive exhibits which were great fun to play with! I particularly liked the flick-books of the evolution of the whale!
Our stomachs couldn’t wait any longer for food, so we headed back downstairs to get some lunch. At first we thought the tearooms were only serving cake, but we soon discovered soups and sandwiches were also on the menu so we sat down and both ordered a Ploughmans platter - I went for the cheese and Mathew went for the pate. It was very delicious and I traded in my coleslaw for Mathew’s pickled onions and the bread was so soft and delicious, it was obviously fresh! Of course we had to follow our lunch up with a slice of cake - they were displayed very nicely so Mathew went for carrot cake while I went for coffee and walnut. MmmMm MMmMm!!
We continued the tour of the house on the ground floor with an audio guide - but this wasn’t one those dodgy audio guides, this was David Attenborough telling us about Darwin’s house and with each room there was a choice to listen to more information about the furniture, pictures, and carpets. My favourite room was the study of course, I could just imagine him in there with books strewn about the place in some sort of orderly chaos! I also loved the photo of Darwin in the Billiards room on which he had written how he really liked the photo and he thought it was the best photo which had ever been taken of him! I also liked how the audio guide revealed more personal things about Darwin, for example, if he was reading a book which was too heavy for him to hold, he would snap it in half and read the two parts separately!!
It was time to go out into the garden, for which we still have the audio guide, but this time Andrew Marr was talking to us, and after each segment we had the choice - like before - to listen to more information, and this time we got to play a cute little game using the touch screen each time too! It was great fun!
We ended our tour with a trip around the shop of course, and I bought a couple of souvenirs including the guide book which I was told was “a very good one, especially as there are a lot of rubbish ones out there”…!! By the time we left it was around 3:45pm and the tearoom and the car park were very busy indeed, lots of people obviously having late lunches and afternoon tea! We got back into the car and set off to Bodsham to our holiday cottage.
We arrived around 4:40pm to “The Smithy” which is a converted Blacksmiths building! We got in and explored the place - which looked much nicer than it did on the website. There was a very helpful book with information on places to eat and even recommendations on places to eat nearby in the visitors book - including a place where diners are advised to “keep an eye out for the greedy cat…”…interesting! we’ll be eating out at least twice during this holiday so we’ll have to find out where the tastiest sounding food is!
We settled down, unpacked and as Mathew read his book I enjoyed Strictly on BBC2!
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