Baslow, Chatsworth House Garden Tour, Calton Lees, Calton Houses, and Bakewell

A walk with a specific activity included today.

I got off the bus at Baslow Nether End and walked through Chatsworth Park to Chatsworth House, getting there in plenty of time for the start of the first of the daily garden tours at 11:30 even though the bus was twenty minutes late due to some poorly organised roadworks on Abbeydale Road at Sheffield.

I actually reached Chatsworth House just as they were opening the gates to the garden at eleven o'clock and so I had plenty of time to head for the Emperor Fountain to take some photographs. I tried to capture a good image of the rainbow created by the spray; you can just about make it out if you enlarge the bottom picture.

I then walked a few yards and pointed my camera right into the sun; I'm quite pleased with the result.

I took my time in getting back to the place where people were gathering for the guided walk, as I did so my mobile phone rang with some good news for me about an employability programme for people with autism that I might end up organising, or even running.

The tour of the garden lasted just over an hour and it was really enjoyable; we were regaled with tales about stags and serpents, the Cavendish banana [from which over ninety percent of bananas bought in the UK are descended], the first day at work of Joseph Paxton the famous landscape gardener...and a scandalous ménage à trois.

I stayed about another hour in the garden; eating a couple of flapjacks that I'd brought with me, before walking across the parkland to Chatsworth Garden Centre at Calton Lees where I popped in to The Vines restaurant for a scone and a pot of tea.

The weather got a bit more cloudy and it probably spit with rain whilst I was inside; so it was good timing, even if it was rather early for a scone.

I then walked along the track to Calton Houses and across Calton Pastures before dropping down into Bakewell via the footpath that cuts across the golf course. 

I took a photograph of this interesting sign; the instructions only apply to people walking in the other direction, up the hill away from Bakewell.