Family Walk: Elvaston Castle and Park

Kristine's parents are in town for a week.  We gave her mom our copy of Derbyshire Walks with Children and asked her to pick 3.  Today's walk was at Elvaston Castle.  It's been on our list for a while from other recommendations, so I was glad to get a chance to check it out.  Consistent with a couple other local places we've visited, I think we'll be going back again.  There's much more than a 90 minute walk let us see.

One reason we have to go back is because, much to Clare's dismay, we didn't spend any time at the playground.  It was pretty hard on her to walk from the car to the pay station (past the playground), and then stand in line waiting for parking tickets while looking across a row of cars to said playground.  We declined one Indianapolis colleague's advice to get a people carrier (e.g., minivan) for our time here so that we could carry guests.  That means we do two cars when we have guests.  This weekend it's our normal Golf plus a Vauxhall Corsa from the Avis guys at Rolls-Royce.  It gives us the people capacity we need, but it also means buying two parking tickets.  Which is a problem when the automated ticket machine is painfully slow.  Everyone else went ahead (with sobbing toddler in tow) while I stayed in line and swore that next time we're here I'm going to the ticket office and paying cash.

I got the cars sorted, joined the rest of the family, and found a much happier Clare with two excited older sisters.  The map below shows the walk we took.  The reason the girls were so excited is that the beginning of the walk has all sorts of trees and rock formations to explore.

This gave Elise a chance to work on her hero poses.

Charis and I got in on the action,

which is how this became the first family photo we've taken since moving to the UK.

That first quarter mile or so of the walk got a disproportionately large amount of our time because of the rocks and trees.  Clare found her own cave,

The girls scaled some massive cliffs,

and we tried to take another family photo.  This one got sabotaged by all the people on the path with dogs.  One of us found looking at the dogs to be much more interesting than looking at the camera.

We did spend a little time at the castle itself, but not much.  Steve Frey, a now former secondee, has a good explanation of why the castle is run down here.  The girls were excited about the gardens until they saw the signs about staying on the path.  Kristine's parents were more appreciative, and thoughtfully took this photo of the main garden.

We also got the obligatory photo of the drunken gardener tree.

I thought the most interesting part of the gardens was this sculpture in the Old English Garden.

Clare had spent most of the walk so far on her own two feet.  By the time I took this picture of her sisters in the Old English Garden (about 1 mile into it), she was running out of steam.  So she got to ride on my shoulders back to the car.

We did get a couple more tree and rock photos in.  I might have mentioned earlier how much fun the girls had with them (and how much we enjoyed watching them have fun).