Chatsworth

Summer Solstice! Aprille said that, on the telly this morning, the Druid element were out at Stonehenge.

We went over to the Duke of Devonshire's estate outside Bakewell today, a giant house-&-grounds called Chatsworth. The boys were a bit excited because in "Monopoly--The Derbyshire Edition" Chatsworth is the "Boardwalk" property.

We did not go in the house: the gardens alone were a couple hours of exploring. We saw greenhouses and an entire room of furniture made of topiary; the stupendous fountain powered by gravity, and the sensory garden. Two highlights were when we saw them turn on the Cascade, a long fountain of steps that stretches a couple hundred metres down a slope; and the Maze. The boys and I got lost in the maze (which was hedges), but eventually we mapped it and found our way to the centre. And out again.

We also got to see the new sundial for the gardens, unveiled by the Duke today. (At first Kate was eager to be there for the unveiling, but as the hour approached she wasn't so keen. She would like to be the duchess, but I think ordering about all the servants would get on her nerves.) Anyway, this sundial was fascinating. It was a sculpture, like a stack of intersecting cubes: different faces act as the gnomon at different times of day. There are many indices also on various faces, so you might look at the top to see the time around noon, but on the left side to see times around 8:00 or 9:00 a.m.

On the way home we stopped in Buxton to buy Will a second harmonica as a real music store, and to buy him a pair of Wellies (boots) at Millet's. The young man behind the cash register said our accents we sounded like his girlfriend's, and that she was from central Minnesota. We laughed about how that's almost Canada, and then I asked what she did. "Oh, she was working for CERN, the European Nuclear research centre, in Geneva," he said offhandedly, "but now she's doing her doctorate at Manchester."

Back at the Grange, Galen and I played Risk in the barnyard, and later he practised with Aprille's ukelele. Galen is quite in love with the ukelele. He's pretty sure he wants one, and he wants to explore playing it on his own. He's learned the C chord so far.