Levens Hall

 Dear Gentle Readers

Sadly we packed our bags and left the Lakes District today. This was our hotel for the past three days, very nice with lovely owners who looked after us.

This is the view from the hotel carpark (a nightmare to park in, by the way).

This is looking the other way with our car with the tailgate open. It's an Audi and very comfortable to drive.

We drove to Levens Hall, on the recommendation of one of our church friends, Jan Eastman, who has been here twice. This is the house and if you think it's grand, wait till you see inside.

Legend has it that the current owners won it in a card game in the 19th century. The new owner attached heart symbols to the downpipes as the house had been lost on the turn of an Ace of Hearts.

This is also the front door.

This is the Great Hall with wood panelled walls and amazing ceilings. The armour dates from the 13th century and pistols from the 16th.

The library boasted a very old copy of the Encyclopedia Britannica. It is no longer printed in books, it's all online now. It would have been fascinating to peruse these to see how outdated the information is inside them.

In the Drawing Room, this globe dated from 1769.

It had been updated by the recent voyages of one Captain Cook and here you can see the east coast has been mapped out in pink with Cook's surveys. Note the name of the land - New Holland. Later on it would become Terra Australis - South Land which eventually became Australia.

There's a lot of history with the previous owners and the Duke of Wellington. This is a Chocolate Tea Set captured from Napoleon Bonaparte after his defeat at the Battle of Waterloo.

This is the original report of the Battle of Waterloo in a broadsheet from a newspaper house.

And this is the original deed to the property dating back to the 12th century, written in Old English of course.

This table exhibits amazing carved double helix legs with matching gilded candelabras. The workmanship in this table is incredible and would have taken considerable time to carve.

Human needs haven't changed since medieval times and here is a fine example of a commode or indoor toilet.

But the real treasure lay in the gardens. Here you can see topiaries of every shape and size. The garden is immense and has so many of these topiaries, I couldn't capture them all.

A beautiful topiary carved arch.

Garden beds laid out in perfect order.

A topiary train!

Hedges of all different shapes and sizes.

This is what the inside of a hedge looks like, trees supported by poles to prevent them from collapsing as they grow old.

Here's Victoria amongst the topiaries. She was as amazed as I was.

After this we climbed back into our trusty Audi and motored down to Conwy in Wales. I never saw a sign saying "Welcome to Wales" but suddenly all the road signs were in Welsh and English so we knew we were in Wales. Some the signs are just unpronounceable.

Tomorrow we visit two castles, Conwy Castle and Caernarfon Castle.