Frills 'n' Spills

Apologies for the radio silence recently, I have been super busy with work and have been finding things a bit overwhelming so blogging has had to take a back seat. Luckily, our families had something planned to get me out of the house and despite me being super tired, it was super fun! You know how much I love going on little day trips (yes I am already an OAP!) and Croome Court was ideal as it is just up the road from us. It is one of the closest National Trust properties to us and we used to visit a lot when we were kids but it has been a while (last time we went, my 4 siblings and I managed to fit into a hollow tree trunk, that's how log ago it was!) so I was interested to see how much had changed since then. 

We had really lovely weather and the estate looked beautiful. I love visiting stately homes and swanning around pretending to own the place, I definitely could live as a lady of leisure! ;)

Croome was a little different though as it is currently undergoing significant restoration at the moment. 

I mean you can see it in these pictures, there were flagstones pulled up, walls exposed and scaffolding covered the outside of the house. 

The beautiful decorations just made the contrast even more stark...

The Long Gallery was probably my favourite room, it was fairly bare but had loads of cool art in which was apparently inspired by Croome...

I mean, isn't this cool?!

I'm not sure when these tiles date from but they look super 1970s to me!

There were originally some beautiful French tapestries in this room but they were sold off when the estate ran into difficulties. The dominant colour was this gorgeous raspberry pink- I bet they made an amazing feature wall!

A dizzying look up the staircases (this house is huge)

The dining room is amazing, the fruit plasterwork dates back to the eighteenth century but the house was used by Hare Krishnas between 1979 and 1984 and they painted it all in these vibrant colours. It's a bit of a controversial topic but I love how colourful it is, even if others aren't so sure!

Beautiful views along the culvert...

There was a kite flying event on and although we had limited success, it was very very fun!

A look back up the hill towards St Mary Magdalene's Church, Croome D'Abitot.

Edinburgh is one of my favourite places in the world and I was super psyched to show Mark around. In total we spent 2 whole days (plus an afternoon and a morning) and 3 evenings in the Scottish capital and enjoyed every minute. We took far too many photos and found it really difficult to narrow it down so I have just shared my favourites here. Apologies for the Insta-spam over the last week too, I got more than a little snap happy! ;)  I was pretty impressed with how much we managed to fit into our few short days here but there was plenty more we would have liked to have seen, I guess we will just have to book another trip! Many thanks to everyone who shared their recommendations for things to do and eat/drink, I will be sharing some of my favourite foodie places we tried over the next few days too if you are interested?

The castle may be a bit of a tourist cliche but it is pretty darn spectacular, especially in the sunshine!

Although I was keen to show Mark around one of my favourite cities, the main reason for us heading up to Scotland was to go for a meal to celebrate my auntie and uncle's 25th wedding anniversary and we went for a lovely meal at Forgans in St Andrews. We got to St Andrews a little earlier and spent an enjoyable afternoon strolling around the golf course and town and it was very pretty indeed, if a little blustery! 

If your dad was ever into golf like mine was, this will be a pretty familiar sight... 

My brother and I were never ones to follow the rules ;) Can you tell who got the tall genes in our family?! 

Mark always was the rule breaker in our relationship! 

These steps were pretty pointless but I was very excited when I saw them, as you can see from my super smiley face!

Hilarious street names are just par for the golf course...

The university is absolutely gorgeous and I very jealous of the beautiful surroundings the students found themselves in! 

Despite this being a graveyard, it was very pretty and very peaceful. 

Precarious looking ruins make for some pretty dramatic photos. St Andrews, it may have been a flying visit but it was fun! 

Manchester has been on my list of places to visit for a long time now, both Mark and I have family who live there but we have never actually got round to visiting. This weekend we finally made it up there and did a whirlwind tour of the city before heading over to Mark's brother's house for a barbeque to celebrate his birthday. We only had a couple of hours in town but I fell in love with the city and I will definitely be back. Warning: this does sound like the Tourist Board have asked me to write a gushing piece about the city but I was just bowled over by the place; I mean how could you not love somewhere with more trams than you could shake a stick at?!

The Old Wellington near the Corn Exchange looked brilliant, I love the wood panelling on the eaves of the pub and it was absolutely heaving with people. Apparently there was some kind of festival on over the weekend and it was pretty busy but despite the crowds, everyone was in a good mood because of the sunshine...

The Oast House is an absolutely amazing building, next time I visit, I definitely want to go there, the food looked incredible!

I know not everyone is a fan of buskers but this guy was incredible, he had such an amazing voice! Apparently the 'Hoochie Coochie Mancunian' is the 'self-proclaimed king of buskers'- it's hard to disagree when you hear him sing...

...whereas I wanted to take home the Arkham Asylum, just look how amazing Poison Ivy is!  I have major hair envy...

In the end though I settled for a worried looking Frodo, a jazzy Wonder Woman and a Stormtrooper for Mark. Next time I go, I will definitely be bringing Gimli home with me...

The building for the National Football Museum was really cool and looked amazing in the sunlight. Apparently the museum used to be in Sheffield but not enough people visited it so they moved it to Manchester in 2011. 

Spinningfields is a 'business, retail and residential development in the west of Manchester city centre' (ooh fancy!) and it really reminded me of Canary Wharf or the Mailbox in Birmingham. How great are these flats though?! I'd love to live in the ones in the middle!

We called into the People's History Museum for a quick look at the post-1945 political posters (the perils of hanging out with two politics geeks!) and I really wish we had had more time to spend there as it was absolutely fascinating. I will definitely be devoting a full day to look round the museum next time, there looked like so many interesting collections. I especially wanted to see the one relating to Emily Wilding Davison and women's suffrage but we didn't have time :( 

Possibly my favourite poster in the collection...

Sir Robert Peel looking out over the city - I love playing guess the famous figure with statues, I had never even heard of half of the people whose statues we saw, I think I need to brush up on my history!

 

The birthday boy looking decidedly unimpressed. I'm not sure if that face was because of the chocolate cake or the insanely strong vodka jelly, who knows?! 

I hope you enjoyed my whistle-stop tour; have you ever been to Manchester? Where do I need to visit next time I go?