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Visiting Jane Austen's House in Chawton

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 And last but not least, actually the best post of all, my visit to Jane Austen's house in Chawton. I wanted to actually enjoy it, and enjoying any site with a small child is entirely dependent on their mood and whims. So, the hotel arranged a taxi to take me over to Chawton by myself (and it was even a lady driver, which I appreciated! She did drop me off at the wrong place insisting it was Austen's house, but luckily it's a small town and I just trotted over to where I needed to be).  The house below was her last home, where she lived for eight years and wrote and revised her six novels before dying at 41. The below is Jane Austen's donkey carriage; they would have kept a pair of the creatures beyond the garden. Her brother Edward provided his mother and sisters with the cottage, which was on his estate in Chawton--he inherited it after being adopted by a wealthy, childless couple who made him their heir on the requirement that he take their last name (Knight). It see...
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Visiting Eastnor Castle - A Very Short Post

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This will be a very short post, because I forget to add these pics in the Hereford day! On the way back to the hotel, we stopped at Eastnor Castle (which I had no idea existed--good job to Taylor to finding it). It was built between 1811 and 1820, and it looks like something out of a fairy tale. It took 250 men working day and night over the first six years to get the castle built, and the Hervey-Bathhurst family still lives there 200 years later.   Since we got there late in the day, we just missed being able to visit the interior, but at least we were free to walk around the extensive grounds. The castle overlooks a large lake, which you can in theory walk all the way around on a lovely hike--except that we had about thirty minutes of sun before the clouds rolled in. The difference in weather was so extreme the pictures look like we were there on two different days!        I suffered to get the gloomy picture above over the lake--it started pouring when I was ...
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