It’s another bank holiday weekend and Steve and I went to spend it at Brad and Maxine’s, my cousins who live in Apperknowle, a beautiful village not far from Sheffield, where my mom is from.
I drove all the way there. It took an hour and fifteen minutes, only five minutes longer than usual, even though we left on a Friday at 5pm. It was a relaxing and beautiful drive on the scenic route. I’ve never been able to put the words “relaxing drive” and “5pm on Friday” in the same sentence in Southern California.
We had planned on taking a long walk on Saturday depending on the weather, as it always does in England. Thankfully we woke to a beautiful day – good weather, sunshine, a picture perfect day to go for a walk on the wild side. It really wasn’t on the wild side although there were hundreds of sheep and a herd of deer along the trail.
We decided to go to Baslow, a great little village on the way, for a quick lunch and then onto our walk destination, Chatsworth.
We arrived at Chatsworth, parked the car and off we went onto the trail that would take us through the grounds with hundreds of acres of beautiful rolling hills and trees, a lake, and many sheep and deer on the surrounding landscape.
We walked past a cricket game in progress and stopped to watch to see how it is played and to take a few pictures.
As we continued on the foot path we were suddenly surrounded by hundreds of sheep and their new babies – baby lambs. I stopped in my tracks and started taking pictures and more pictures and moving along the path taking more pictures until I had taken almost fifty pictures of sheep and their babies. I was so excited that they were actually posing for me. They just stood there looking straight into my camera lens waiting for me to take a picture of them. It was obvious that these animals are used to people walking through their fields so they didn’t run away from us. Our walk took us around two miles of this huge estate and I ended up with two hundred pictures. I’ve selected a few dozen of my favorites that you can see by clicking here.
We really appreciate the time that we spend outdoors enjoying nature. It was a beautiful day. We love going on walks with my cousins Brad, Maxine, Lissie, Ashley and Lucky Louie, their dog.
