A typical Bank Holiday Monday

A few weeks ago, when it was unseasonably warm, one of the mums at Isabel's school told me that the warm weather was set to continue, and that it would be a lovely warm Bank Hol weekend. This clearly doomed us to cooler conditions. Sunday was quite nice, but we stayed indoors since Isabel had a cold. And then of course today was much chillier and quite showery. Which I think is probably the law on a Bank Holiday Monday.

We were all feeling a bit cabin fevery though, especially me, since we hadn't been out much all weekend. We therefore decided to do a quick outing to somewhere local. Since it was raining, we first of all drove to Chorleywood to have a mosey about and perhaps look in a shop or two, but there didn't seem to be much to Chorleywood so we didn't even get out of the car in the end! Instead, we retraced our steps and went to Chenies Manor, a Tudor manor house built in 1460, which turned out to be absolutely lovely. When we went through the gates we were confronted by a group of Morris dancers which gave the afternoon a uniquely British flavour. We'd only bought tickets for the gardens, not the house, since Emily is currently feeding every three hours so we weren't planning to be out long. The gardens were full of beautiful tulips and loads of other flowers which I was unable to identify, not being much of a gardening buff. They had separate gardens for the kitchen (growing onions, chard and beans, amongst other things), and a physic garden with medicinal herbs. The fact that I found these interesting shows how old I must be getting. There was also a mini-maze and a proper maze too, which kept Isabel amused for ages. And Husbandio, come to that! He was gutted that he'd left his camera behind since taking pics of flowers is his forte - I thought he was going to mug an OAP for his camera at one point.

So, all in all this was a really typical Bank Holiday - lots of people milling about in drizzly rain, determined to have fun despite the weather. Gawd bless us Brits and our ridiculous eccentricities.