B2B Day 71: A Rest Day at Shugborough

Today Ken scheduled a rest day for us so we could see Shugborough Hall, an eighteenth-century Greek revival mansion.

Can you spot the otter-seals relaxing?

It was wonderful to be staying at a traditional, full service B&B.

Our host Elaine served us a marvelous cooked breakfast, and we particularly enjoyed the fruit salad (with many different kinds of finely diced fruit) as a starter. We also enjoyed listening to the music from the 1970s and 80s, and our brief chats with Elaine.

I was feeling a bit under the weather, and I couldn't tell if it was leftover allergies to cat hair, or a mild cold. 

One of the huge trees in Cannock Chase

We had been purchasing guide books to all of the properties we had visited, and Ken was carrying them all plus a book he had brought with him on walking in the Shropshire Hills. We decided to pack everything up that we wanted to post home and carry it with us to Shugborough Hall, afterwards continuing to the post office at Great Haywood to post them. Ken remembered after we had started walking that the post office closed at 2:00 p.m., and given that we had started out at 11:30 a.m., we knew that we were not going to the post office today.

The two mile plus walk to Shugborough was a bit ambiguous when it came to the pathways through the trees of Cannock Chase, but as usual Ken navigated us perfectly to the gateway at the beginning of the long drive (and it was a long drive) to the Hall. We learned from some National Trust volunteers that we needed to check in at the car park first—more walking! 

Exterior of Shugborough Hall

 

Because it was lunchtime, we went immediately to the garden cafe. I had tea and a curried cauliflower pasty, and Ken had a Cornish pasty and Pepsi. Refreshed, we began our tour of the house. Only the ground-floor rooms were open, but they were the ones we were most interested in (the other rooms belonged to Patrick, Lord Lichfield, a fashion photographer from the late twentieth-century).

We learned the story of the Anson brothers, Thomas and George. Thomas developed the estate, and George was a famous naval figure who obtained a huge amount of money from capturing a Spanish galleon—the money went into the estate. 

We enjoyed all of the rooms, especially the library. There was a book door and a mirror door (and another book door that a volunteer pointed out to us). If all the doors were closed, you would be surrounded by walls of books with no apparent doors. For a country house, it was the cosiest library we had ever seen. We could just picture ourselves in chairs, reading in front of the fire.  

The library, with two chairs in front of the fire

I was feeling pretty tired after our tour, so we went to the cafe again to share some carrot cake and to have some tea. Because I didn't feel like going out for dinner, we bought one cheese scone and two fruit scones to take "home" for dinner. 

We walked home the same way along the long drive, and then by a slightly different, more direct path through the woods. We had a nice quiet evening resting and watching TV. Ken watched a bit of an international friendly football match between England and Bosnia. England won 3-0 after a scoreless first half. It was a good rest day for us both.