A little break at the Appleby Manor Country House Hotel

Brian and I had thought about going to Gran Canaria or Tenerife for a week in the sun, but when it came down to it we couldn't manage to find a whole week when we could both be away from work. We also didn't fancy the hassle of the airports and would have lost a couple of days with travelling anyway. So we decided to have a short break at a lovely country house hotel and found the Appleby Manor had everything we could want including being only about an hour's drive away.  You can see what the hotel is like HERE

We drove to Appleby on Sunday, it was a nice sunny day so we thought we would have a walk around one of the footpaths, unfortunately, it had been very wet and everything was waterlogged so we had to give that up pretty quickly!

River Eden

 

 

 

View over Appleby

So we walked back into to town and had lunch in a little wine bar, we did have a glass of wine, it would have been rude not to!

Monument at the top of Appleby

Looking down towards the town

Appleby Castle

We'd seen this scaffolded structure when we were on our walk and wondered what it was.  It turns out that it is Appleby Castle, which should be being restored, but there seems to have been a bit of a halt in the proceedings.

So here we are in 2010 and the Castle is still not open.

View from bedroom window

Then it was time to check into our hotel.  Unfortunately, I didn't take a photograph of the hotel on Sunday because there certainly wasn't much opportunity after that as the weather deteriorated rapidly.  This was the view from our bedroom window.

Splish Splash

 The hotel had a small pool, sauna, jacuzzi and steam room.  But we also had a 'spa' bath in our en suite and even better, it had it's own televison!  Here i am wallowing in the foam watching Downton Abbey.

On Monday we decided to head out to Barnard Castle, we had to travel along the A66 through the Pennines and there was quite a bit of snow on the hills.

In fact in some places the snow as right down to the road!

Bowes Museum

At Barnard Castle we visited the Bowes Museum  there were lots of interesting exhibits.

 

Dinner is served.

 This was an amazing piece of modern art, the bit at the top is a book of fish which has been cut into and if you look closely you can see that some of the fish shapes are there in between the cut paper which looks like seaweed.

This is the most famous exhibit in the Bowes Museum, the Silver Swan automaton.  This is the partner of the  Peacock in the Hermitage in St Petersburg and as we had seen the Russian version, I really wanted to see the one which was just down the road, see Peacock below!  It did not disappoint, although the animation is only for 35 seconds the motion of the swans neck is incredible as it appears to catch a fish from the 'water' below.  Photographs are not great but if you would like to see more you can click HERE

Silver Wing

These are the little fish swimming between the glass rods that make the water.

Peacock Automaton at Hermitage, St Petersburg

We headed back to the hotel and enjoyed another first class meal, the food and the service at Appleby Manor was excellent and we were sorry to leave on Tuesday.