Anyway, other than that, it was an impressive stately home. The room with the matching wall-covering, curtains and upholstery all in a vivid pink floral pattern made my head hurt. Some of the others were much nicer though, with some very good portraits. The grounds are a very pleasant balance of open vistas, trees, gentle rolling hills, water features and formal gardens.
The ride wasn't too bad, nice quiet B-roads running parallel to a motorway that takes most of the traffic off them. The headwind made for a bit of a slog on the way there, this of course meant that the ride back seemed like half the distance.
¹ literally. OK, not literally full, but there were quite a lot of birds and they were very dead and stuffed, and many of them did look good.
