Castle Howard.... I am ready for my closeup.......

Carrie arrived at the Danby train station (which was actually a shed of sorts!) on time (11:23am) and in the pouring rain. I felt bad that she had traveled so far to be with us and the weather was really awful.

We headed off to Castle Howard just north of York. The property has been on my to-do list for a long time. A visit had just never worked out before. I was now determined to take this opportunity. I have to admit I have grown tired of visiting English Houses long ago but knew I had to see this one. If you only visit one great English house, this is the one. It is a masterpiece by Vanbrugh and Hawksmoor. The vistas over a small lake to the house, the mausoleum and the Atlas fountain are spectacular.

Castle Howard has been the setting for many movies but most famously for Brideshead Revisited with Jeremy Irons in 1981. To our surprise we arrived at Castle Howard to find that Brideshead Revisited was being re-made. There were huge ugly blue cranes blocking the front of the house. It was very disappointing. We were told Michael Gambon was filming that day but we never saw him. While we were on a tour of the house we were made to stand quietly in the hallways until someone shouted cut and we could move on. It felt silly and time consuming. Afterwards, we had a great time feeding the peacocks and ducks outside and trying to take pictures in the rain. We had some lunch and headed out.

Looking for the things to do in the rain our next stop of the day was Nunnington Hall. It is a good example of a 17th century manor house. It was the not the house I thought it would be. I had gotten it confused with the Triangular Lodge. Wrong! As I said before I am really bored by English houses and we moved rather quickly through the house. We challenged the guides to sum up each room in a sentence and they did! We were out of the house in 20 minutes! They really must have thought us crazy Americans.

We returned to the Wellington Inn, had dinner and played trivial pursuit in the pub (I think Carrie won!). I went to bed hoping the weather on Saturday would be better.