Travel: The Best Places to Relax in The UK’s Peak District

A neatly kept mini-patchwork quilt of lush valleys, velvet meadows, characterful Victorian market towns and gloriously open moorland, the UK’s Peak District sits plumb in the middle of the country’s backbone.

Myth has it that the Peak District is the second most visited national park in the world after Mount Fuji. Whether your innate scepticism reflex can put that aside for a moment or not, once there you can certainly see why that might be true (and not just because of its geographical fortuitousness at the mid-point between the capitals of London and Edinburgh).

In many ways, the region (actually not that ‘peaky’ - you may be surprised to know) concisely captures many a picture of the hallowed rural England which film director Danny Boyle tried to represent in a segment of his London Olympics fandango: that rich verdant sheen, the chocolate-box villages, myriad colour-flecked flowerbeds and sheep - lots of sheep. Moreover, if you didn’t quite twig what was meant by the phrase ‘rolling countryside’ - when you have spent a week or two nosing round the different corners of the Peak District, you certainly will.

So, if you’re planning a nice trip to the UK soon, you may want to fold in a little trip to the Peakland, hole up in a cute little two-up two-down and explore the region. Here are some suggestions of the most relaxing spots to visit while you’re there;

Dovedale

Pictorially famous for its linear stepping stones, the views here are pretty definitive of the region as a whole. As the name suggests, as long as you miss the crowds on really sticky days, the peaceful feeling that permeates the valley is one to savour. Just a little further up the burbling stream, the heights on the left are known as Dovedale Castle.

A little further on is a grassy tuft locally nicknamed Lovers’ Leap which takes its moniker from a folk tale recounting a distraught maiden who threw herself off said tuft after a particularly disastrous romantic rejection. Fortunately, you are almost guaranteed to have a much more positive experience!

Chatsworth House

The majesty of Chatsworth House and its grounds has not gone unnoticed by film directors and television producers down the years. Nestled in a prime spot overlooking the Derwent and Wye valleys, Chatsworth and its extensive estate makes for a thoroughly enjoyable day out.

Rent a deck chair and pull up a pew mid-way up the slope of the main lawn and watch the bubbling weir on the River Derwent and the people passing by and take in the tree-covered hillside, the magnificent hunting tower, and the faded golden hue of the bridge down below.

Buxton

Constructed around thermal springs in the Wye valley, the delightful Roman settlement town of Buxton is now something of a cultural hotspot once again with a flourishing arts scene, popular annual festival and a plethora of eye-catching sandstone pavilion-style buildings and gardens, an opera house and classical churches.

That said, the best place to relax here are the natural baths. Sheer bliss.

Bakewell

A fairly typical-looking town for the region, Bakewell is famous for one thing in particular. They are sweet, they are almondy, they are a little jammy. They are the Bakewell Puddings and they are delicious. They are also often confused with their cakey brethren the Bakewell Tarts. Buyer beware - these are not the same sweetstuff at all. (But actually also really rather quite nice).

This in mind, the best thing to do in Bakewell is a find a sweet little traditional tearoom like the Lavender Tea Rooms for example, order yourself a nice fresh pot of English breakfast tea and award yourself a serious treat in the shape of a Bakewell Pudding. Delish.

Guest Author Bio: "Matthew Pink is a writer and editor working in digital publishing covering travel and culture. Originally from the Lake District in northwestern England, he also writes crime fiction which is set there. Scafell is his first novel."

Small Space Living: Remodeling? Angies List

Okay, I told you yesterday that I was looking at carpet for our master bedroom.  Sure enough the Sleep Number bed is in and I will need to have delivery delayed because the carpet will not be here for 2-3 weeks...maybe sooner if I push the process along. This is a learning process it seems. Even though we have gone through similar things many times before, the rules keep changing. And I have a cold so I am working with a big cloud hanging over my head. Thank heavens for my wonderful husband!

The Plan
I had thought I would go with one of those quick install companies you find across the US. It seemed simple and they would come to your house with samples.  Easy peasy...right? Then I got a little worried and decided to check reviews on line at places like 3 Cent Worth and Yelp. Wow! It seems from the comments made, having the carpet salesman come into your home was a bit like letting the vacuum cleaner salesman step in the door.  The old bait and switch, etc., seemed to be what people were complaining about. I was ready to cancel right then but I wanted to make sure that the bad reviewer were not the only ones commenting.

Click for link: promo code

Angie's List
I had been thinking of signing up for Angie's List for quite a while. My family had been using them so I had a feel for how it worked. The yearly fee was around $35 per year but if I signed up using my Paypal account and the promo code I found online, the amount went down to $16.81. I bought it.

Angie's List users commented on the company I was thinking of using. It was not a good as I had hoped. Angies's  gave the carpet dealership a B grade. I don't know about you but B is not good enough for me when I am talking about my home. I cancelled the appointment.

Home Depot
We decided to go with our local Home Depot. We have dealt with them over a long period of time and feel comfortable with our store here in town. It is very good, reliable and honest. The salesman did not bait and switch. If a service costs extra he did not shrink from telling us so.

Why Use the Home Depot Card
The suggestion was made that we take the full 6 month interest free payment period to pay off the Home Depot credit card debt. If we do that we will be notified of any promos that might come up on the carpet we purchased during that period of time. We could then take advantage of more savings.

We get a 5% discount every time we use the card BUT we have to ask for it or they do not do it...let me repeat...it is not automatic!

The Process Starts Thursday
So that is where we are.  I will let you know how the rest goes.  The installation people will come measure on Thursday and we can have the whole thing in the works by Monday if I push things along.

Wish me luck!

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Keep your fingers crossed for us!

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Small Space Living: Bedroom Carpet Dilemma

From Apartment Therapy

Okay now we are getting ready to upgrade our carpet in the master of our little retirement community home.

The bed we have been using was returned to Costco because I felt like I was falling out of bed all night. My husband and I were fighting for the middle space. It was the safe part of the bed. Incidentally Costco gave us a full refund even though we purchased the bed in 2010.

The room is empty as we wait for the delivery of our Sleep Number bed in a week or so.  Hopefully, we can locate the perfect carpet and have it put down within the next few days. Yikes!

So what is the best carpet for the bedroom? Anybody have any suggestions or ideas?  Help!

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Money Cannot Buy the Perfect Graduation Gift

The perfect graduation gift has no monetary value. It something only an open heart and hand can give. It is the freedom to fly and fall, then fly again.

My husband was a high school principal and we are the parents of 3 children and 12 grandchildren. We know what graduation means and how important it is to families across our nation. It is a right of passage for families and a wonderful privilege. 

This time sees parents feeling that twinge of relief and regret all at once. The empty nest looms and they are hoping that they have raised their child to be ready for what is to come next. Their guidance is more important now than it ever was but finding a way to communicate with their child also difficult. 

On the other hand the grandparents are less useful than they have been in the past. Where do my husband and I fit into this mix at this point in our life?  The truth is we are only onlooking-perfect-gift-givers and smilers this time around.

The dilemma we face now is knowing what that perfect gift is. We have a son graduating with his Master Degree in Business and his daughter is graduating from high school and facing her college years. We also have a grandson getting ready to finish basic training in the Marines. All are big occasions in our family's life... commencements for both the children and their families. We have such high hopes. This gift giving season is more important than any other. We want to present the graduates with something they can hold on to for the rest of their life but the perfect gift is not tangible.

I am aware that my gift may be chosen because it reflects what I hope our young people will do with their life when I should be honoring what the children see as their future. I remind myself that each child must find their own way in their own way. The difficult thing for my husband and I is that we know too much.  We are full of information and advice, none of it wanted or, in the view of the youngers, even useful. We are relegated to watching. It is hard.

When my youngest son received his Masters Degree this week, the commencement speaker said something I liked a lot. He said, "Don't be afraid to take risks because the only person that will remember a failure is you. But more importantly, many successes are built on the rubble of failure." I liked that a lot.

In truth, the thought I am having now is that I should not worry so much. If people a lot wiser than myself know that a misstep is not a bad thing, then I should embrace the risks my children and their children take. They are strong and smart. They will be fine.

So I think that the perfect gift is not money or a worldly possession. The most valuable of gifts cannot be held in your hand.

A box containing "hope" and "surprises" would be perfect.  It could contain "moving on cards" that allow them to forgive themselves for what they see is as not good enough. It would be filled with "courage" and "laughter" and above all "kindness". "Work ethic" would top the box off to over flowing.  Oh, and there would be "ideas" and "creativity" too.  That is what I would like to give. After all, life is very short and in the end it is about a huge passion and love for the journey. 

While I know money cannot buy those things nor is there a box big enough to hold them, I also know that with our encouragement the child can find these gifts inside their own head and heart. That is where my husband and I fit in this picture. I remain hopeful.

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Gifts: Teens and my 15 Minutes of Fame!

In an article written for Inc. Davic Freedman asked the question "What Do Teens Want?". His comment that "...most of us feel we'd have a better chance of achieving a breakthrough in quantum gravity than we would of figuring out how to reliably connect with teenagers" hit very close to home. Those of us that have shopped with a teen know that they will not like what you suggest, are not reliable when it comes to sticking with a style and disdain places we picture as being the places they would like. It is very hard getting the perfect gift. If you get it right once every 7 years, you are a real winner. 

I discovered the best gift for young people ever...my old stuff or things that look like my old stuff. Only they cannot know that you ever liked it and it must be up graded to meet all their current needs. This spring we have high school graduates and birthdays by the scores...all teens wanting to be themselves. I am struggling.  My 16 year old granddaughter made a recommendation and I thought she knew what she was talking about.

So I bought a portable hi-fi record player (or that is what my generation called them) as a gift for my 14 year old grandson. When I texted him on his birthday (we don't talk anymore...that is not cool) he said he loved it. Phew!

Crosley CR40-RE Mini Turntable (Red)

I think the perfect thing about this is the fact that it looks so retro and it is portable. My grandson can haunt thrift stores to find records for almost nothing. My grandson is very thrifty so that is good. He described how he had it set on his top shelf with all the records he had found stacked near-by. His words were, "I absolutely love it Grandma." Perfect.

I will order him the latest Journey album for his collection just because I think that would be nice. Who knows, that may be a winner too.

My fifteen minutes of fame as a grandmother are over for another 7 years. But I will take it. I don't want to be greedy.

Have a wonderful Day.

Greatest Hits Volume 2

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Down Sizing in Real Life

Deciding to downsize to a 55+ community was a wonderful decision for us. But not so many years ago I was put off by the idea of being around "old people" ALL of the time. Now I look around in my 55+ community and everyone looks just like me. Here is a little bit about our journey and how it has worked for us.

Why Did We Downsized When We Did?
My husband and I actually downsized twice. The first time we moved because we were still young (60 and 64) and wanted to try out a new lifestyle. We did not think it was our "last" move and we did not choose a house because it was a place we could grow old in.  That made the moves easier. We were downsizing without realizing.

We were empty nesters and our frugal side told us that we did not need nor did we want four bedrooms, a family room or even a basement. We were done cleaning and doing the giant amount of yard work. No amount of sentimentality could over come the practical part. We gave up our yard and moved into a condo.  The community was young, hip and new. We liked that a lot.

Then we traveled.

Ten years went by and we were tired of all the travel. We realized that practical needed to guide our lives again. It turned out we missed our yard and the exercise we got when we worked outside. We realized what a barrier steps would be if we were ill or injured and our condo was built on four levels. That fear presented itself when I fell on a golf course and sprained my ankle severely. We decided that the time had come to live on one level again. It was so painfully obvious it was not even a choice anymore. It was what we needed. That was when we moved into a 55+ neighborhood. We have lived here for almost 2 years now. I was 69 and my husband was 73.

Where?
This brings me to Contentment. Contentment is an actual place in my mind. The place is relaxing, happy, comfortable and you fit in with the people around you. The trouble with the place called "Contentment" it is ever changing.  You cannot recognize that a new place might have that name until you are ready. It might be an apartment, a small house in the woods, a retirement community or even an assisted living facility. You might think today as you look into the future that you would hate one or the other of these choices. BUT...on the day or week that any one of those is right for you, you will be happy to be living there. It will be where you belong. But not yet if you are not ready. We have found that all of our living situation have been unique to a particular time in our lives. What we loved when we were very young is not what we want now.

That brings me to the people I suppose. The people that you are surrounded by can be a real deal breaker. That is why some are so horrified to think about living in a place where everyone is old or young or loud or even of a different nationality. It is all about the people. When I open my door I am very glad to see the person from across the street.  How would you feel about looking out the window and seeing your neighbors walking by? Many of my neighbors are using walkers now but I don't care. I don't think I would have felt that way when I was younger.

When you retire, you give up a world of people that have a lot in common with you. After that you may find a hole in your life. So who would you like to hang out with at this stage of your life. Would it be people that share your life experience, age mates for example? That is what we discovered we liked.

We were like many of you. We did not want to be with old people all of the time. I remember staying in a 55+ town where everyone within the city limits was 55 or older...much older. There were no public parks with play ground equipment or even a school. The grocery was filled with nothing but old people. It was almost spooky. I wanted to drive to the nearest town and stop at a school so I could watch children play. It drove me nuts! It was just too much of a good thing.

Then we took our Motor Home to a RV resort that was 55+. Grandchildren visited, we were near schools and neighborhoods with families. The grocery stores were used by every age. We discovered that we were at home there. The neighbors were age mates. We shared common experiences even though we came from every walk of life. It was such a positive experience that we began to think about finding a similar place back in our home state.

But that was not easy. Even though the boomers are coming into their old age we found there was not much choice in the area where we wanted to live when we decided on downsizing again. But, as with most things, it all worked out. There were two houses for sale in a very small neighborhood two blocks from our daughter. Both were all on one level, had a small yard and the covenants required that you be 55 or older. We chose one and made the move.

Our 55+ neighborhood is near a much larger neighborhood that is home to families, schools, pools and a community center.  Our neighborhood shares garage sale days and walking paths with them. It is just close enough to young people to make our area seem alive and vital.

We think our neighbors are older than we are but we seem to fit right in. We both are very active and think young even though we may not be as young as we feel. The truth is we look like everyone else. In the end the important thing is we are happy.  We live in our current version of a place called "Contentment".

My private back yard.

How?
Down sizing is not something people do without realizing what they are going to sacrifice. Memories, things and even neighbors all come into play. They also worry about their physical ability to do what is necessary. Even though they want to downsize they are stuck! This is what I have discovered:

1. Memories go with you no matter where you live. I carry those in my mind and in pictures. 
2. Worldly possession are just that. I know you might think I am nuts, but you will actually be relieved when you have less to dust or store. If you think you can't part with "stuff", put it in storage for a while and if you don't go look at it or even think about it again, give away.
3. Neighbors are a little harder. But if they are age mates, they will be doing the same thing you a thinking of doing. Remember God gave us cars, taxis and public transportation for a reason. Gather together for special dinners on a schedule. I think you will find that the need to get together lessens with time. 



My visiting patio in the front yard!

4. As for the physical part, I need you to remember that this move is like eating an elephant. Take very small bites. It is doable if you just do it a tiny bit each day. If you and your children have a good relationship, they will help. 

This part of our life is ever changing. Each time I talk about down sizing or living in a small space I am reminded that the story is never the same. It is always good to have the conversation. Change is a good thing for many reasons and it reminds us that we do have choices, nothing is forever and we can't predict the future until it is not the future anymore. 

Be well.

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Links: Retire in Style Blog posts labeled Down Sizing

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Backroads in Oregon: Garden Vineyard, Hillsboro

This place just takes my breath away sometimes. We took a short drive out to one of our favorite wineries on Sunday. The owners work out of two locations. You have seen pictures of their primary place of business but on Sunday they invited members to come to the estate where the wine is actually produced. This place just blew my socks off. The grounds were worth of The Great Gatsby.  While it was a bit down at the heels, the bones were absolutely gorgeous.  From the lilac lined walkways to the formal gardens and arbors lush wish wisteria you could imagine a kinder gentler time. We picniced near the terrace as a small band played in the background. Life was very good on that day.

Take a look at Garden Vineyard website. If you are in the PDX area it might be worth looking into.

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TED and Mothers: Philosophies Worth Sharing

TED Talk

I subscribe to the TED Talk updates on my email. I don't always watch them but when I do, I am inspired. The brightest and best people are chosen to speak for 15 minutes on a subject about which they are passionate. But it is not only what they say, it is how they say it.

Note: The acronym TED stands for Technology, Entertainment and Design. Information on the organization is here.

Today I received an email telling about a talk by Ken Robinson on a topic called "How to escape education's Death Valley" (link). It is worth your time to watch. This man is not only very smart but he is also killer funny.

Robinson was talking about children and their education but it seemed to me that his information applied to all people. This is the thought that caught my interest. It speaks to why I believe that we all make our lives what we will. Here is what Robinson had to say about creativity:

.....that human life is inherently creative. It's why we all have different résumés. We create our lives, and we can recreate them as we go through them. It's the common currency of being a human being. It's why human culture is so interesting and diverse and dynamic. 

Funny Mothers Philosophy
But there is more. I belong to a group of writers over at Generation Fabulous. This Mother's Day we shared stories about our mothers as teacher. One of my favorites was Quotations from Chairman Mu. The mother quoted here is hilariously quirky and seriously funny. Here are a few:

Somebodies mother!

• Never call anyone “sir.” And “madams” run brothels, so don’t call anyone that, either.
• Always tell a person if she has lipstick on her teeth, but never tell her if it’s something she can’t fix—like a run in her stocking. (— NOTE: ACTUAL USEFUL ADVICE HERE.) 

• “All you need in your handbag is a wallet, keys, tape and a stapler. Wallet for money. Keys to start the car/open the front door. Tape to clean lint off clothes, and stapler to repair torn hems.”

My Philosophy
I know I should be very wise by this time in life but unfortunately some days are better than others.  Here it is:

Life it too short to do what is not necessary. Water it if it's dry, throw it out if it's dead and goldfish don't like soap! As for the fish...well I just threw that in because if the goldfish dies, I will be the one that has to throw it out.

Have a wonderful day.

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