Oooh, look, a Duke...

The Scottish Holiday.

Plan A, which was rapidly followed by Plans B thru' Z following the demise of the Astra's clutch, was always going to be a visit to Chatsworth House in Derbyshire.

Chapter Eleven:

I was in a bit of a "tiz" about getting back to Kendal to pick up the now-fixed-Astra before the garage shut for the weekend - this meant some fine planning regarding leaving the castle on the Friday morning. This would entail leaving at *precisely* 10:00am in order to make the 270 miles in good time. I also had to factor in going through Glasgow. I was, as you say, worried.

I rang up the garage in Kendal.

"Hiya, what time do you shut please? It would be nice if we could pick up the Astra and pay you for it before you go home for the Jubilee Weekend."
"You can pay over the phone if you like and we can leave the key under a rock or something."
"Ah ha. Yes. Key! I have my spare with me, just lock the other in the boot. Oh bugger, I need to give him (the hire bloke) the Colt POS back before he goes home too."
"Oh don't worry about that, just chuck the keys through his letter box. What's the long number on the card please?"

Brilliant! No stress, no worry, so long as we were at the hotel in Bakewell in the Peak District before the bar shut we were fine.

We got up, had a leisurely breakfast, washed up, tidied up, said goodbye to everyone (twice) and left at precisely 10:03.

Chapter Twelve:

We got through Glasgow like it wasn't there, stopped for a leisurely lunch at some truck stop on the M6 and got to Kendal at half-four. Nothing went wrong at all, even the Colt POS was working better.

"This Colt still feels like it's running on three though..."

We swapped cars at Kendal and put a face to the nice garage receptionist. The most difficult part was swapping over all the incumbent junk from the boot that we never used, and set off for Bakewell. The Astra running like a dream. We got to the hotel with enough time to have dinner, a beer and a shower.

What could possibly go wrong1?

Chapter Thirteen:

We left early for Chatsworth House to miss the crowds. We got there just before opening and found ourselves about number 800 in the queue. We estimated that there was about 2,000 cars in the car park already - each with an average of two people.

"Hang on, it's 15 quid each plus three to park, that's 66 grand they've taken just today."
"Better be good then..."

It was. We were just traversing between the 1953 Coronation Coach and some nice corridor packed full of gold stuff when my wife pointed to a distinguished gentleman in the crowd...

"Oooh, look, the Duke."
"Oooh, look, a camera crew."
"Oooh, look, a large chicken."

Just to show you how large the Duke's Cock actually was.

After about six hours of walking, staring and eating cake, we left for home.

Epilogue:

We got home just in time to get to our local pub for dinner and a pint. We didn't bother with a shower.

I later found out that the Mitsubishi Colt only has three cylinders.

1So far, nothing.

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