Outside In

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Last night we stayed at the Orchard Hotel on the University of Nottingham campus. It was a convenient spot, coinciding with dropping the eldest off after a sailing trip and prior to another of our history tour days, this time to Derbyshire and the Peak District.

The hotel was built using eco-friendly principles but what I really love about it is how it is so light and airy, appearing to bring the green space from outside to the interior. Indeed it even takes this principle to extremes in the bedrooms which have a woodland mural on the wall.


Perhaps its designers anticipated the research I have referred to recently confirming the health benefits of nature and we certainly, as on previous occasions, enjoyed our stay which proved a fitting prequel for a journey through the Peak District, taking in Ashbourne and Buxton before heading for Castleton and Edale.

Buxton has been undergoing rejuvenation since I last visited (some thirty years ago) with the restoration of the Pavilion Gardens whilst the project to renovate the Crescent which was originally built as a hotel housing the thermal baths, is now well under way. In the 19th century the town was a popular hydrotherapy resort although the spa has been closed since the 1990's. When the restored hotel and baths reopen, they too will be a centre for the promotion of well-being, not least for those who exert themselves in the High Peak area beyond and around the town.


Comments

Debra Journet said…
Oh, to live in England . . . .
18 August 2015 at 02:42
Caree Risover said…
Your comment reminded me of this poem by Robert Browning:

O, to be in England
Now that April 's there,
And whoever wakes in England
Sees, some morning, unaware,
That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf
Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,
While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough
In England—now!
And after April, when May follows,
And the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows!
Hark, where my blossom'd pear-tree in the hedge
Leans to the field and scatters on the clover
Blossoms and dewdrops—at the bent spray's edge—
That 's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,
Lest you should think he never could recapture
The first fine careless rapture!
And though the fields look rough with hoary dew,
All will be gay when noontide wakes anew
The buttercups, the little children's dower
—Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower!

18 August 2015 at 21:29
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