Woburn: Day 1

Our meeting point was at Euston Square at 7:50 under the main timetables. I got up at 6am, and was out the door by 7 to get some cash and make it to the train on time! I got there easily and on time! We caught the 8:17 train to Milton Keyes. It was a quick train ride… about 45 minutes. We all climbed into taxis and made it to the house around 9:30am.

First impression… I didn’t really have one! Unlike Burghley (where you come up to the house and can see the entire structure) we entered a side door and walked into the ticketing room and dropped our stuff. There wasn’t a real wow factor right away. I was put in the furniture group first. Sigh. I wanted to learn the house history!! We don’t always get what we want I guess! I was stuck with Andrew and crew doing furniture. The problem is that I was too distracted to really concentrate. I should have been in the history group first so I could gape at the rooms without having to pretend to be looking at a table. Basically I stood there completely immersed in looking that everything that I didn’t pay much attention…. Ill admit it!

The house was BEAUTIFUL. It is my favorite that we have seen. I think the big difference was that the house is lived in and certain rooms are actually used in the winter. There was just a feeling about it. There wasn’t a museum feeling. You felt like a guest. There were family snapshots on tables and shelves, which really added to the overall homey feeling! There weren’t plaques around either, just room guides (people) so that was nice too.

After I suffered through furniture it was time for lunch! I packed mine to save some money, but I bought a pot of tea for 2 pounds so I didn’t feel badly eating my own food in the cafeteria. After our lunch break we headed over to the old stables and listened to a talk from the curator. Basically country house jobs never open up because those who get the job never let go of them. ( I don’t blame them!!) It sounds awesome but at the same time he is basically a one man show so he has to do a LOT of stuff and not all of it sounded fun. He gets a lot of the tedious stuff also because he doesn’t have a team under him. The next talk was from the head of cleaning… I kinda want that job. When the house is closed to the public (during the winter) they clean EVERYTHING which sounded tedious, but also awesome because they get to touch EVERYTHING in the house. That would be epic!

After the lectures we had one more session. Somehow I got the worst one again, and I was off to the vault to look at silver with Andrew. I like silver, but not in an academic sense. I like to look at it, not study it. It felt like the longest hour of my life! When we were finally free at 5, we grabbed our bags and half of us got a taxi to our hotel which was in the town nearby.

Our hotel was just a Best Western, but it was a cute brick one with a little pond outside. Isabel and I shared a room, and it was just a Best Western room! We crashed for a bit and then went out to get food. I was SO hungry so I was ready for a hamburger as big as my head. We picked a pub (when I say picked I mean that we went to the only one around). It was really cute! I picked the burger, got a pint of cider and eagerly awaited my delicious hamburger! Then… a lady came out from the kitchen and said that they had run out of hamburger meat and that we needed to pick something else. NOOO!! GAH! I picked the steak and ale pie with chips, and it was amazing. I could have eaten 5 of them! It was really really good! I recommend it if anyone ever goes to The Anchor in Apsley Guise! We headed back to our room after dinner, watched some tv and headed to bed around 10:30!! I love early to bed nights!

P.S the picture is the house