Christmas in Peak District, England

December 2017.
2017 Christmas was unique for me. It was not a typical snow clad Christmas. There were few snowy drizzles but that's about it. But this was the first time I was spending the whole Christmas week with my friends and friend's family, an English family observing the typical local quirks of the festival, traditional, unique and very different from my usual Christmas back at home.

We drove up to Nottinghamshire where my friend's family lived. It was early in the morning and I was extremely pleased to find a service station as I was bursting for a wee :) trust me, these things are important when you are driving on a highway with as minimum service stations as possible. We reached their place about mid morning and to be honest, I was feeling a bit apprehensive at first. But everything became very homely soon!

The house was warm, comfy and had a picture perfect cutesy vibe about it. It was decorated with pretty showpieces and beautiful paintings and sweet family pictures. A nice Christmas tree stood in the corner looking over a little back garden. My Christmas day started with opening up gifts in the bed and a 'hulk mug' of hot coffee. Perfect huh? We had a turkey roast dinner at 1:30PM. Yes it's called 'dinner' even though it's at 'lunch' time and the meal in the evening is called 'tea' and tea is just a drink that is consumed every other hour throughout day and night. We also had a Christmas pudding on fire. I make it sound dramatic and in its own perky way, it was quite amusing. There was a highly calorific, rich, delicious Christmas pudding and a little rum was poured on top of it and a dim flame was lit on its side. The ritual is more fun than the visual. And for a first timer, of course, it's hugely interesting. To make things more interesting, Snowball made an appearance in the evening. No it's not what you think :) Apparently Snowball was a very popular drink in the 70's England. It has this yummy vanilla flavor and very 'more-ish'. It came in little glasses with cute cocktail umbrellas. To make my Christmas week even more memorable, the musicians in us emerged. There were some really good performances by my friend's brother and dad and few hilarious ones by me. For the first time in my life, I touched an accordion and made considerable noise. I even learned to play first few lines of an old English song 'Ain't got a barrel of money..' in the piano and played my own Bengali 'Rabindrasangeet' songs; couldn't really play both the octaves simultaneously, but played some tunes whatsoever. It was fun.

The place Nottinghamshire is in the middle of the country of England, typically called the midlands. And very close by is Derbyshire, a part of the Peak district. The dry winter didn't bring out the green in all the places but even then Nottinghamshire seemed very cosy. We had a good walk around the Wolaton park and Elvaston park, the old village town. When I first heard about Elvaston park I actually thought it has got something to do with Elvis Presley. Pah! We took the mandatory selfie with the Robinhood statue and saw the castle of Robinhood. The street that winds down from the castle has got the oldest pub in England. The interior of the pub would take you to the 16th century immediately. If you love the smell of old mysterious walls, these 'yelde olde' pubs are definitely a must visit for you. We also went to a deer park and saw the manor house. There were two very brave deer who seemed unnerved by human presence. I stood very close to them but they didn't bother. However people were being warned of their gorgeous antlers that can turn out to be quite dangerous if required.

One sunny morning, we drove around Derbyshire. This place is lovely with its rolling hills and undulating lands, nice little streams and rivers. Very picturesque. We drove past Bakewell (Yes, we did talk about the famous Bakewell tart), up to the very royal Chatsworth house. Warm sunshine, cold hands and white ice sheets on the slope of the hills in the distance - it was all very worthy.

The midlands, the country sides, the greenery and the cosiness of the people and the place - my Christmas in the Midlands was well spent :)