A stolen shot...

Today we went to Lyme Park. A chance encounter with a lovely guy in a coffee shop yesterday resulted in an invite to visit the house as his guest. We were surprised and touched by such a generous and genuine gift of friendship from a person who half an hour before had been a total stranger...

Lyme Park was fabulous. The house is full of treasures, particularly the National Trust volunteers themselves who are so well informed and clearly love what they do. The gardens are stunning - especially as the sun was shining and the sky was blue.

For any Jane Austen or Colin Firth fans Lyme Park is home to THAT lake - the one Colin Firth swam across in the guise of Darcy (in one of the latest adaptations of P&P) and then strutted out of all wet-shirted and manly. As a rather peculiar tribute to the afore mentioned incident there is now a very big, very ugly statue of a half submerged Mr Darcy in the middle of said lake. It truly is an eye-sore...Mr Firth could probably quite successfully sue someone somewhere for slander if it is meant to be an accurate representation of his person!

So now to my photo - while admiring the gardens we came upon this group of people. They were standing in what seemed a slightly awed silence looking at the huge effigy of Darcy in the lake. After a few moments of contemplation the lady with her hands on her hips suddenly says, rather loudly and to no one in particular - "What the bloody hell he's doing in the middle of that pond I do not know!" Genius, pure genius!!! You cannot make this stuff up...

And for the record - I totally agree with her!