Mrs Peacock

Mrs Shiltonpig strutting her stuff

Saturday 28th May 2011

Wow! You can't get better than that, you setp one foot outside the ticket office and you see the view on the photo to the left. A load of peacock strutting their stuff...and let me tell you "their stuff" is pretty well impressive. But perhaps we are getting ahead of ourselves. Today on this bank holiday weekend we decided to set off for the Northamptonshire countryside and in particular this place....Kirby Hall. Belive it or not, by the time this photo had been taken, 2 caches had been completed. One of them at the top of the hill with fine views of the Hall.

Money ran out to finish the roof

Kirby hall is one of those very atmospheric places, for a start its in the middle of nowhere, altjough it is on the outskirts of Corby. Kirby has half a roof and a whole bucket load of peacock poo. Its the first place where we have been where Josh has come second in the poo stakes! Kirby Hall dates back to the 16th century, which by all accounts was a long long time ago when men wore frilly clothes and managed to get away with it. But by the 18th century some blokes debts got the better of him and the place started to fall into disrepair. Now you are provided with an audio guide as you go around the place, but having a Josh around does tend to

The worlds largest dominoes

hamper all attempts at finding about the history of the place. Now team Shiltonpig are not quite sure about the next bit, in the background we could hear motorcycles galore, were these around in 1570 or not? perhaps you can help us. Yes the Rockingham motorcycle race track is not far away, also home to the other cache we did this morning. Looks like the council decided to dump all their waste on the entrance to that cache. Returning for a moment to the Hall, Josh and Mr Shiltonpig were able to find some dominoes to play with in a room, that the whole team wants to have in their own home. The views and the windows are just awesome and we

This is MY house!

can only hope that one day some kind wealthy person gives us £100 million pounds so we can afford this type of place. As we left the room and went outside the peacocks were there, stalking us, we wondered whether they were some kind of aliens from a strange Dr Who episode, but thought better of it! The gardens are supposed to show you what gardens looked like back in the 16th century, well judging on this one, they can keep them, we prefer 21st century gardens. In the distance alongside the motorbike noise, we saw 100 cows charging towards a jeep with its food. I kid you not, seeing 100 cows charge is a sight you will not forget.

Josh tries to run off

Josh on the other hand is going through a stage of going completely the opposite direction to what we would like to go? Do all toddlers go through this stage we wonder? Trudging through the peacock poo (and trust me it when I say that it wasn't easy) we headed back to the car. On the way to the next place, we stopped off at a delightful village full of thatched cottages and light stoned houses. We cleared another cache, which was by a red telephone box in Gretton. They seem to have a bit of a thing for red phone box caches around here! For more info on the above hall please click on the amazing team Shiltonpig linky poo

The cave monsters appear wherever we go!