Dalston Hall

 

We've been away for a long weekend. Son, Daughter-in-Law and our neighbours combined to look after the cats. Since we didn't have long without Grandson duties, we didn't go far - just to Carlisle in Cumbria, over the border into England. Or, to be more accurate, we were just outside Carlisle, in Dalston. We picked, more or less randomly, Dalston Hall Hotel to stay in. Here it is above and below.

 

 

It was spectacularly lovely. It dates from the 1500s (with lots of later additions) and used to be a private manor house belonging to the Dalston family. The area was very turbulent in the past, fought over between the English and the Scots.

 

 

Now, however, it seems the picture of rural calm.

 

 

 It would be a great place for a wedding...

 

 

... and we enjoyed processing up these very grand stairs...

 

 

 ... and along to our room.

 

 

Room 4: the bed (and cuddly tiger*). That bedhead was not comfy to lean back on.

 

 

The inglenook fireplace.

 

 

The bathroom (in a turret).

 

 

The view from the window.

 

On the desk by the window, there was a folder with information about the hotel, including about its seemingly rather numerous ghosts. Apparently room 4 is the most copiously haunted. Spectral ladies come out from the right-hand inglenook and tug the bedclothes off. Dogs whine at the door. Strange noises are heard.

 

No, we didn't see or hear any ghosts. And we would greatly recommend the hotel. The food was wonderful. Strangely, we appeared to be the only guests... - well, apart from a young foreign girl who approached us as we were going down to breakfast and said that she believed that we were in room 4, the haunted one.

 

Now, how did she know that? And why did we never see her again...? Wooooooo.

 

To be continued.

 

(If you'd like to see more of Dalston Hall, you might like to look at this YouTube clip from the programme "Britain's Most Haunted": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sh4_q85Fr4 I'm quite glad that I didn't know about all this before we went... not that I believe in ghosts. Though I would have to say that in the middle of the night, with Mr Life sleeping peacefully beside me in the very dark darkness that you get in the country, and with the strange creaking noises that you get in an old house... I did slightly wonder... .)

* Very true, Daughter 1. It does appear to be a cheetah or leopard or something, not a tiger. I was too busy looking for ghosts to examine it in enough detail.