Yet another holiday part 1

We've just returned from yet another little jaunt down in the Edinburgh/London train. First we met up with Daughter 2 for a meal, but couldn't stay with her at that point because she had a friend visiting. However, this gave us a fine opportunity to visit my brother and sister-in-law, in Surrey.

They took us to Polesden Lacey, the party house of the daughter of McEwan of McEwan's brewery. Her father had made a lot of money - from brewing but also from railways. He fell in love with a maid servant (not his own) and had a long love affair with her (with resultant daughter) but couldn't marry her because his family disapproved. But then later in life, when the older members of the family had died, he did marry her. Which is rather heartwarming.

This is the view from the back of the house. The daughter actually lived in London and used this house only for entertaining.

She had rather fancy tastes.

I suppose that if you have all that money, you have to do something with it.

She died childless, however, and left the house to the National Trust, which is handy for the rest of us. This is her rather fine rose garden...

and these are her rather splendid delphiniums. Clearly she doesn't have my slug and snail problem.

Another day, my brother took us to Dorking, which is a rather pretty old town not really designed with cars in mind. It has a lot of antique centres - we mainly managed to resist buying things -

 and this - oh dear - lovely quilting shop in a rather ancient building. It's called The Quilt Room https://quiltroom.co.uk/ and is run by a lady called Pam. She does mail order. (Just saying.)

Well, it would have been rude not to buy anything.