Whoops we forgot the passports.

Tuesday 27th September 2016

So....we continue with our cultural quest to visit National Trust properties.  The weather was better today which meant that we got on our bikes and publicly displayed our matching fluorescent jackets that we purchased from Decathlon yesterday.  I'm not normally in favour of matching clothes but they were good quality and just what we were looking for.

Our aim was to visit Quarry Bank Mill in the morning and Dunham Massey in the afternoon.  Quarry Bank Mill is that place that is signposted when you turn to go to Manchester Airport.  The sat nav told us that Quarry Bank was about 5 miles from where we were staying but that involved motorways.  Our route turned out to be 13 miles on the bikes and although we missed the motorways we did go under the airport runway.

Chocks away, permission for take off!

We had been tempted to take our passports and see where we could end up!  Quarry Bank Mill was bigger than we expected and was quite busy with a school trip.  Nevertheless it has a good assortment of spinning and weaving machinery as well as an old water wheel and steam engines.  The setting was pretty too as the surrounding gardens were lovely.  The mill had been owned by the Greg family who had obviously been involved in the cotton industry before they started making pies!

Nice jacket!

After lunch we cycled around the airport again, seeing the highlights of Wythenshawe (didn't take long) and some nicer places on the fringe of Altrincham.  We arrived at Dunham Massey which is a house that was owned by the Earls of Stafford whose family name was Booth in the 1700's, I believe they made their money in the early supermarket business!  They only had a daughter and she married a Grey (linked to Lady Jane Grey).  The 7th Earl was George Harry and he scandalised the area by taking a second wife who had been a circus performer.  Shock, horror, she was certainly not the right sort of class.  Local gentry rebuffed the wife and as a result the Earl and wife abandoned the house to live in a mansion elsewhere.  I always though those Cheshire folk were society snobs!

Here's the thing....before we left I managed to ask the staff the killer question...."Why is Dunham Massey called Dunham Massey?"  Of course the person I asked didn't know and neither did the person they asked.  They were eventually helped by a volunteer who told us that the area had been called Dunham (but couldn't explain what it meant) and the area had been given to a French nobleman called De Massey who had come across with William the Conqueror and been given the land for his services.  Sounds a bit like the story of Richard De Vernon.....but more of that later.

By the time we got back to the van we had done 30 miles cycling when I thought we might have done about 12 miles, never mind it is all healthy stuff.  We ate a nice Beef Stew made in the slow cooker and helped down with lashings of Lea and Perrins....mmm.