Breadsall Priory

Our next stop, after beautiful Wales, was Breadsall Priory, in Derbyshire, back in England. Don't bother to look up Breadsall Priory on your National Trust or English Heritage maps. It's a Marriott hotel and golf resort. We had a few free Marriott nights soon expiring, and Breadsall Priory was close enough to serve as a base for our visit to Chatsworth house and garden. Breadsall really was a priory way back before the Dissolution; it passed on into private hands, got rebuilt, sold, added onto, sold, renovated, rinse, repeat, etc., for 500 years. The Darwin family actually were among its owners a couple generations before Charles. Precious little remains of the actual Priory. In our times, the owners got the idea of sprucing up the main house--now reception, offices, bar and restaurant, meeting rooms--and adding on a new building or two for sleeping rooms, the pool, and such. Several more buildings servicing the golf resort were added. At some point Marriott became part of the deal, and so you now have a 13th century Priory/hotel/and two full golf courses complex. Marriott touts it as its oldest property, and I would say it's the second most interesting Marriott property I have been in, after the Marriott Marquis in Atlanta. But that's another story. Breadsall Priory's landscaping is impressive, in any case, and it would fit comfortably into any of the great gardens we've seen these past few weeks.

Drive-up appeal

Over the door it says "Welcome to Breadsall Priory,
The Oldest Marriott Hotel in the World"

After checking and moving in, we went on an explore of the
immediate grounds

Full frontal view

Vicki attempting a hole-in-one

Rock garden

Closer-up of the house, the first version of which was in 1590

In the hotel block, up on the top floor, our room

Pet cemetery

Ha-ha

"Miss! Miss!" I was yelling, channeling Caddyshack 

In the main hall there were many historic photos
and a nine-panel history of the place; the other
eight available on request; nice historic touch

Victorian Breadsall Priory

Will of Francis Darwin, evidently one of Charles' antecedents, 

a past owner of Breadsall Priory

More Bodnant Garden, 2022

A few more of the 300+ pix we took at Bodnant, brutally edited...

Climbing roses, not quite out, but will be spectacular

Descending to the old mill

Lunch view

Among the 50 trees lost in recent storm Arwen...a redwood that
stood 50 meters tall, planted in 1887

Among the monuments, follies

We decided to exit through the Laburnum Arch

Unforgettable place

Bodnant Garden, 2022

We visited Bodnant in 2016, and pronounced it the best we'd seen. In 2022, I think we saw it in its prime, and again have to give it the superlative. All these gardens we are seeing are different and incommensurable, but Bodnant has the greatest variety, drama, color, peripheral features, and so on. And then there's the Laburnum Arch, one of the most stunning things one can see in the garden world. Our pix from 2016 are here. But I think our pictures this year even better represent the place. And we saw not much more than half the place before our legs and senses gave out.

The Laburnum Arch, 55 meters of glory

Generations old

Bodnant House, privately owned, not part of the tour (the National
Trust has many different kinds of deals with its benefactors)

Many varieties of trees, but a surprising number of
British magnolias

The conservatory adjoined to the house

Nearly everything in bloom

Ha-ha

Quite a few of these unusual bark trees around...
an acer griseum, from China

Ugly Tree, maxime deformis arbor

Under the Ugly Tree, betula pendula

Three huge beeches in a row