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So where does this fine winter day in the new year of 2006 find me? 
My Home Away From Home in Knutsford. Ok, so it's the only home I've got.
Well, I'm now resident in a tiny, sleepy little English town called Knutsford. Not the most reconizable of cities and definitely not on the tourist trail, but this little place is kinda hidden gem way off the tourist path.
I had some misgivings when my company told me that they were sending me to someplace called Knutsford, especially since the last time I was working in the greater Manchester area was last year exactly this time and I ended up in the Industrial area of Oldham which is famous for nothing more than the race riots between Pakistani and British National party (read Nazi) members. Thankfully this place is nothing like Oldham, and is actually a kind of agricultural area turned bedroom community for the rich and famous of Manchester.
The Mansion. This place is huge and hard to believe one family actually lived there. The place is amazing and the grounds are huge.
From my digging and visit today to the Historical Center of Knutsford, I've found out that the unfortunate name of this tiny town is actually taken from a Danish king called "Canutsford" who forded the river Lily in 1016 to help establish the town. Their other famous temporary resident is the American General "Blood and Guts" Patton who was here in 1943 with his men to prepare for the invasion of France in World War II. Strangely enough, just by chance I was wandering the town yesterday and came across the old American Recreation Center where the American soldiers relaxed with the local women before the hell of the mainland Europe invasion.
The famous General Patton spent time in little Knutsford. Actually, from wandering in Tatton Park I found out that Patton and the British practiced parachuting in the middle of the big fields to prepare for the invasion of France where they had to parachute in.
Cows with free reign of Tatton Park. The deer were more impressive, but the batteries in my camera ran out on Sunday right before I saw them
This is a really tiny town of about 25,000 and has a ton of history. The town center itself is really nothing more than two streets (King Street and Queen Street), with an old 1200 year or so church. But you can tell that it's really, really posh. I wasn't sure why at first, but quickly figured it out when I was told to go check out Tatton Park which is right off the main street. 
Beautiful wide open spaces. But jets passing over every two minutes. Tatton Park is right in the flight path of Manchester airport. And they wake me up at night too in my hotel.
This is a huge, huge park with Tatton Mere (big lake and swamps) and the best preserved Victorian Mansion and estate in Britain with a massive Victorian garden. I spent the day yesterday hiking Tatton Park and checking out the Garden along with all the stressed out Manchester workers who have come back home to the countryside and spend their days letting off steam in the park.
Free land in Britain to hike is tough to find and here there is a ton of it. It's an amazing park with huge herds of deer roaming free around the park, people fishing in the Meer and tons of people riding horseback. A pretty nice place to live I'd say, and since my hotel is about a minute walk from the park entrance I'll be taking full advantage of it.
Fishing in the Meer. It looks like a Northern Ontario trout lake, but in reality is only a small depression in the field that filled with water.
So yesterday I hiked the park and checked out the gardens (mostly the Japanese gardesn since they were rated as the best Japanese gardens outside of Japan).
The Gardens of the Mansion. The Posh Astrocats own private lake.
Today I woke up early and had my usual Full English (free) at the hotel and then took a run for an hour out in the park to burn off those sausages and blood pudding. I actually got a new addition to my Full English today, fried toast. Never had that one before, and it raised the greasy goodness of a Full English breakfast up another notch. Toast soaked and fried in butter. Yumm. It was so good that I knew it was shortening my life about a year every bite so I had to leave half of it on the plate.
The Japanese Gardens. I went tramping through the japanese gardens looking for the perfect picture before the park warden saw me and less than politely asked me to get back over the line.
So the hotel is quaint Victorian and very nice, the work is boring but easy (until the Q1 2006 work kicks off and I'll be missing these boring work days), I've got nature at my doorstep, and life is good. Until next time.
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1 comments:
Hay, i've been scanning though your sight. It's interesting....kinda sorta
but thoes are great photographs! You could almost frame some of them! Anyways, take a look at my sight,
www.goldenspear.blogspot.com
and what do you do again? Your profile wasn't clear enough.
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