Jess and Rach's Book-hauling trip of Awesome - Day 1!!

Right ok I know I said I would post *aaages* ago since I've been back from Barbados for over a week but it's only now that I'm able to get back to a normalish posting schedule. But I have an excellent reason for my absence - on Monday and Tuesday, my best friend Jess (From JessHeartsBooks) and I went on a little roadtrip with one purpose - buying books. Being the book addicts that we are, the mere idea of running about the country raiding whatever bookshops we can find is immensely exciting, actually getting to do it though was fantastic.

On Monday I had to get up rather early to drive and pick Jess up (we live about an hour apart) so we could both head up to a lovely little town in Derbyshire called Bakewell. We have a friend called Ellie who lives there and also runs her own second-hand bookstore (jealous? Heck knows we were :P) so we were determined to go visit her and find some books of course ;-). The one downside to the day was that it absolutely chucked it down all freaking day and since I was wearing bloody sandals I got rather wet feet *sigh*. We also went to visit Chatsworth House while we were in the area (you know in the new P&P movie when Elizabeth is in the statue room at Pemberley? That's Chatsworth and some of those statues are actually there). It was a gorgeous mansion and I wanted to take a load of photos but I was daft and didn't charge up my camera before we went so I had to be sparing with the battery and couldn't take many photos. I'll show you the good ones from the visit.

When we got back to my house we recorded a couple of vlogs for you lovely people, one explaining what the hell we were up to and the other showing off the books we bought over the day. God I apologise for the insanity of these videos - we should *not* get in front of a camera when we're together cos there will be mayhem!

This is (L-R); Jess, me and Ellie in her lovely bookshop. We spent nearly an hour talking to her and it was a terrible shame that we couldn't stay all day. Hopefully we're going to go back again later this summer for a lengthier visit when Ellie's not working. Also check out Ellie's blog Musings of Bookshop Girl where she does reviews and hilarious stories about some of her weird and wonderful customers.

This is the rack of gorgeous bookmarks in Ellie's shop which Jess gleefully raided with abandon. If she could have bought one of each she would have done it in a second.

The amazing Chatsworth House from part-way across the grounds. I actually stopped the car on the road through the estate to take this because the view driving up to the house was so fantastic.

Just for Jess- NEKKID BABY CHERUBS!!! hehe We're *soo* mature.

Of Course I had to get a picture of the library in Chatsworth although this is only a little bit of it, soo many books!




So there you have our first day of bookish mayhem, I'm sorry that this post is so unbelievably long but if you've stuck with it then well done you! Please do continue on with the second day's post (when it's up tomorrow) and once I've got that finished I'll do a final summary post actually listing properly the books we bought and I'll throw in some pictures of them all laid out on the floor.


I'm hoping also to do a Booking through Thursday Post tomorrow and I will be working on a review for Dreamland by Sarah Dessen because it had quite an impact on me and I really want to say thank you to Jess for lending me her copy to read (thankfully I now have my own) *massive hugs* for you my dear.


Right to sleep with me, I'm shattered and I'm having a massive lie-in tomorrow :D
LadyV