I’m sitting in our hotel room looking out of the window at rolling meadows and hedgerows, copses and cattle, with morning mist clearing to yet another blue sky and soaring temperatures. In the near distance is Chatsworth House – the jewel in the crown of English stately homes, set betwixt meandering river and dramatic moorland, its deer-packed estate encapsulating villages and land as far as the eye can see.

I am back in the stamping ground of my youth, and dragging Peter through my memories and nostalgia. Its easy to do, for little has changed in this part of the Derbyshire Peak District, although after fifty-five years, finding my way round takes some thinking about. My local hostelry, once called the Eyre Arms has added ‘Old’ to its name, but the interior is exactly as I remember it. So, too, the Cavendish Hotel with its vintage furnishings and elaborately-finished decor where we’re getting some R&R in between visits to historic houses and the Bakewell Pudding Shop. Stop! All those of you who make or buy so-called Bakewell Tarts, for they bear no resemblance to the real thing that’s still made in Bakewell to the original recipe that went so wrong in the first baking that from that moment on, they have been made to that delicious, original secret wrong recipe ever since!

Red Bear has, as always, been making the most of  his travels – and dismissing as irrelevant our travails –  and has been indulging himself in all manner of adventures. He spent two nights with us at Cathedral Lodge, in the precincts of Canterbury Cathedral, and we took him with us to Evensong and, later, on a tour of the Cathedral. There’s a photo of him with Edward Plantagenet – Red Bear meets the Black Prince! From there we went to Broadstairs on the Kent coast where we used to live. It didn’t take us long to realise that the number of cars on the roads in England has grown exponentially with this overcrowded island. So much so that we go from one frustrating traffic jam to the next in a very short space of time. One wonders, then, why there are such huge and never-ending expanses of farm land and countryside that seem to stretch from one horizon to another.

Thus it was last Sunday when, as promised, we took the grandchildren to Duxford Air Show, a mere fifty-odd miles from home. At one point in time, as we sat, stationary, for what seemed like hours that Harry piped up from the backseat that he was bored and wanted to go home!  Of course, a banana and one hour later, we arrived, hot and bothered but eager to catch the magnificent men in their flying machines doing their best in WW2 bombing raids with a squadron of Spitfires zooming around in fake dogfights, and achieving what everyone expected after Brexit – Peak Blighty! And clear blue skies meant that the famous Red Arrows were able to perform their entire repertoire ending in a huge sky-filled heart and cupid’s arrow…

Even the weather is what I remembered from those languid halcyon days of my childhood – hot humid summers with buzzing bees on country walks through wildflower fields, and picnics beside the river with luscious strawberries and clotted cream. If that’s what we all voted for, then let Article Fifty be invoked!!

Funny how you look forward so much to the journey and then find, halfway through it all, you’re already planning the next trip. We’ve only another five days before we fly out to Vegas, and another week after that before we board our ‘transport ship’ home. Six weeks later we arrive back in Noosa, and already we’re planning next year’s visit – and the year after – checking out homes to swap. One in Sevenoaks, where we stayed last year – we had lunch with the couple with whom we swapped; and another, next week, in Betchworth, which would be really good because it’s close to friends, close to London, handy for the West Country, and not a million miles away from our family.

But it will be with a tear in our eye that we have to bid farewell to our family and grandsons next week. Of course, they are a year older than last year, and will hopefully retain memories we so want to feature in, and even though our visit has been short, it has been sweet.  Peter looks for a reason to come back in a year’s time, but then says, ‘This is definitely my last trip.’ While I say, I must – for as long as I can do the journey. Because, as we all know, you can take the girl out of England, but you can’t take England out of the girl!