Welcome!
The original Entertablement site with tableware and recipes happily continues to grow. The travel portion of the site continued to grow as well—so much so that eventually, it needed its own home. So, here we are – Entertablement Abroad!
Longtime readers will know of The Cathedral Project—my quest to photograph all 42+ Anglican Cathedrals. Well, after ten years of travel, thousands of photographs and oodles of research, it’s done! All written up in a special section on the site featuring their fascinating stories, an historical timeline and an interactive map of their locations.
Along the way, we also visited castles, stately homes, abbeys, and monasteries—more to come on them. Meanwhile, our previous posts about other countries are still on the menu.
Enjoy!
The Cathedral Project
A visual, mapped and narrated tour through England’s most storied cathedrals, each with its own spectacular architecture and all with fascinating stories to tell.
CATHEDRAL STORIES
Visit our Cathedral blog, which takes you on a tour of 43 Cathedrals and the unique role each played in England’s history.
CATHEDRAL TIMELINE
Through the lens of a cathedral timeline, you will see how world-changing history unfolded over centuries
CATHEDRAL TAPESTRY
The tapestry of England’s Anglican Cathedrals comprises the warp—the political and historical backdrop that affected them all—and the woof, the unique story of each cathedral.
CATHEDRAL MAP
You have the what, when and why. The cathedral map provides the “where” in a convenient google map format.
Castles and Stately Homes
No tour of England would be complete without a look at the castles and stately homes for which England is so well known. Here a links to a few, with more coming in the months ahead.
The Family Trip to England and Scotland
The Big Family Trip has been long in the planning. Originally on the docket for 2020 (sigh), it was pushed out to 2022 so as not to overlap with the Clans and Castles train journey Glenn, and I had booked for 2021 to celebrate our respective significant birthdays (you...
England in the Autumn Part II
Following our time in England in the Autumn. Determining which train to take to Chichester was more complicated than I had envisioned. Staff shortages, line repairs, and similar disruptions ruled out the usual route from Victoria Station. Lauren and I eventually...
England in the Autumn
The long-awaited, oft-rescheduled trip to England was a heady mix of emotions: apprehension as to how difficult it might be to navigate changing requirements, elation at the freedom of travelling again, disappointment and frustration with the National Trust, amusement...
Sudeley Castle
Most of the grand manor houses we see in England have a history involving a lot of ups and downs. Sudeley Castle is the veritable Snakes & Ladders of the genre. The tale began innocuously enough with a commonplace event: William le Boteler of Wem married heiress...
Harewood House Part II
Good day, everyone, and welcome to Harewood House Part II. Sorry for the delay in providing the sequel to Harewood House Part I. Travel and the holiday season got the better of me in the intervening period, but I'm determined to tie off as many loose ends as I can...
Harewood House
"Where shall we go today?" was the question. Our three weeks in England were almost at an end and we – Glenn, that is – had done a lot of driving already, so I was hesitant to suggest Harewood House, almost two hours from our self-catering cottage in Derbyshire. He...
Unique Places to Stay
Burford & Chipping Campden
Let's do a little armchair travelling to the beautiful Cotswold villages of Burford and Chipping Campden. Like many people, we have postponed our overseas trips for now; I'll use the found time to catch up on photos of past trips and let the world gradually come to...
Hartwell House
“Daffodils, that come before the swallow dares, and take the winds of March with beauty” (Shakespeare, Winter’s Tale, act 4, sc. 4) Daffodils abound at Hartwell House, swirling in colourful drifts around the historic house-cum-hotel. Anyone who has ever planted...
Valentina’s Lost Orangery
We are finishing up our time in England and head home tomorrow. In my spare moments throughout the trip, I've been busily sorting and processing photos in an attempt to wrestle more than 2,000 of them into a workable number for future blogs. The good news is I've...
Leeds Castle, Kent
We've been settled in Kent for almost a week now, in a tiny cottage on the grounds of Leeds Castle. One of the benefits of staying on the property is the ability to wander the grounds after everyone has gone home, so we got these night shots a couple of evenings ago...
The Hunting Tower, Chatsworth
We are very comfortably situated at the Chatsworth Hunting Tower, and have had a marvellous few days visiting Haddon Hall, Hardwick Hall and the exhibit at Chatsworth itself, House Style, Five Centuries of Fashion. More to come on all of these adventures! The...
Cliveden
On our last night before we left for Sissinghurst, we went to Cliveden for dinner. An Italianate mansion set among 375 acres, it's most famous for being the home of Nancy Astor and her cronies (do women have cronies?) during the roaring 1920s and more subdued 1930s....
Chateaux of France
The Palace of Fontainebleau
We had been extremely lucky with the warm temperatures in April, but our weather- luck deserted us as we travelled the 34 miles from Paris to the Palace of Fontainebleau by train. It was, in a word, F*ing (Frigidly) Freezing. The day was sunny and bright, just...
The Loire Valley
The Loire Valley is utterly gorgeous in the spring - abundant lilacs, colourful bulbs and tumbling wisteria. I've done a quick recap of some of my favourite spots from our trip a couple of years ago. In putting together the collage, I noticed I chose three...
Chateau de Beynac & Chateau de Castlenaud
We had been awash in elegant chateaux in the Loire valley, and were interested to see that the ones in the Dordogne region were much more austere. Built in the middle ages, their purpose was defence, not entertainment and refined living. Chateau de Beynac...
Chateau de Chaumont
It was our last day in Amboise, and we had time to see one more Chateau. Anxious to see the "rest of the story" between Diane de Poitiers and Catherine de Medici I voted for Chateau de Chaumont. I was dying to see the "downsize" into which Diane de...
Chateau de Villandry
Another day, another Chateau... Chateau de Villandry is rightly famous for its magnificent gardens, very much in the French parterre style. I'm more of an English Country perennial garden gal, myself, but these were something to behold. We started by exploring the...
Chateau de Chambord
The next Chateau on our list was Chambord, probably the most photographed Chateau in the Loire Valley if not all of France. It is undoubtedly the largest and marvellous example of French Renaissance architecture, built by King Francis I (the self-same Francis who...