R E C E N T L Y Lions and tigers are p.c., oh my! By Sally Eckhoff Disney goes p.c. at its new theme park (07/28/98) Sex, drugs and Armenian vodka By Drew Fellman What goes on behind closed doors in Iran (07/27/98) Mondo Weirdo No place like Oz In Japan, a bar with no alcohol or music, only coffee (07/24/98) Mondo Weirdo Nude beaches of the week Favorite places to bare all (07/24/98) Safety strategies By Dawn MacKeen Savvy safety tips for business travelers (07/23/98) Browse the Wanderlust Feature archives		ENGLAND'S DECADENT DELIGHTS | PAGE 1, 2 - - - - - - - - - - Malcolm is the big, toothy, tweedy, constantly laughing man who oversees outdoor activities at Stapleford. No sooner had I arrived than he piled me, a couple of fellow pilgrims and several shotguns into his Land Rover and drove us off across the wide-wale corduroy meadow in search of the elusive clay pigeon. We stopped a few hundred yards from the house and climbed out of the Rover. Two boys were huddled behind a nearby mound ready to operate the catapult. They looked anxious -- as well they should have. Perhaps they could tell that I'd never fired a shotgun before and was eager to get my hands on the thing as a means of releasing the day's tensions. Malcolm gave us a brief lecture on gun safety as a pregnant gray thunderhead approached from the south. Then he handed me the shotgun. I raised it to my shoulder. Malcolm watched nervously. The boys ducked out of sight. The sheep stopped chewing and cocked their heads. All was silent. My fellow travelers adjusted their ear protection. The thunderhead moved in and dumped its water on us. I gave a sideways nod to Malcolm. He yelled "Pull!" And a black flying saucer no bigger than a crumpet went sailing toward the horizon. I jerked the gun, squeezed the trigger and the intact saucer fell to earth with a dull wet splat. The sheep moved quickly toward the lake and the swan on the bank fell over dead. It went like that for the next half hour or so as I briskly made my way through several hundred dollars worth of ammunition and the dour, Hindenberg-sized cloud gave us a proper English soaking. "It's true," I conceded to Malcolm as we walked back to the Rover, "that I used a great deal of ammunition while refining my aim. I'm not proud of it. But the weather conditions were not the best, and think of how much money was saved by sparing all those clay pigeons." Malcolm glanced mournfully at the boys, who were running hither and thither gathering the pucks I'd failed to blast back to the Stone Age. "I always say," he remarked, "that you can't educate pork." I snorted and took it as a compliment. Along with rapeseed and cheese, grand houses, castles and abbeys are the prime cash crops in Leicestershire. Within an hour of Stapleford there are more than a dozen, most of which are open to the public. In addition to Althorp, the Spencer family's estate and the final resting place of Princess Diana, there's 900-year-old Rockingham Castle; Burghley House, a hysterically ornate Elizabethan hallucination of a place with a deer park capably landscaped by the famed Capability Brown; Belton House, with its orangery and Italian-style sunken gardens; the medieval Grimsthorpe Castle; Hardwick Hall; Calke Abbey ("crammed with all manner of curious collections," I'm told); Kedleston Hall; Fawlty Towers; Sudbury Hall; Newstead Abbey (once home of Lord Byron); Harlaxton Manor, the first Duke of Devonshire's Chatsworth estate; and Deene Park, ancestral home of those sweater-wearing maniacs, the Earls of Cardigan. Granted, many people are bored delirious by being marched through such places, forced to look at moldy tapestries, dusky portraits of long-departed dukes, suits of armor, moth-eaten boar heads, kitchen walls hung with turtle skulls, a glove that Queen Victoria left behind, a chair in which Disraeli once sat, rusty muskets, ancient billiard tables and hideously painted ceilings. But some are never happier than when they're creaking around spooky 800-year-old hallways. For those of us who spent much of our childhood staring hypnotically out the windows of cars and classrooms while imagining ourselves anywhere but in the drear present, going to these places is like coming home. They are high-test fuel for the imagination -- magnificent stages, as they were for centuries of human drama both political and personal. For the career daydreamer, there are few things more pleasant than wondering who did what to whom 600 years ago in the very room where you're standing. The place the locals call "Beaver" Castle (though it's spelled B-e-l-v-o-i-r), situated atop a hill about 25 minutes from Stapleford, fired my hope of lurid revelations. Unfortunately, all they could come up with was a snippet of 16th century Chinese silk said to have been taken from the nightgown worn by Mary Queen of Scots the evening before she was beheaded. "But those embroidered, uh, paddles," I said, breathing heavily, "on the stands next to the fireplace. What were those used for?" "Why, those are just 'pull screens,'" the elderly guide answered irritably. "They were used to protect ladies' faces from the direct heat of the fire. Back in those days they covered their faces with wax as a base for their makeup, to give a smooth surface. But if they didn't place the screen between themselves and the fire, why, their faces would melt right off. Terrible mess on the carpets, I should think." "Yes, terrible," I agreed. Later, in the picture gallery, standing next to a magnificent life-size portrait of Henry VIII by Hans Holbein, I finally had to query our guide on the castle's name. "How do you get the pronunciation 'Beaver' from Belvoir?" The old gentleman paused and looked at me as if I'd just asked the most absurd of questions. "We're British," he said abruptly, and took us into the King's Rooms for a close look at the hand-painted 19th century wallpaper. Back at Stapleford there was just time for a short horseback ride before descending into the evening's menu of indulgences. I was given a large, dark gelding and loaned a pair of black boots, and off we went through the woodland and past the Naughty Earl's folly, which now resembles a tumbledown chimney wrapped in vines. I had horses when I was a kid, so riding usually returns me to those days of contentment and abandon -- ambling aimlessly through the wilds of child dreamland atop a cordial beast. When we emerged from the woods, we looked across the verdant sheep meadow to the great house lit up yellow by late afternoon sunshine spilling through the clouds. The light, the air, the eager energy of the horses demanded that we gallop over the expanse of grass and mud that lay before us. And backwards in time I went -- almost. The rain had left the ground soggy and the horses' hooves sunk in a good six inches or more with each impact. I watched my animal's pounding feet, felt the bracing English air against me, the great body beneath me, his mane whipping my face, his tree trunk neck rocking back and forth in front of me, but I was not transported to childhood. Instead I was returned to my anxiety-ridden, adult media-besotted memory. And as I listened to the slog and clump of the racing horses and watched the horizon bounce up and down, two words came to mind: Christopher Reeve. And I immediately slowed my warm beast to a walk. Such is the curse of adulthood, isn't it -- graphically imagining everything that might go wrong, so fast come undone, never able to be-here-now like the gurus say we're supposed to? I walked back to the house from the stable through the gardens, past Mariah Carey, who was nibbling a fruit salad at a table on the patio, and into the back hallway where I got stuck reading the old certificates displayed on the walls. One of Stapleford's previous owners was a collector of turn-of-the-century memorabilia from men's societies, and several of the best examples still hang in the house. The "Registration Certificate of the Worshipful Company of Farriers" was fine indeed, and another for the "Ancient Order of Foresters Friendly Society" was also a hit, as was the certificate for the "Otters United Ancient Order of Druids." But really the best, I thought -- the winner hands down -- was the superb specimen from "The Royal Antediluvian Order of Buffaloes" (antediluvian, mind you!), which read, "This is to certify that Brother William Jacques has been duly initiated into the mysteries of Buffaloism with all the ancient rites and ceremonies." We should all be so lucky, no? As I turned to go to my room, Mariah Carey walked into the hall, assiduously avoiding eye contact with me (a skill the famous must perfect if they're to have any hope of making it through the corridors of a crowded, fawning world). She was followed by one of my shooting companions. He looked at my injured shoulder. I guess I was absentmindedly rubbing it. "Shoulder bothering you?" he asked. "A little sore," I said, wondering if he'd heard any antediluvian buffalo howls emanating from my room the night before. "Yeah," he said. "Mine too. Those shotguns have a bit of a kick. They'll bruise you up good and red if you don't hold 'em firm." At which point Mariah Carey looked back at us with a very peculiar glance, then headed into the bar. "Shall we kick off the evening with a glass of Cardhu?" my companion asked, nodding toward the door through which Ms. Carey had just disappeared. And we did. In fact, we had several, and the mass of lacy crimson stripes on my shoulder was all gone by morning. SALON | July 29, 1998 Douglas Cruickshank has written for Salon Wanderlust about the Yucatan and London.