Monday was a busy day at our Peak District cottages.  One cottage out with five back in.  One cleaner up as some of the cottages were already cleaned.  The day was fine with a few light showers.  Four of the cottages arrived between 3 and 4pm.  One was a German family so that  completes my European complement for the time being!  The final cottage had to delay their arrival due to ill health. In the evening Chris went to the Bakewell Photographic Society and I kept the dogs company.  On Tuesday I was up early to take dogs for a walk before Chris took me with Joanna and Lynne down to Bakewell.  Here we caught a coach to Derby organised by one of the other local WI’s for the Derbyshire WI Autumn Council Meeting. On the coach I had the chance to chat with a lady from another WI which is always interesting.  I’ve not been to one of the Derby meetings so it was a new experience.  The large hall at the Assembly Rooms can hold over 1000 people and there were hardly any empty seats.  In the morning after a rendition of Jerusalem there was the business part, eg accounts before the mornings speaker.  This was Jan Meek, a lady that lives up to the WI motto of Women Inspiring Women.  This lady has rowed the Atlantic, trekked to the Magnetic North Pole and Geographic North Pole.  She gave a very enthralling account of all her expeditions.  Time for lunch and we headed from the Assembly rooms and walked round to the Westfield Shopping Centre where we found a cafe for a light snack.  Back to the venue where I caught a glimpse of our afternoon speaker signing books.  He was one of the reasons I had wanted to come to this event.  After various prizes were handed out Adam Henson gave us his talk.  He told us about his early life and how he got into farming, he talked about his farm and the Rare Breeds Park set up by his father and how he got onto Countryfile.  There were a number of farming based questions from the audience and his views on current and future farming practises were very interesting.  After the conclusion of business and singing the National Anthem we caught the coach back to Bakewell where Chris picked us up just after 5pm.  By now it was raining and with us both not being here during the day there were quite a few emails and phone calls to respond to so it was gone 9pm before I sat down.