Two Days, Four Stately Homes and One Very Confused Voluntary Steward: My Mona Lisa Coach Trip Diaries

There comes a moment in every Moan-a Lisa writer's life when they must ask themselves a simple question: what would happen if you turned up at Chatsworth House dressed as the Mona Lisa, carrying a gilded picture frame, on a heritage coach tour full of pensioners called Margaret?

I am pleased — and mildly horrified — to report that I now know the answer.

Friday, 6:40am: The Coach Waits for No Renaissance Master

The trip was billed as Grand Houses & Glorious Gardens: A Weekend of British Heritage, departing from a retail park just off the M1. Our driver, a magnificent man named Trev, greeted each passenger with a boiled sweet and a handshake. He greeted me with a boiled sweet, a handshake, and a long pause.

"Going somewhere nice?" he asked, eyeing my velvet cloak.

"Everywhere, Trev," I said. "I'm going everywhere."

The coach had that particular aroma of upholstery and Werther's Originals that no amount of air freshener can shift. I took my seat at the back, propped my empty picture frame on the luggage rack like a hand-luggage-sized ego, and settled in for two days of architectural grandeur and gentle social ruin.

Saturday, 10:15am: The Hall, the Portraits, and the Problem of Family Resemblance

Our first stop was a stately home so grand it has its own postcode and its own grudge against the Inheritance Tax. The entrance hall alone could house a small village, or at the very least a very ambitious Wetherspoons.

And this is where things got interesting. Because the walls of these places are absolutely covered in oil portraits — dark backgrounds, folded hands, that exact expression of someone who has just eaten a bad oyster but refuses to let it show. In other words: my people.

I took up position beside a particularly gloomy 17th-century nobleman and adopted the stance. Chin down. Eyes up. Mouth doing absolutely nothing and everything at once.

Within four minutes, a couple from Hull were photographing me. Within ten, I had a small queue. Within twenty, a gentleman named Brian had asked whether I "did weddings", and when I said I'd been to one, once, he wrote down the name of this very website on the back of his map of the gardens.

Brian, if you're reading this: you're the reason we do what we do.

Saturday, 1:30pm: The Volunteer Situation

Every heritage site in Britain is kept standing by volunteers, and every volunteer has a laminated badge and a line they've rehearsed since the Blair years. Our guide was Carol, a woman of tremendous knowledge and zero tolerance for what she later called "fancy dress nonsense".

"You can't stand there," she said, when I posed beside the dining room table. "That's an authentic period setting."

"Carol," I whispered, "I am an authentic period setting. I'm 500 years old and I've never once been photographed laughing."

Carol was not moved. Carol reported me to a man with a walkie-talkie. The man with the walkie-talkie, upon arriving, took one look at me, sighed the sigh of a man who has seen everything, and said: "Is this the painting thing? Because we had someone do a Van Gogh last month and it was a nightmare."

It was at this moment I understood something profound about British heritage sites: behind every "please do not touch" sign, there is an institution quietly, desperately hoping someone will make the place go viral. They just need it to happen in a way they can deny all responsibility for.

I was escorted to the gift shop, which is where they escort all troublemakers and all geniuses, and where I spent £14.50 on a fridge magnet and a fudge assortment.

Sunday, 11am: The Gardens, the Pensioners, and the Photo Economy

Day two was all gardens, and gardens change everything. Out in the open air, away from Carol, I was free. And the retirees of the heritage coach circuit are, it turns out, the most enthusiastic photoshoot participants in Britain.

Seventeen photo requests. Seventeen! I posed by the topiary. I posed by the fountain. I posed with a coach party from Rotherham who insisted on doing the pose back at me — eleven pensioners, hands folded, eyebrows aloft, smirks switched to maximum. It was the single most beautiful thing I have witnessed on British soil, and I once saw a seagull steal a whole pasty from a magistrate.

One woman, Doreen, told me I'd "cheered up her hip replacement". I have since had that engraved on a plaque.

The Verdict: Heritage Britain Is Secretly Starved of a Bit of Mischief

Here's the thing I learned, somewhere between the second lot of fudge and Trev's farewell boiled sweet: our stately homes are magnificent, yes, but they're also a bit lonely. Rooms full of dead relatives nobody talks about. Corridors of faces daring you to be interesting.

They don't want quiet reverence. They want someone to turn up in a velvet cloak and give the ancestors something to look at.

So, National Trust: I'll be back. Carol — start the walkie-talkie.