The tourist department in Leicester decided to make a big weekend of it, before the royal relics were snatched away, as they will, no doubt, be. We were half-minded to go over there and take a wee peek. (Or is it "Have a wee keek"?) But, by coincidence, this was Hanna's birthday and she wanted to spend it near home.
Our thoughtful carers offered us the first night off in five years and we leapt at it. Originally we planned to go to the Norfolk coast, but that's at least 2 hours away and expensive, especially if you want to stay somewhere special, such as Cley Windmill or in a railway carriage in Burnham Market station. To cap it all, the weather forecast was dire. I was up for both or either of these options and a few other things too, but good sense, safety and frugality prevailed. We decided to go 30 minutes up the road to Stamford where the Bull and Swan offered a Sunday special; a decent double room with breakfast for £20 each, which saved me 160 quid at least!
Having saved a fortune on the accommodation, we decided to splash out on a good Sunday lunch; but where to go? The truth is, we don't get out to eat much and when we do, we often feel that we could have done better at home. Hanna did a web-search and discovered a lot of really good places within reach of home, but none in Stamford. She picked a small pub in Fotheringay that won the award as the best pub in Northamptonshire to eat in. It turned out to be a well-deserved award.Fotheringay is only 24 minutes by Sat-Nav from our house but in most respects it is a world away from Brampton. We live in a flat landscape designed and engineered by the Dutch to grow crops, but just across the Great North Road there is another world where the landscape evolved over centuries. Here you have hills, hedges, sunken lanes and stone villages. There are ancient churches and Medieval manor houses. The small fields were designed to hold sheep and cattle, not sugar beet and the landscape looks lived in, but not worn out.
Have you heard of Fotheringay? I bet you have. If you are a fan of Fairport Convention or of their lost vocalist Sandy Denny, you will remember the vinyl albums by that name. If you read historical novels you will remember that it was in Fotheringay Castle that Mary, Queen of Scots, was beheaded. What few people remember is that Fotheringay was previously the seat of the Plantagenet sons of York and it was where Richard the Third was born.
Sadly, all that remains of the great castle is a mound to the south of the River Nene. However, almost all the existing buildings in this stone village were standing when the castle was still active. Many of them provided accommodation for visitors to the castle or for the staff who worked there. The spectacular three-story church is all that remains of a much bigger religious establishment that included a college and other buildings, but Henry VIII's reformation only spared the nave and the choir. Most of the stones were eagerly dragged off to build a new bridge across the river, but I bet some of the most attractive ones, especially the carved ones, were added to a few neighbouring houses in the village and in nearby Oundle.So where is this all going? Well the small pub is called The Falcon, which happens to be the emblem of Richard III. If you visit the church, it is everywhere you look. The pub is built of local stone, and although it has been added to, there's no reason to think that the exterior has changed much in 600 years.
We had a splendid Sunday dinner there and then took a turn around the village and the church, which reminded me of why I love history.
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