We went away for a few days. My dear other half suggested Ironbridge, but as it was a bank holiday, I really didn’t fancy anywhere too touristy, because, well, people.

So we ended up on the M69 and travelling towards Leicester, more specifically Enderby. Enderby has, in places a village feel, with a conservation area containing several old thatched buildings- we ended up staying opposite a thatched pub.

I really didn’t know much about Leicester beyond glimpses of the coach station and the colour of the very multicultural Narborough Road glimpsed from a National Express coach in the late 1980s, a sight relived by catching a bus into the city (an electric bus, none the less, which seemed very well suited to the stop-start of Narborough Road).

A more attractive city centre than I’d expected. The Lanes, near the (surprisingly small) cathedral in particular. Some nice parkland, a large choice of places to eat and drink.

We also got out to Foxton, Melton Mowbray (Mmmmm, pie!), and Market Harborough – a place we’d last visited before the existence of this blog, when we’d walked from the Sun Inn (now a private house) at Marston Trussell to Foxton locks, on to Market Harborough, back when we were younger and fitter.

The journey back was quite different: trusting the sat-nav saw us on back roads to Tamworth, and then the A5: it’s quite remarkably rural quite quickly. It’s also shorter…

There were a few pubs.