Day 1 Oakham and Uppingham (Sept 16)

We instantly fell in love with this beautiful market town of Oakham.  When you picture a traditional English village, you picture something that looks like Oakham. The buildings are brick, many with thatched roofs, and give you a sense of stepping back in time. The town is filled with history, cafes, pubs, a castle, a church and even stocks.
We spent a lot of time wandering around, just taking in the sights. Many people take advantage of the great growing climate and flowers and plants abound.

We spotted our first thatched roof.

It was a Sunday and so the town wasn't terrible busy, but that also meant that many of the shops were closed. After we wandered around for a while, we decided to take a drive in search of a bakery that I had seen online (we would come back to Oakham the next day to explore). For some reason, our GPS was having issues with the address and we didn't find the bakery (but don't worry, we eventually found it) but we did end up finding the smaller village of Uppingham.

street in Uppingham

Uppingham town hall

Uppingham is about 6 miles from Oakham. It's much smaller than Oakham but every bit as charming. It's been a functioning market town since the 14th century. It has traditional country inns, pubs, rooms, a beautiful old church and a market square.


As in Oakham, since it was a Sunday, there wasn't much open in town. It was a little rainy outside, so we decided to stop for a cup of coffee at Don Paddy's cafe. Eric ordered an Americano and I got a hot chocolate. What a beautiful cup of hot chocolate! As we sat with our drinks, Eric pursued the menu and ended up ordering a chorizo hash brown breakfast that was fabulous. 

Irish cafe in English village

yum!

My favorite thing about sitting in Don Paddy's was hearing everyone around me speaking with a British accent. I think that for the first time it really sunk in that I was in England!

As we were exploring in the village, we came across the beautiful St. Peter and St. Paul's church. We would soon discover that every town/village we were in had its own parish church. Most are still in use today. Surrounding every parish church is also a parish cemetery. It was interesting seeing headstones from the 1700's. We assumed that many are older than that but they are too worn out to read.

                          

                                              St Peter and St. Paul's church in Uppingham

church cemetery 

After exploring Uppingham, we headed back to Oakham for some grocery shopping. We parked a ways away from the market so we did some more sight-seeing around the town. I was getting a bit hungry by then so we looked for a place to grab a quick bite to eat. What we found out is that on Sunday, the Brits are all about the "Sunday Dinner". Every place we checked had a set "Sunday Dinner" menu and usually a long wait. We ended up sitting in one place, The Admiral Hornblower" for a while in the bar area hoping for a finger food menu, to no avail, but Eric did get to have his first English pint. Most English beer is served at around 55' degrees and is very low alcohol content as compared to Oregon's craft beers. He enjoyed it nonetheless.

A pint at the Admiral Hornblower

We took the opportunity while back in Oakham to explore Oakham Castle. This castle was built around 1180 and is one of the finest surviving examples of Norman domestic architecture in Europe. I loved seeing the Great Hall of the castle and could just imagine all of the activities that would have gone on there in its heyday. 

Parish church next to Oakham Castle

exterior of Oakham Castle

The Great Hall of this castle is famed for its collection of over 230 ornate ceremonial horseshoes donated by Peers of the Realm (Royalty and nobility such as Dukes, Marquis', Earls, Viscounts, Barons and Bishops). The oldest surviving horseshoe was given by Edward IV in 1470.

wall of horseshoes

 Just outside the castle is the town buttercross, a type of market cross associated with English market towns and dating all the way back to medieval times. This is the place where the town's people would gather to buy locally produced butter, milk and eggs. It's also the location of the town stocks. We were quite curious as to why there five holes in the stocks??                       


We finished up our afternoon at the local market, called Tesco. It was a very nice grocery store and it was very fun exploring and seeing so many different foods and brands that we don't have in the US. We picked up some items for dinner and headed back to the room for an early bedtime. 

UK grocery store