shewhomust | Multum in parvo

The next stage of our holiday involved driving from London to Yorkshire, and we decided, for no stronger reason than that it was on the way, and I had vague memories of a pleasant pub lunch there years ago, and there wasn't anywhere we'd rather go, to stop for lunch in Oakham. One of these days we must take time to visit Rutland Water properly - this huge expanse of water in England's tiniest county - but from the road you see only intermittent glimpses of water. We did see a sign to Edith Weston, though.

Oakham is all hidden treasure, good things concealed in the back streets. We drove into town on the main road and, having found the car park, decided to take the back way - past the thatched cottage with roses by the door, and past Toot Sweets, the old-fashioned sweet shop (well, no, not past - into, and in no hurry to come out again, either) - to one end of the main road, and then work along the street and select a pub for lunch. We had a very pleasant meal at the Admiral Hornblower (overheard from the next table: "No, I think Hornblower was a fictional character...") and then set out to return to the car round the other side of the High Street.

As before, there were plenty of small pleasures, the remants of a painted advertisement advertising "Smith's Hygienic Bakery above the Oxfam shop, not to mention the charity shops themselves, and we were nearly out of time when I turned down one more narrow sidestreet and found myself in the Market Place, with a magnificent market cross. Almost hidden behind it was one more lane, leading through an archway to the remains of Oakham Castle.

Oakham has a castle? Who knew? All that remains of it now is a gem of a twelfth century great hall, alone among the grassy hummocks that mark the traces of fortification. Inside, the walls are covered with horseshoes of all sizes and materials: there is, it seems, a tradition that any peer of the realm visiting Oakham for the first time must make payment of one horseshoe, and naturally the peers of the realm respond by trying to outdo each other in the size and magnificence of their horseshoes.

Perhaps it was this bizarre decor which scrambled my brain to the point that I misread a reference to the Rutland Fencible Cavalry as the "Fetland Runcible Cavalry", a phrase of which I now cannot rid myself.