Melton Mowbray

This morning, I woke up a bit early to travel to the town of Melton Mowbray.  This market town has had a market for nearly 1,000 years.  The city itself is very old, made of beautiful stone work with lots of pedestrian spaces for shopping through the market stalls.  While all of this was very interesting, the market had very little to do with my reason for visiting.

Jeff, a fellow-Fulbrigher, and his beautiful family live there and they had offered to host me for the day, showing me around the town.  Jeff's wife, Rebecca, made a delicious eggs benedict for breakfast (hence why I woke up early), then we were off to see the market.  There were auctions going on all over the market.  Apparently on many weekends there are sheep, cows, and pigs brought in to sell, but this weekend was not one of those.  There were, however, rows and rows of chickens, ducks, swans, turkeys and even a few peacocks.  Most fowl seemed to be sold in pairs, seemingly more for pets rather than meat.  I saw several of my favorite kinds of ducks: the crested ducks that appear to wear small hats of feathers and the runners who stand upright.  I had never seen so many different types of chickens!  There were small chickens, chickens the size of geese, chickens with colorful faces, multi-colored feathers, feathery feet and even silly hats of feathers.  This farm girl enjoyed the fowl auctions a bit too much perhaps.

We wandered through the street venders selling candy, cheese, vegetables, freshly baked breads, clothing, books, just about anything one could imagine.  St. Mary's is a beautiful old church that sits at the heart of the town and so we wandered in there.  There has been a church on this site, it is believed, since around 700.  Yes, 700.  The church that you see today went through several renovations and additions, but parts of the church date back to the 1100s, most of it being completed by the fifteenth century.  I never ceased to be amazed at the age of things in this country as for Americans, "old" has a very different definition.

The church is truly beautiful and while not nearly as large as a cathedral, it has several features that are much more similar to a cathedral rather than a typical village church.  Jeff recognized a man in the church whom he had seen ring the bells in a neighboring church several weeks back.  Jeff got to go up into another church tower and watch as the group of talented volunteers played the bells for all to hear.  William, this very kind bell ringer, offered to take us up into the tower of this church, a very rare treat!

The first level we stopped at held the ropes attached to the bells: this is where the bell ringers play the bells.  Ringing the bells is a true art form, and unfortunately, one that is going out of style.  Hopefully they will continue to find people in younger generations with a passion for learning how to play the bells.  We went up a few more stairs to see the mechanisms for keeping time on the clock and the machine that makes the bells play a couple of tunes each week.  Then we began the more treacherous part of the journey: climbing the incredibly narrow, worn stone steps to the top of the tower.  The stones were so worn in fact (remember they are somewhere between 600-900 years old) that they were quite tricky, but you know how I love to climb a tower, so of course I didn't complain!  We went right out onto the top of the tower, overlooking the town of Melton Mowbray.  As the tower was not all too frequently visited, there were no guard rails or fencing to keep us in which made for great views and cautious footsteps.  The large iron monument on the top of the tower that held the weather vane and occasional flag is only from 1778 (yes, I said only and it is just two years younger than our country), but the graffiti on it was really fascinating.  People had carved their shoe prints onto it, putting their name and date on it.  The early "graffiti" was actually quite beautiful, as it was carved very carefully in beautiful handwriting (handwriting is obviously not the right word, but neither is print or font, so I am not sure what belongs).

View of the market from atop the tower.

Jeff, Annika and Rebecca from atop the tower

One of the carved out shoe bits of graffiti on the tower.  I'm thinking their feet were smaller as most were my size or even smaller and I have small feet!

Anne of Cleves Pub

After a climb to the tower, we stopped at a local pub for a snack and some local cider.  We were unable to find a seat in this pub, the Anne of Cleves, but it was still worth a look in!  Apparently this pub was part of the divorce settlement of Anne and Henry the VIII.  There is no proof that she actually visited here, but still, pretty cool!

Since Jeff is also here on a Fulbright Teacher Exchange, I was eager to see his school.  He's teaching in a very small village school where there are only a handful of classrooms.  The village where he teaches is a few miles away, so we went on a driving tour and discovered several small picturesque villages.  Melton Mowbray is quite a large town, but all of the surrounding villages are quite quant.

Jeff and his family at his school.

We made another stop at a very famous apple tree.  Any ideas about this apple tree and why a tree would be so famous?

Sir Isaac Newton grew up on this farm with his mother and stepfather.  His mother wanted him to be a farmer and carry on the traditions, but his uncle saw his capabilities and encouraged him to continue his studies.  Newton sounded like an incredibly curious person who sought to make sense of things he wondered about - what an incredible gift!  It was watching the apples fall to the ground under this tree, noticing how they always fell straight to the ground that helped Newton to discover gravity.  Newton made countless contributions in the fields of math and science that continue to ring true over three hundred years later.  He also was a member of parliament and in charge of the Royal Mint, just to name a few of his contributions.

I stayed for a meal and a long visit with the Sturges family, enjoying Annika's guacamole and some enchiladas.  I had a great day in Melton Mowbray and certainly enjoyed seeing some beautiful, historical sites, but I think what I enjoyed most was just spending time with a family.  It is not often that I've had that opportunity here, and just being with a typical family, enjoying meals and a day out with them was a wonderful gift.  It was a great way to round out my holiday.