Tugby

Well here we are in Las Vegas Tugby for our holiday away from home. Tugby is  a small village in Leicestershire some twelve miles east of the city of Leicester. See the middle house in the picture. That is where we are staying. It is called Chestnut Cottage and it is nice, clean, well-maintained  and spacious. Behind our rental home is the Norman tower of St Thomas a Becket Church. The cottage on the left was once the village smithy where the blacksmith worked on farm implements, horseshoes, hinges and general wrought ironwork.

Across the road from us is the village's little primary school that serves  nearby villages as well as Tugby. Just down the street is "The Fox and Hounds" pub where we have reserved a table for Sunday lunch. The pub is only open from Wednesday to Sunday but at least this village still has a pub - unlike so many other English villages in which hundreds of pub landlords and landladies gave up the ghost long ago.

Frances, Stewart and Phoebe arrived a few hours before us because Nurse Shirley was working till six yesterday. We arrived here bang on eight o'clock last night to be greeted by the aromas of a lovely Moroccan meal  that Frances and Stew had prepared for us. Little Phoebe was refusing to settle down to sleep and there were tiny baby tears on her cheeks so we brought her down to watch us eat.

I am looking forward to walking some paths I have never walked before and visiting towns I do not know like Uppingham, Market Harborough, Oakham and somewhere I have been before - Melton Mowbray which is famous for its pork pies. Oh we will be grand here in Tugby. Unlike Las Vegas, there are no casinos or neon lights but there is a path that leads over the fields to Rolleston and I shall go there.