Market Harborough

After a very late night yesterday; and an even later blog post; much of today was spent purchasing and carrying essential food supplies back to Waiouru.  There has also been time to reflect upon events from yesterday.  We think generally the day with our visitors went well.  The two meals (lunch and dinner) were very good.  Jan and I both enjoyed the fish pie at the Foxton Inn and the meal in Market Harborough last night at the Three Swans was excellent.  The customer service at both locations was also good.

I made an enquiry about the cost of casual moorings in the basin and was informed it cost £10 per day, which included electricity.  We are currently on the 48 hour moorings just outside the basin and have decided not to go into the basin and pay for the shore power.

We used the camera in the smartphone to take photos today and these were downloaded to the laptop at the end of the day before being deleted from the photo.  I now discover only one photo downloaded and the remainder can’t be retrieved!  The most noticeable building in the centre of the town is The Old Grammar School

Apparently it was built on stilts in 1614 so the butter market could continue to be held.  The money for the school was donated by Robert Smyth who was from Market Harborough but went on to become the accounting and financial manager of the London Lord Mayors Court.  The school sent a number of its students on to Cambridge and Oxford.  Two of the most notable are John Moore who went on to be the bishop of Norwich and Ely.  In the 20th century William Bragg and his son were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize for physics in recognition of their work into the analysis of crystal structures.  Interestingly, there is a connection to Adelaide, South Australia.  William Bragg spent 23 years teaching at Adelaide University.

The sole negative for the day was my failure to establish where we might be able to take delivery of some mail we’d like sent Post Restante.  I phoned two post offices who stated they didn’t accept the mail and a third didn’t answer the call.  I then attempted to call the principal post office in Leicester on a “pay” number only to get the standard government run-around through their automated system.  After repeatedly being directed to the website the call was eventually terminated (by them) after the canned voice told me all the operators were busy.  Then I tried to find an email address on their website.  I don’t know who designed the website but I do hope he/she wasn’t paid very much for their effort.  It’s awful.  Eventually I found a contact form but… of course….. the 4 fields relating to an address were mandatory.  We don’t have an address!   All I want is a list of post offices who accept post restante mail…… You’d think that wouldn’t be too hard.  Try finding it on the website.