Leicestershire is a lovely part of the country, in our recent visits to the UK this has not been a part of the country that I would ever have considered visiting (I did have a quick encounter hundreds of years ago when I went to Sherwood Forest – but it was so long ago it’s not really worth mentioning) and to be honest we chose Leicester simply because it was about half way to Dover, where there is a castle that we have been told is fabulous.

Having said that there is so much to see here, and as our day today has shown it caters for all age groups and like the rest of the country is incredibly picturesque.

Upon our arrival and after a little exploring of the city including the great shops we went to “Frankie and Benny’s” a New York style Italian Restaurant for dinner followed by the movies where we saw the new Tom Cruise movie “Edge of Tomorrow”. The vote by a slight majority was that it was indeed very entertaining, with one of us ( Nick ) hating the ending – you can’t please all of the people all of the time, the rest if us were pleasantly surprised. I always love going to the cinema in another country, watching the ads and comparing the screens – it’s a great equaliser.

We are staying at a Premier Inn which is the polar opposite of the Fairfax Arms, this is a cookie cutter American style motel which works perfectly for us. A big room that we can spread out in, we can get breakfast at a reasonable price and there is free parking, and it is only a couple of minutes into town.

Today after breakfast we headed to Ashby de la Zouch to visit the castle there. The castle was built in the Norman times and owned by the Zouch family until the 14th century, and like so many others fell in the Civil War ( yep another one bites the dust).

We try to ensure that we use an audio guide at each castle/abbey we go to, and Ashby de la Zouch castle was no exception. Steve and Michael were our tour guides, and whilst their commentary was fun it did become a little wearing toward the end. They provided us with a lot of information on the history of the place including that the castle forms the backdrop to the famous jousting scene in Sir Walter Scott’s novel “Ivanhoe”. The scene in the book and corresponding film is fictitious, but certainly put this part of the world on the map.

It is a lovely castle to visit with underground passages to investigate and towers to climb, and because it is out of the way not many people to deal with.

Then into town for a coffee and snack before we make our way to the National Space Museum. I was so very excited to see the signs for this as we drove into Leicester, usually I have investigated the possible places for us to visit for weeks and sometimes months before hand but not this trip. From the road it kind of looks cheesy…see photo below

And it does look a little tacky when you first go in and hand over £13 per adult and £11 per child…but then you walk a little further in and if you are a space geek (which apparently I am ) you are blown away. We immediately went into the planetarium and watched a 360 degree film entitled “We are aliens!”. It was probably targeted at primary school kids but for the rest of us mere mortals was wonderful to watch, talking about future programmes to Mars and the discovery of microorganisms in the most unexpected areas.

After leaving the film, you head straight into space related activities, I even filmed a weather broadcast of the future, the feedback wasn’t great but hey you can’t help it if people are jealous of natural born talent!

Whilst this place isn’t Kennedy Space Centre, it is pretty good, and you never feel at any point it is trying to compete, because it can’t. It is what it is, and was lots of fun for those of us who love this stuff – if you don’t best to sit in the coffee shop…