219daysoflondon: Day 167

This weekend I went to Lincolnshire to visit my grandparents. They live in a beautiful village surrounded by rolling green hills.

Their backyard looks out to this…

We ventured out to the fields where my grandfather showed me where he keeps his beehives (he keeps bees in the summer):

and then relaxed in the summer home at the bottom of their garden. We talked for a long time about the past-I had this strong desire to ask them all the questions I could about their parents, sisters, the jobs they had, stories from when they were my age, stories of my mum when she was younger. It's funny how growing up has instilled me with this need to know about the past, to ask questions I didn't think twice about asking them before.

On Saturday we went to Stamford, a Medieval town just outside their village. They still have the gallows across the entrance to the town, once used to hang people.

It was a beautiful beautiful town filled with so much history. It is so well preserved which is why I think it felt like I was walking around in a different era. It was filled with lots of intricate and historical architecture and small alley ways.

Stamford is home to the oldest newspaper in England which was founded in 1695:

We took a visit to St. George’s Square which was where scenes from the film Pride and Prejudice were shot:

We then went into Tobi Norris, a restaurant/pub which building dates back to the 13th Century! It had the most amazing bathroom:

Sunday morning we went to a small pub near my grandparent’s house. It was so British! Everyone knew one another, there was a roaring fire going and I was served a huge cup of tea.

After that we went to see the Yew tress in Clipsham-a long path filled with these 200 year old trees that have been trimmed into shapes that represented England (there was one commemorating the Queen’s 80th birthday, another one inscripted with “BBC”). I felt like I was in a scene from Alice and Wonderland...

On our way back from the trees, we stopped at a local convenient store run by a 94 year old woman named Mrs. Bee (that name makes me so happy!) It was SUCH an original old British shop, filled with cans of baked beans and one pence candies.

We then headed off to the Nornanton Reservoir, the largest man made lake in England. The village of Normanton was flooded in the 1970s to build the lake, though St. Mathews Church was saved and is now a museum.

We ended up at the Burghley House, built for Queen Elizabeth I in 1555. The house is surrounded by acres and acres of land and there are deer wandering around the front…