One of the places which I definitely wanted to visit on our recent road trip south was Stamford. For some reason I thought that it was where the BBC filmed Cranford but I was wrong, it was Middlemarch which was filmed in Stamford. It’s about 100 miles north of London but somehow seems much further away.

It’s a lovely place actually, not very big shop-wise but it has a lot of independent shops and it’s all very quaint. I wanted to take a photo of these buildings near the town centre because the wee white one in the middle was leaning every way it possibly could – backwards, forwards and from side to side – all at the same time!

There were some quite grand looking buildings in the town but somehow I’m always drawn to the wee quaint ones which ordinary people will have lived in for centuries. We tried to get into this antiques shop, the lights were on, but nobody was at home!

I don’t think a town is a proper town unless it has a river running through it and this one is very scenic.

Swans and all! Although I have to admit that this is as close as I like to get to swans. They might look very elegant but in my experience the males are very bad tempered. There’s a particularly nasty one at Linlithgow Loch which just lives to hiss at you.

During all our visits down south we had no problems with parking, we usually managed to park legally and for free and very close to the town centres. At Stamford we were about a three minute walk from the town. It’s such a change for us because all of the towns in Scotland have seem to have pay and display car parks or parking meters. The local councils just don’t understand that it really puts people off visiting their towns if they have to worry about the expense of parking tickets and feeding meters then it doesn’t make for an enjoyable experience. No wonder our high streets are dying on their feet!