Day 3: Roses

A deliberate break today. The plan is to explore Leicester, in particular the Richard III visitors' centre which has been built over the carpark, which was built over the school, which was built over the house, which was built over the friary which housed his remains.

Let's start off with a statue to the man outside the cathedral, which now houses the remains (which were found under the friary, which was under the school, which was under the …, I'm sure you get the gist)

The visitors' centre is done well, lots of multimedia stuff but still way too much to read. It doesn't help we've coincided with a local peak in tourist traffic, including a bemasked Chinese contingency. It is surprisingly busy. Part of the exhibition tries to succinctly explain the War of the Roses, something in my opinion that is far too complicated to ever be explained succinctly.

But the real story is the research and archaeology behind the dig and then the science behind verifying the remains are, beyond reasonable doubt, those of the long lost king. Fascinating. The story is well worth the entrance price

Onwards, across the road to the cathedral

and the tomb itself

The cathedral is heavily focused on the tomb. To be honest it's because it has little else going for it. Pleasant enough, some nice carvings

and ceiling bosses

and new stained glass dedicated to Richard

but little else outstanding

Back to the hotel to collect our bags before the rain. We pass this suffragette, Alice Hawkins, amusingly outside the food hall, so perhaps she was doing the weekly shop

We fail to avoid the rain and are quite wet as we alight the Skylink. Still we're a couple of hours ahead of schedule so should make Derby in good time.

The journey up through Loughborough and on to the East Midlands Airport is pleasant, more than enough scenery to distract me from blogging or reading.

Beers a plenty this evening as we sample just three of Derby's many excellent alehouses. Still two brewery taps and the area pub of the year isn't a bad evening's pub crawl.

Here's today's 33 miles, all on the one bus