C'Obs: Out to Ashby

Leaving Ely, we headed west towards Ashby Castle. M was not hopeful that I would be able use the new road atlas of the UK that we had just bought. Luckily he found a function on his GPS that could navigate and ignore the motorways.

We crossed canals, bogs and rolling green pastures. The later were full of gigantic agricultural machines doing the things farmers have always done in spring.

Ashby de la Zouch is the town that surrounds the castle. Ashby(Danish invader) means place of the Ash trees and the Zouch chappy(Norman invader with Will the conquerer) came and married the daughter(de Beaumaris) of Ashby manor. So now the town was Ashby of the Zouch, it stayed like this until the first Zouch's great nephew died heirless and King Ed in 1464 gave the property to Lord William Hastings. He built it into a castle sending himself broke doing it. After King Charles' defeat at Naseby a couple of generations later, the royalists fled to Ashby and the Roundheads laid siege for year or so eventually letting the owners surrender and walk free after a bout of plague. The main tower of the castle was then blown up with a significant amount of gunpowder and was never repaired. Upon the restoration, the loyal Lord Hastings was made an Earl and built a manor next to the ruins. So although there are Ashby fish shops, Ashby hairdressers, Ashby realtors, Ashby lawyers and doctors there are no wealthy relatives waiting for a lost branch of the family tree to turn up. Nor, it seems, were there ever any Ashbys actually living in any kind of fancy house at this site. Never fear, there are five other major Ashby locations listed in the road atlas.

Reading: the altas and lots of tourist brochures.