Oakham

Brewery Tap and Market-place Pubs

The Grainstore Brewery brews its own beer inside a former grain store beside Oakham railway station, where its tap opened in September 1994. It has won Own Brew Pub of the Year five times. Live music spans jazz, blues, rock and pop, with darts, bar billiards, giant Jenga, quizzes and comedy nights.

Town-centre pubs cluster around the Market Place and High Street. The Lord Nelson sits directly opposite the parish church, serving regular and changing real ales alongside craft offerings and local gins. The Admiral Hornblower on the High Street occupies a 17th-century former farmhouse that retains much of its original character. The Wheatsheaf on Northgate is an Everards pub with an award-winning garden, real ales and a changing choice of ciders.

Market Food, Covered Cross and Carved Stone

For food to take back, Nelson's Butchers is at 26 High Street. Northfield Farm Shop, over at Cold Overton, has specialised in rare-breed meat for more than twenty years and brings it to Oakham's market; Hambleton Farms runs a butchery and deli counter inside Gates Garden Centre. Oakham's general market and monthly farmers' market bring artisan bread, cheeses, meats, cakes and vegetables to the town, while independent shops gather on Mill Street, Gaol Street and Church Street.

In the Market Place stands the Buttercross, an old covered market cross with the town stocks still fixed beneath it. The Old Buttercross in Barleythorpe, on Panniers Way, has a kids' play area beside its outdoor seating. Above the Market Place rises the spire of All Saints', a Grade I church whose nave columns carry carved capitals showing animals, birds, figures, foliage and Bible scenes including Adam and Eve, a Green Man and what appears to be a fox with a chicken; the identification is uncertain.

Castle Horseshoes and Oakham Characters

Oakham Castle's Great Hall was built in the 1180s and is England's most complete surviving Norman hall, and its walls hold more than 230 horseshoes. Every peer of the realm visiting for the first time must present one to the lord of the manor; the oldest still hanging was given by Edward IV in 1470, and the Duchess of Cornwall added hers in 2014. It is free to walk in and look up.

Titus Oates, who invented the Popish Plot and earned the title "the biggest liar in Christendom," was born here to ribbon-weavers. Sir Jeffrey Hudson, the court dwarf, was baptised here; at about seven years old and eighteen inches tall, he was presented to Queen Henrietta Maria by rising out of a pie in a miniature suit of armour.

Long-distance Paths, Rail and Cutts Close

The Viking Way finishes here, 147 miles after leaving the Humber Bridge near Barton-upon-Humber; its final stretch follows the shore of Rutland Water and joins the reservoir perimeter track at Whitwell. The station sits roughly halfway between Leicester and Peterborough. Cutts Close Park, laid out over what were once the castle's ponds, has swings and a skatepark.