Walking to Camelot by John A. Cherrington Page B

the villagers found the tone a tad offensive. (After all, noted Healey, even though it boasts but nineteen houses, Whitwell is clearly the place to be.) So the village elders wrote back and advised M. Chirac that if they did not hear back from his office by a fixed date, they would assume that M. Chirac had agreed to the twinning. That date passed without response, and so the official twinning ceremonies were scheduled in the village.
    The day of the ceremony was so replete with liquid refresh-ments that about all Healey could remember is that everyone ended up as “drunk as lords.” He woke up in his coal shed the morning after. He did recall that they staged the first can-can dances ever seen in Whitwell. Healey wrote to M. Chirac and told him he’d missed a great party and the committee would deputize someone to officially open the new toilets at the Noel Arms for him, since it appeared that M. Chirac would be unavoidably absent.
    The news report concluded with Healey saying, “It isn’t a bloody joke. It’s serious. We put up the signs, one at each end, and Victoria Dickinson came and painted all these nice French flags on the wall. The road signs cost forty quid each, and we’ve had a lot of them pinched. We’re thinking of making a sign saying ‘Paris — twinned with Whitwell,’ and sticking it up at Charles de Gaulle Airport. Why not?”
    Even Rutland County Council got into the spirit of it all, by replacing the hokey wooden signs with formal, legal metal ones. Whitwell had arrived.
    Julie verifies all this. She is also very kind and turns on the heat for us this evening.
    Morning dawns with a bland tapioca sky that hints of a dry day on the path. We are soon wending our way along a cycle track through a copse skirting the lake.
    DIARY: Our entry into the trim town of Oakham coincides with the first rays of sun striking the buff-toned façade of the Brook Whipper-in Hotel in the market square, where I enjoy a fine panini tuna sandwich. The serving of tuna sandwiches for lunch on Saturdays is a tradition in many market towns. A barrel-chested green grocer at the market next door sonorously proclaims, “90p. for 3 cauliflower!” I love the picture-postcard octagonal Butter Cross with its pyramidal roof, beneath which lay stocks that were used to punish miscreants.
    Oakham historically wielded a degree of autonomy normally associated with a city-state. Its authority emanated from Oakham Castle, whose only surviving structure is the Great Hall, built in 1190. We leave our dirty walking boots at the door and tiptoe inside to explore.
    The Great Hall is the earliest structure of its kind associated with an English castle to survive intact. Sunlight streams through the high window at one end, highlighting the rounded Doric arches that support the ornate ceiling, which consists of elaborate cross-sectioned beams strung out in the Elizabethan style.
    But the real feature of the Great Hall is the 230 horseshoes clustered all over the walls. Most are plain, but a few are encrusted with jewels, and glitter subtly in the soft light. The explanation for this unusual display is a centuries-old tradition requiring any peer of the realm visiting Oakham to forfeit a horseshoe to the lord of the manor at the castle. Even Prince Charles recently had to hand over his horseshoe. The tradition is linked to one of the earliest owners, the Ferrers family.
    We move on to inspect the famous Oakham School, founded in 1584 by Robert Johnson, an archdeacon who believed — unusually for his day — that every child should have an opportunity for education, and who set aside much of his church’s income to establish a school plus two grammar facilities in Oakham and Uppingham. His injunction was clear: “The schoolmaster shall teach all those grammar scholars that are brought up in Oakham, freely without pay, if their parents be poor and not able to pay, and keep them constantly