Hello, I'm Simon Corder, welcoming you to today's independent travel podcast, coming to you today from Lincolnshire.

Well, a corner of that vast and lovely county, actually in the far south-west.

I'm in Stanford. Well, just outsideamford in fact, at Burley House.

Now, you may or may not be familiar with this grand Elizabethan mansion,

but on a bright sunny day as it is today, the site is magnificent. Twirls and turrets holding the horizon

in your gaze. It's an outstanding place and I want to talk today about the modest joys of the English countryside in this part of the world,

the East Midlands, and also I'm going to finish with a bit of a rant.

But let me tell you about Stanford. It has won the best place in Britain to live award, and it's very easy when you walk through the beautiful town centre to see why.

It's mostly Georgian houses on a slightly crooked high street, which once upon a time was the, I believe, one of the great highways of England.

Not anymore. It's now, well, an interesting range of shops, but United almost entirely in their

independence. It's a place which really champions the independent retailer.

Also lots of great places to eat and drink.

And as far as I can see it, only one chain place and that was Costa,

which should be proving quite popular this morning, but there we are. It's got a lovely town meadow

because the River Welland bifurcates. Yes it does. It goes round this little tongue of land and you can

walk across. If you do that, you'll get to the railway station where you will find that there's

some trains that run from Stamford to and from Stansted Airport, Peterborough, and then on to

Leicester and Nun Eaton. But it's not astride the great railways of the world.

Even though the main East Coast mainline passes really quite close,

it's also on the A1.

Anyway, when you walk south, you find yourself

entering the gardens of this beautiful place and it seems to be a kind of odd

...