Postcrossing Blog

Good news, everyone! After a short hiatus, the Little Mail Carriers have written back from the UK, where they were hosted by Sophie (aka FlyingGiraffe). They loved it so much that we’ve had to break their stay in 2 posts! :) You can read all about the first part of their journey below, and stay tuned for more adventures in Leicestershire!

Hello again, everyone!

In September we visited the UK, staying in the county of Leicestershire, in the East Midlands region of England. We stayed in a village and our first job on arrival was to help in our host’s vegetable garden, where we picked home-grown produce such as rhubarb, tomatoes and some purple carrots! We found out that traditionally all carrots were purple; the modern day orange carrot wasn’t cultivated until the end of the 16th century by Dutch growers – interesting! We especially enjoyed climbing up the apple tree to pick some lovely English apples which we then used to bake (and eat!) a delicious apple cake; it was worth all of our hard work!

Bitten by the baking bug, we also helped to make and decorate some delicious vanilla cupcakes which we sold at a charity bake sale held at our host’s workplace to raise money for the charity Jeans for Genes. We even helped make some little jeans out of fondant icing to decorate the cupcakes; they suit Little Paulo don’t you think?!

It was great to visit our host’s office; she works part time at an architectural company. Whilst we were there, we were interested to look at some drawings. Little Ana also helped answer the phone and Little Paulo had a go at some audio typing – it’s harder than it looks!

We enjoyed exploring the Leicestershire countryside, including going on lots of autumnal walks with our host’s dog, a Jack Russell named Ruby, who helped us sniff out some brilliant conkers! Public footpaths in England are marked with distinctive yellow signs so you always know which way to go!

Apparently Leicestershire is well known for many foods, including Red Leicester cheese, Stilton cheese and Pork Pie from the town of Melton Mowbray. Pork Pies are a traditional British meat pie made of chopped meat and pork jelly sealed in a crust pastry. They were tasty but very filling for little people like us!

Our host’s local town of Ashby-de-la-Zouch has lots of interesting things to see and do and we really enjoyed our visit to Ashby Castle, originally a Norman Manor House which is now in ruins. There is a tower to climb and an underground passage to walk through. To round off our visit, we visited the gift shop where we bought postcards of the castle (of course!) and some very special English Heritage stamps which feature images of the castle and are especially designed for use on international postcards – perfect!

Their adventure will continue in a few days… stay tuned!