Bury St Edmunds is a wonderful medieval town with a fine abbey, much renovated over the past ten years and now topped by a magnificent spire.
Nearby in the very centre of Bury St Edmunds is Moyse's Hall where you can gain a good insight into the town's history from medieval times onwards. if you are taking children then visit on a Wednesday in August, when they will have an opportunity to meet medieval characters and join in activities, and watch demonstrations of medieval crafts.

For full details go to www.moyseshall.org or call 01284 706182

A very fine Elizabethan house which once played host to Henry VIII's second daughter, Queen Elizabeth I. As with any royal visit in Tudor times the entertainment would have been lavish, the owners thinking nothing of extending or re-vamping the property and its grounds for the royal visitor and her 2,000 courtiers in 1578.

Today Melford Hall is run by the National Trust, its exterior little changed in over 500 years. Set in magnificent Edwardian-style gardens surrounded by the remains of an ancient deer park, where Elizabeth I and her court no doubt hunted, the walks are superb.

Christmas Day 2008 was to be the third in succession that we had opted to eat out instead of cook in. Two years ago we had a superb Christmas Day lunch at The Carved Angel in Earls Colne (now sadly closed) followed by a comparatively disappointing meal at the Marks Tey Hotel near Colchester in 2006 (this being the only place we could find to accommodate a party of 11 at the eleventh hour.)

Many will know of Hadleigh’s prominence as a wool town in medieval times, but few may realise that this bustling little place was once home to an avant-garde art school attended by Lucian Freud. There’s so much more to Hadleigh than meets the eye…

The small but very beautiful and bustling market town of Hadleigh is a convenient base for exploring the aesthetic delights of Constable Country and an increasingly popular holiday destination in its own right owing to a rich history and profusion of mostly privately owned shops and eateries.