During my recent weekend trip to stay with friends in Leicester, I wasn't expecting to have time to check out many coffee shops. Nor did I have any time to do any research, but having enjoyed an espresso from Leicester-based St Martin's Coffee Roasters at this year's London Coffee Festival, I did have at least one café on my list — and one that is relatively close to both the train station and my friends' house.

Despite my life-long interest in 15th- and 16th-century English history — a passion I inherited from my dad — I had never managed to visit the city of Leicester, whose connection with the Plantagenet king Richard III has been in the news fairly regularly over the past few years, displaced only by a certain football team. My only previous visit to Leicestershire was when I did my PADI Open Water training in the murky quarry of Stoney Cove back in 2002, so it was high time I returned to the county.