Where horses and history vie for attention

Pop quiz: Which flavor of Lifesavers do English horses go absolutely wild about?

A) Butter rum

B) Peppermint

C) Wild cherry

D) Are you crazy? Horses don't eat candy.

Ah, no. Actually, the correct answer is B. Equines will also graciously accept Altoids or Tic-Tacs as substitutes, although the latter are a little hard for them to wrap their lips around.

That fun fact comes courtesy of the Newmarket Horseracing Museum in East Anglia. The Altoids and Tic-Tacs were the result of an on-site experiment.

The part of eastern England that includes Newmarket, a premier horse-racing town, may not be as well-traveled as London or the Lake District, but it offers many of the attractions tourists expect from the English countryside.

Old architecture? The old wool town of Lavenham is full of beautiful examples of half-timbered construction. If manor houses are more to your taste, Kentwell Hall has elaborate gardens and re-creations of Tudor life.

Or there's Hedingham Castle in Essex, a Norman keep so well-preserved that the A&E channel filmed "Ivanhoe" there. Royalty? Newmarket has hosted kings since the 1600s.

Famous writers? Well, this is England, after all. The girls who wrote "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star," lived in Lavenham, and there's a skinny, cockeyed building that lays claim to being the "Little Crooked House" from the nursery rhyme. Dickens stayed in Bury St. Edmunds and set part of the "Pickwick Papers" there.

Pubs and beautiful gardens? Bury St. Edmunds boasts both Great Britain's smallest pub, The Nutshell, and the honor of being the only town to win the Nations in Bloom contest two years running.

But these sites have a quirky personality that saves them from becoming too "twee." Many of them were, frankly, built on failure.

Lavenham's architecture is so well preserved because the town fell into an economic decline after the wool trade collapsed in the 1600s, and no one could afford to renovate. Hedingham Castle is still standing because its owners surrendered without a fight when King John besieged it. Bury St. Edmunds gets its name from a poor guy who was killed in battle during the 600s.

And Newmarket guides take gleeful pride in the fact that the kings they love best are the ones the history books look down on.

The combination of the picaresque and the picturesque – the towns are undeniably pretty – along with the lack of crowds, makes for a pleasant, relaxed vacation. Here, horses outnumber night clubs by a wide margin. In fact, Newmarket's population is about 7,000 humans and 3,000 horses. A quick stroll around informs visitors just who has priority.

There's a public swimming pool for the race horses, as well as sidewalks and stoplights just for equestrians. Newmarket commuters have to work around the stables' exercise schedules.

This is less of an issue than it would be in, say, Boston, as a large portion of the town either owns, works with, or is mad about horses. Folks here name their children after famous race horses, and gentlemen used to pay more for a portrait of their horse than one of their wife.

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