We shake the dust of Horncastle off our feet.

On Thursday we returned to Belchford and walked to Horncastle. This is another of those Lincolnshire towns (like Barton on Humber and Louth) where the clocks seems to have stopped in about 1970. This is not necessarily a bad thing: it has two proper hardware shops, always the sign of a good town centre; several butchers (they like their meat in Lincolnshire; and an extraordinary number of antique/vintage/junk shops. I think the verb declines as follows: I deal in antiques; you trade in vintage items; he sells junk. Next to our hotel was one such establishment with a large white parrot in a cage. We were rather concerned, seeing it shut up in a cage at night, but when I returned the following morning, the bird had the run of the shop. It screeched "Hello" repeatedly followed by a series of alarming screams. If it is imitating what it's heard, I can only assume that the owner has murdered a number of customers. The bird turned out to be called "Sally" and seemed to be left in charge of the place while the boss was outside smoking. 
Horncastle has two famous former residents: Joseph Banks, the naturalist who travelled with Captain Cook; and William Marwood, hangman and inventor of the "long drop" technique (remember this - bound to come up in a quiz sometime). It was also the home of Mrs Alfred Lord Tennyson (Emily Selwood). Considering it has had the misfortune to have a Tesco plonked on the edge of town, it is a surprisingly bustling place. 

From Horncastle we had a straightforward if longish walk to Woodhall Spa, along a canal and then a disused railway. I found Woodhall Spa a strange place. Its prosperity was founded on waters discovered by accident during some early nineteenth century attempts to find coal measures. More latterly it has become famous for its golf courses, across one of which we walked, dodging the competitors in the English Women's Golf Championship, with which we happened to coincide. There are various large hotels, and some surprisingly fancy shops. It is like a little piece of Surrey, transported to the Lincolnshire countryside. During WWII it was surrounded by airfields, and the Dambusters were based nearby - their officer's mess was based in what is now the Petwood Hotel. 
There is only one tiny settlement - Stixwold - between Horncastle and Woodhall Spa - and the latter is only a small place. We did get some impression of how extraordinary it must have been for the inhabitants of a very sleepy and thinly populated part of Lincolnshire to have thousands of airmen descend on them: the first British, but from all over the UK; then Canadians and Poles; and finally the Americans. 

This was a long day: 14 miles - and we had done 18 miles the day before. We were tired and hungry and rather late on our return to Horncastle. We felt we needed a bath and a sit down before finding somewhere to have dinner. This was a mistake. Horncastle shuts, for culinary purposes, at 8.30. We were turned away from the Thai. We were rebuffed at the Bull. The Admiral Rodney, where we were staying, wouldn't feed us. Eventually the Chinese agreed to give us a takeaway, but refused to consider letting us eat it in their empty restaurant. The Rodney were persuaded to supply us with some plates and cutlery, but then told us we couldn't bring food onto the premises, so we rather furtively sneaked it upstairs. This quite tasty Chinese food was given some added savour by its being very slightly naughty to eat it in our room. But the experience put me in mind of Matthew 10:14 -  "And whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear your words, when ye depart out of that house or city, shake off the dust of your feet."
Photographs: Horncastle Farmer's Club; impressive former court building in Horncastle; picturesque ruin; Viking Way sculpture.

Hassocks!

There has been an eleven month interval since our last visit to Lincolnshire to walk the Viking Way, and we finished last September in the middle of section 4, partly for practical reasons but also because we were a little footsore from walking distances which generally seemed somewhat longer than those set out in Lincolnshire CC's otherwise admirable (and free to download) guide. As a result we have been slightly out of sync with the sections into which the guide divides up the route. So on 23rd August, having spent the night in Horncastle, we returned to Ludford, site of disused airfield which was the home of 101 Squadron. From here Lancasters took off towards Germany; later it was home to the Thor ICBM: but now the airfield has almost disappeared into peaceful farmland. 

From Ludford we headed to Wykeham, where we could just about make out the site of a lost village. Around this point we met the only other Viking Way walkers we encountered on the whole trip - two middle-aged(ish) chaps who were doing the whole route from end to end and going a lot faster than we were. 

As we continued at a moderate pace through rolling farmland I was getting messages about flooding in Leeds: the basement of my old chambers was underwater! Traffic was at a standstill! My parents (near Derby) reported a tremendous thunderstorm over them. This seemed ominous as we assumed the rain would be heading east and the deluge would be with us in an hour or two. And so it did: the clouds massed; the sky grew dark; a wind got up; the heavens opened. After about ten minutes they closed again, and that was all the rain we had for the whole trip. Enough to make us reasonably damp for an hour or two, but otherwise we have been incredibly fortunate with the weather (as we were last year).

As the rain descended we arrived at Biscathorpe, an out of the way spot with an interesting-looking but disappointingly locked church. Little St Helens is still used for the occasional service, apparently - we were surprised that whoever looks after it felt it necessary not only to lock the church but also chain up the gate to the churchyard, thus making access unnecessarily difficult. 

While still drying off we reached Donington on Bain, where there is a fine church built of the local greenstone. There was a curious custom, in existence till the 19th century, of hassock throwing. When a couple got married the older ladies of the parish would gather in the church and throw hassocks at them as they left. This custom was quashed by the Reverend Veners - clearly a dull chap - who took exception on being struck by a (possibly) misaimed hassock. The church is now full of brightly coloured hassocks - so I revived the custom, despite protests from my sister. You can't do much harm with a hassock. 

Onwards then, across one of Lincolnshire's many disused railways, to Goulceby, Scamblesby and finally Belchford. When we calculated, using the GPS on my sister's phone, the mileages for today we discovered we had walked 18 miles. Belchford was a little too far: we should have stopped at the previous village. Unfortunately doing a linear walk using two cars ties you to a particular destination. It was by then a glorious sunny evening. 

When I did the Coast to Coast a few years ago it seemed that I would fall over almost every day, usually onto something soft and muddy. I decided to revive this tradition by falling over in Scamblesby. We spotted a disused shop, formerly the Post Office, the windows of which were festooned with rather sinister looking stained white cloths (rust? blood?) and which had a useful display of VHS video tapes inside. While walking up to the door the lace of my boot bizarrely hooked itself round part of a bootscraper, bringing that foot to an abrupt halt while the rest of me carried on. The bruises will last for some time.

Photographs: multi-storey haystacks; Grims Mount (a barrow which we passed); the locked church at Biscathorpe; hassocks at St Andrew's, Donington on Bain; Provence or Lincolnshire?; the shop at Scamblesby; the locked church at Biscathorpe.

Saturday in steampunk Lincoln

TESDEY3NDHTESDEY3NDH

After an enormous number of strides (literally) being made by the intrepid crew of Sarah, Chris and me during the first three days based in Horncastle, we decided to have a shorter walk today.
We are now based in Lincoln. The weather is glorious, so we returned to Bardney where we finished yesterday and walked to Stainfield.
We set off across fields containing stubble and some unidentifiable crops, intending to visit the remains of Bardney Abbey. We kept to public footpaths through an abandoned piece of farmyard but realised we were being stared and pointed at by some locals. We came to no harm and arrived at the Abbey. Sadly there was little to see apart from a curious talking model monk (shown below). We carried on through another abandoned farm at Snakethorpe and on to Stainfield.
There is a beautiful mid-18th century hall next to the stunning church of St Andrew, claimed to be designed by Christopher Wren. Wonderful restored textiles shown below.
We returned to Bardney and were suitably refreshed in the Old Angel Inn.
We then had an entertaining walk around Lincoln which was host to the Steampunk Festival!

Day 4 Tealby to Ludford

Paul, Chris, Sarah and I stayed overnight at the excellent Ivy pub in Wragby. Overnight rain dried up quickly by 9 am, Paul and I explored Wragby and visited the local Georgian church. We met the wonderfully friendly vicar, Mark, who looks after six churches! A very busy man.

After a hearty breakfast at The Ivy, we drove back to the delightful village of Tealby to commence our walk. More Wolds ups and downs were encountered plus thick beds of nettles. Very pleasant walking ending in Ludford at a garden centre which appeared closed and neglected but was in fact still open (just about). Nothing available in the advertised farm shop though.

RAF Ludford was the wartime base for Lancaster Bombers and there is a memorial to the 700 plus airmen who never returned, on the Main Street. There is also a memorial on the outside wall of the only remaining pub, the White Hart, where we had a last drink on this section of the Viking Way.

I have really enjoyed it so far, both the walking and the company; only succumbed to two blisters which are not at all painful!

Who said Lincolnshire was flat?

My sister has a "useful" app on her phone which tells us how many steps we have walked and (allegedly) how many miles we have walked. The latter is slightly suspect as the mileages are significantly at odds with the published mileages for the Viking Way. If the phone is accurate (and who am I to argue with Apple technology) the official guide consistently underestimates the distance walked. On Thursday the official distance was 14 miles; the phone said 17. On Friday, the distance was 8 miles and the phone said nearer 10. Yesterday the distance was 9 and the phone said about 10.5. We shall see if today's 10.5 miles turns out to be 13.
Another function of this app is to measure height climbed. Unhelpfully it does so in "floors", not a unit of measurement with which any of us are familiar and my sister does not know what a "floor" is. We do know that the ascent of Skiddaw is 191 floors.
On Thursday we only climbed 2 floors, and on Friday only 4. Yesterday we ascended forty-odd floors. This was not a complete surprise, as yesterday's route took us past the highest point in Lincolnshire, the 550 foot high Normanby Top. Such elevation in a flat county gave us stupendous views across to Lincoln Cathedral, twenty miles away. To earn this we had climbed up the Nettleton Valley, and we continued through the sort of up and down country familiar to anyone who has walked  the Yorkshire Wolds Way.
Our route did not lack entertainment: after two days of meeting only the occasional dog walker, we had plenty of company - a troop of scouts; several groups of Duke of Edinburgh award teenagers, easily recognised by their map cases, tents and overstuffed rucksacks; and a solitary walker, dressed for December rather than September, whose hobby appeared to be taking pictures of himself. We encountered, for the first time, a herd of Lincolnshire Longwood sheep, an endearingly furry looking variety, on a farm near Risby.
Just after the sheep we met a friendly Hereford bull, standing motionless as a variety of walkers passed by. A party just ahead of us, alarmed by the appearance of this creature, decided to deviate off the path to keep their distance. This was a mistake, as the route they chose led into an unexpected bog. I didn't expect, in rural Lincolnshire, to see anyone repeat my brother-in-law's Pennine Way trick of disappearing thigh deep into mud, but I was wrong.

Nettled

As we walked today from Barnetby to Caistor, we encountered little sign of the Vikings, save in the endings of place names: Searby;Clixby, Ownby; Grasby. This should have been a day of churches: the Way passes 5 which are worth a visit. Unfortunately we were frustrated to find four of those five locked. In Barnetby we visited the main church of St Barnabas. This is a modern (1920s) brick built church but was reputed to have a medieval lead font. The church was locked but a nice lady who was doing a class in the adjacent church hall let us in. She correctly informed us that the lead font had been taken away to a museum, in London, she thought. (A reading of the church guide suggests that it is actually in Barton on Humber, where we were yesterday.) She could not assist us in getting into the much older church of St Mary's at the other end of the village: this is looked after by the Churches Conservation Trust and the local man who held the key had just died - his funeral was last week. Phone calls were made but the current whereabouts of the key remained unclear. So as we left Barnetby we were able to look at the outside of St Mary's, very secluded, up a track, with a large graveyard, but we could not go inside this Domesday church.
At Bigby there is church with a huge tomb to Sir Robert Tyrwhitt and his wife, with all 22 of their children carved around the base, together with a rood beam carved in Oberammergau, but we saw neither of them as the church was locked and the nearby keyholder out. At Searby the church was locked with no hint of the whereabouts of a keyholder. At Grasby there were people outside the church, waiting for someone with a key to let in a group of schoolchildren, but the need to reach our destination prevented us from waiting.
We finally succeeded in getting into a church at Clixby. This was a CCF church, with an open sign in the churchyard. (A passing cyclist had assured us that we would find it open, because Marjorie who lives opposite always opens it when the weather is fine.) Only the chancel of this 13th century church survives. The interior is unspectacular but pleasing: the usual sedilla and piscina.  There is an impressive octagonal 15th century carved font, brought from another church at Low Toynton.
The locked churches all usually share a vicar, and a parish newsletter pinned in the porch at Bigby referred to a longstanding vacancy for this position. There was a plaintive reference to a locum vicar possibly becoming available in a nearby parish. The sea of faith is ebbing from the shores of Lincolnshire.

Curiosity of the day was the Somersby monument, an elegant carved pillar erected in 1770 to celebrate 29 years of conjugal happiness by Edward and Ann Weston of Somberby Hall. We could not find out the significance of 29 years: they were both still alive when the pillar was put up.
The sections of the Way which run near villages, seem fairly well walked, perhaps by local dog walkers, but much of the route is only lightly used. At this time of year this results in an overgrowth of nettles. If the Vikings came this way in September, I hope they did not make my mistake of wearin shorts.

Beet it!

Day 1 of the Viking Way is about the longest of the whole trip, 14 miles from Barton on Humber to Barnetby. That said, it is flat, easy walking for the most part, and today we were blessed with almost perfect weather: mild sunshine & a light breeze.
In the morning we positively skipped along, from Barton, past South Ferriby, and onto what the walk directions described rather over-enthusiastically as the high plateau of the Wolds. Images of something out of a Western were soon replaced by the reality of several large fields  of stubble, slightly higher than the surrounding countryside.
This being Lincolnshire, we had to take our pleasures in the unspectacular. There was plenty of interest: a vast flock of Canada geese lifting off from a field and landing on the shoreline of the Humber; the conveyor linking the chalk quarry at Middlegate with the cement works which it serves; the rapidly changing colour of the Humber as this morning's cloud & mist cleared away.
After lunch our pace slowed, and even my ability to be entertained by the landscape began to flag when we spent an hour walking through a series of vast fields of beets. Concealed under this intensive agriculture were the remains of an airfield, Elsham, used by the Royal Flying Corps during WW1 and Bomber Command in WW2, but there was nothing visible.
Again there were small sights to enjoy: hundreds of seagulls descending on the worms turned up by a ploughing tractor; a small orchard with crab apple trees laden with fruit; and finally the Whistle and Flute in Barnetby, the only surviving pub in the town & a very welcome sight after 6 hours of walking.