Today was meant to be a long one. I measured it on my phone
and it was nineteen miles. Johnny’s feet weren’t up to nineteen miles. I’d done
a bit off research in the evening and decided we could walk to Belchford, get a
bus to Horncastle, then walk to Woodhall Spa, cutting six or seven miles off the
total.
The only thing was you had to ring the bus up and say you
wanted to catch it, otherwise it wouldn’t bother going into Belchford. And when
I tried in the morning I couldn’t get through.
Then David, our host, said he was driving to Horncastle and
would we like a lift, and we said yes please, a lift
as far as Belchford would be great, then we could walk the rest of the way,
cutting a different six miles off the distance.
But that’s not what David did. He drove us fast down A roads
through Lincolnshire farmland, and before we knew it he pulled up at the side
of the road and said ‘I’ll drop you here’ and we were in Horncastle. Which
meant that we'd missed Belchford entirely and we only had seven miles still to go.
I was discombobulated. I’d kind of thought Horncastle would be a changing
point where the scenery became more fenlike and less woldy, and now we’d
whizzed past the last of the wolds in a car. And although I suppose we could have gone backwards, it seemed daft to go in the wrong direction.
Horncastle is made up of more antique shops that you’ve
ever seen in your life – nearly every shop is an antique shop. Johnny’s eyes lit up. We could spend the time here, he said. What, with a dog and huge
rucksacks, you must be joking. I humphed out of the town, past a church and a sports centre and beside a
defunct canal where a family of swans tried to cheer me up.
I was right though. It was different here.
Then after a short stretch of road we were on the golf
course of the National Golf Centre Academy, which was so lovely it almost made me want
to take up golf. Well, almost nearly. And where we narrowly escaped death by golf
ball.
At the other end we came out into leafy, wealthy Woodhall Spa, Despite the
short distance we were all feeling footsore and tired, so after a drink in the
pub garden, we checked into our B&B. I spent the latter part of the afternoon reading Cafe Assassin by Michael Stewart, which is certainly kinder on the legs than the Viking Way.
7 miles
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