Byards Leap to Woolsthorpe

After hot night tossing and turning, sticking to the sheets, our landlady asked us at breakfast if we’d been comfortable. Yes, except for the heat, I replied. Oh, didn’t you use the fan? she asked. Back in the room we discovered the fan in the wardrobe. I’m definitely checking all cupboards from now on.

At breakfast we also met some other people doing the Viking Way.  They were a retired couple and he had done it before 11 years ago.  They were camping and they were very brown and they’d stopped for coffee having already done two miles and they didn’t really do breakfast. They were hardcore,

The next stretch of Ermine Street wasn’t so lovely as yesterday. It runs parallel to the road, but sunken lower, so the traffic noise is by your ears behind a band of long grass. To begin with the plants were interesting. Johnny was a little way behind me and Wilf, and we heard occasional cries of ‘rock rose’ ‘quaking grass'. But it soon became less interesting, and overgrown, dusty and noisy.

After a mile and a half we turned off onto field edges, There were big views and huge skies. The landscape is very photogenic, but samey to walk. One field of wheat is much the same as another field of wheat. Two miles of wheat is quite a lot.

When it finally finished we were stared at by cows.

At Carlton Scroop we met the Viking Way couple again, having a rest on the green next to the pretty church.

Wilf was struggling to get going. Here he is, waiting hopefully at the bus stop.

But there were no buses going the way we wanted to go – so onward. Johnny’s feet were hurting too. The Viking woman had given him a small compeed at breakfast time but he immediately lost it.

The next stretch of walk was more varied, with  long lines of trees

roads with views across the whole world

 good spots for a rest

and this fish van parked in a field!

We walked under a railway and past  sewage works big enough for the whole of Grantham, then past marshland..

... into Marston where the pub was closed and the shop had closed down. Johnny and Wilf were both despondant.  The Viking couple turned up again, and we all sat on wall outside the pub eating snacks and ekeing out water. Even the outside tap was dry.

Then our taxi arrived.  The other couple were walking another six miles, keeping on this side of the A1. Our destination was still ten miles away, and I didn’t think the team were up to it. We got a ride to Allington –  - only three miles by road, but cutting five off our total – and it took us across the A1  which I hadn’t been looking forward to crossing.

In Allington there was an open pub, and a friendly welcome, and this house which Johnny decided was his new home.

The next five miles were mostly lanes and rutted tracks. Johnny was hobbling again, though Wilf had got his mojo back and chatted away. A feature of the walk has been the A-Z game. Choose a topic – eg. Animals – and everyone has to come up with an example for each letter of the alphabet. On this stretch we did games. Board games, team games. computer games – Kerplunk, Operation, Volleyball etc. It tends to distract people from blisters.

We crossed the canal into Woolsthorpe by Belvoir .

The skies darkened as we entered the village. With signs clanking at the crossrooads, castle on the hill and glowering skies, it was a gothic welcome, worthy of a Hammer horror film.

But the Chequers Inn is not horrific or gothic. Here’s the view from our stable door!

16 miles

Lincoln to Byards Leap

Today we set off from Waddington, just south of Lincoln, and walked along the Lincoln Cliff.

More accurately a scarp, the Cliff is elevated approximately 80 metres above a landscape which stretches out flat for ever. The views were amazing. The sky was huge, the land went on and on, even though day was hot there was light breeze and it felt as though every breath went deeper into your lungs, as though if you stretched out your arms they’d stretch an inch or two further. 

I could imagine how Etheldreda would have felt when she reached this part of the country, the excitement, the real feeling that she was nearly home.  

Every mile or so there was a village. They were all pretty, all made of lovely stone, and held hidden corners and secret passages.

And names which made us squint our eyes and giggle.

In Wellingore we stopped for lunch at The Marquis of Granby. What a great pub! The staff were extremely helpful and the food good and plentiful. It had a pool table. They had water and snacks for the dog. It seemed like a proper local pub, the sort you don’t see so often these days. A pub which might be a hub in the community.

Everyone we spoke to there asked if we’d walked along the Cliff. They were proud of their Cliff – and rightly so. 

Leaving the village we passed Wellingore Hall, which Johnny fell in love with and claimed as his new home.

Soon after that we reached Ermine Street.

Ermine Street is a Roman road, and one which Etheldreda may well have travelled on. It was easy to imagine the history seeping up from the ground, through the soles of your feet, to feel a connection with the past, a sense of the purpose of all the journeys that went this way. I loved the straightness, the no nonsense this is the way we’re going whatever attitude.

First it was a surfaced road.

Then a track.

It pulled you on and on.

The verges,, officially a nature reserve, were filled with flowers – small scabious, greater knapweed, fairy flax, salad burnet -  and Johnny was in heaven.

The miles passed quickly and we were soon at Byards Leap, our stop for the night.

There are various versions of the legend of Old Meg the witch and how she was defeated by Bayard the blind horse and his rider, the retired knight from Ancaster. In some versions Bayard is killed along with the witch, in others he vanishes. Whatever, he made a great leap from this point, and his footprints are celebrated to this day.

Unfortunately, just as the landlady came out to welcome us, Wilf began a nosebleed. It only lasted for about ten minutes – not one of his worst. But it’s wiped him out for tonight

12 miles

Lincoln

Today was our day off walking. In the morning, after a dog love-in over breakfast at our dog friendly B&B, I went to Lincoln Central Library to give a talk about my walk and the novel that will come out of it. It’s very odd to give a talk about a novel before you’ve written it. I found myself asking the audience if any of them had any suggestions for what I should put in it – but none of them had. However, some of them were well-versed in the history of saints, and in Bede and even Etheldreda to an extent. We talked a bit about the unreliability of received history, and I did tell them I may well twist it to my own ends, as, after all, I do write fiction and make it all up. They didn’t seem to mind that much.

I’d wondered about getting the bus out to Stow, a few miles north of Lincoln, where Etheldreda is supposed to have stayed and stuck her stick in the ground and it sprouted. Some of the Lincoln Library ladies said I mustn’t miss it as it's amazing. But it seemed a very active way to spend a day off, so I have decided to come back another time to do that.

We spent the afternoon being tourists.

We had lunch at a pub, then later, after dropping off our really stinky clothes at the launderette, we walked around the superb cathedral.

Admired the strange and wonderful stone carvings.

Posed with walls, sculptures and statues.

Then had a drink on a roof terrace.

Lincoln is a lovely city, and really we’ve been too tired to make the most of it.  Our landlady in Woodhall Spa told us that the top of the hill was lovely, but down at the bottom of the hill was not so lovely. The top part of town is the historical bit, with cathedral, castle, museums, cobbled streets, small shops and cafes. Down the hill are high street shops and bars. There was a definite downward flow as the evening began - that's where life happens in Lincoln after dark. Johnny agreed with the landlady, but if it wasn’t for dogs and children, I think I’d have been off down the hill too.

Woodhall Spa to Lincoln

Our Bed and Breakfast in Woodhall Spa was called Oglee and was run by a friendly woman and her son Stephen. Stephen told us he had Aspergers, and many other things about his life, including his love of football and his cat Bagpuss. But mostly he wanted to talk to Betty. He appeared whenever she did, and she responded with true doglike affection. We were there for one night, but when we left he said how much he’d miss her, that he hoped she’d come and stay again.

We walked out of town. Woodhall Spa is well-heeled and well-groomed and we were neither. It was good to get out into the fields again.

The skies were huge and the land flat - sometimes pastoral, grazed by sheep in ancient ridge and furrow meadows; sometimes huge prairies of grain.

We walked through a village where this ‘duckpond’ was in someone’s front garden on Duckpond Lane.

Along roads and over ditches.

We’d seen a place on the map called Lady Hole Bridge and were looking forward to getting there so we could laugh in puerile fashion, hopefully next to a sign. But sadly the only sign said – Dogs Running Loose May Bite. There were six or seven of them and they didn’t bite us, but I think Betty may have got a nip. They circled us barking ferociously as we passed through an evil smelling farmyard, then squeezed between a rusting barn and an abandoned farm vehicle where the path was overgrown with thistles and nettles. It was a place to get out of as quickly as possible and certainly didn’t deserve its wonderful name.

Before long the path went through a field of cows and Johnny didn’t flinch. He opened the gate and walked though and no one would have guessed where Poppy got her fear of cows from.

But it was a good thing this sign was on the far side or he might have been less willing.

Fields of beet, fields of oats, fields of barley which stretched for ever, fields of wheat scattered with poppies.

Eventually Bardney and its sugar factory in the distance. 

(spot Betty having a wee)

We were pleased to arrive there. Johnny’s feet were better today, but he’d still had nearly enough. Wilf was thoroughly fed up of thunder flies and ready for a good rest. We had a beer in the pub garden in Bardney, then caught the bus into Lincoln and made our way up Steep Hill (which is steep!) to the old part of town and our B&B.

After a rest we went to the best chippy in the UK and had some very good fish and chips.

10.5 miles