The Lincolnshire Wolds and coast in a day

---

---

Ah! a very comfortable bed makes a huge difference to a night’s sleep and the Travelodge at Thorpe on the Hill has been recently refurbished and has a brand new bed. And the sun is shining....although it was still a bit cool when we tested the air outside the window.

With the sunny weather and a desire to see both the Wolds and the Coast we will leave the city tour of Lincoln until tomorrow before we head onto Pudsey.

Expecting to add another 200km or thereabouts to distance travelled with today’s drive we were smartly on the road with a full tank of petrol.

We had picked out the market town of Spilsby on the edge of the Wolds to take time out for a walk and that meant taking the A158 east towards the coast.

The road towards Lincoln was busy with traffic and we got a real surprise to see a couple of people in their mobility scooters riding towards us on the highway! Where they were going we have no idea but if they were heading to the businesses at the roundabout where we were staying they had another couple of kilometres to negotiate their way in the heavy traffic including a great number of trucks.

Along the way we came across a directional sign for a ‘heavy horse centre ‘and waited in anticipation to see what it was all about.

We discovered that it was a farm set up for retired horses that used to do work such as hauling heavy loads and needed a place to see out their years. As working horses are known to like to be active the farm invites in the public and groups for riding activities to keep the horses involved. Apparently there used to be a great many ‘heavy horse centre’s ‘in the UK but as mechanical power took over most of the heavy work on farms etc the need for a ‘retirement home’ for these horses became less.

The Lincolnshire Wolds was an interesting area of eastern England and it was pleasant to be looking at rolling countryside rather than the dead flat land in much of Suffolk and Norfolk. The Wolds has a number of public footpaths and trails that give access to the wider area and had we had more time we would have taken a walk along one of the many paths that we passed as we headed for Spilsby.

Spilsby’s history dates back over 700 years and has always been known as a market town with a large square in the middle of the shopping area for regular markets although there was not one on today. Most of the shops were built around the square although we did find a new Sainsbury’s just outside the square and it was here we did some shopping for our lunch.

We have been into a lot of supermarkets on the BBA V2 but have not been able to converse very often with fellow shoppers in the queue because of our inability to speak their language and it has only been those who spoke English that we exchanged words with. However this morning as we waited out turn to be served a guy behind us pointed to the newspaper announcing a plan by the British government to spend one billion pounds a year to provide school lunches to all schoolchildren and how dreadful that all was. We had to inform him that it looked like this idea of school lunches was going on all around the world because the NZ government were going to do a similar thing although for a much lesser cost .He then got onto the health system and we don’t think he had fully understood that we weren’t living in the UK .However we agreed with him and then it was our turn to be served and we were saved having to comment on ‘local issues ‘by escaping out the door. Talking with the locals is great but we prefer to stay off politics.

Before we left the town square we took a closer look at the statue of Sir John Franklin who was born in Spilsby in 1786 and became Governor of Tasmania and later lost his life as an explorer trying to chart a way through the Northwest Passage in Canada. A mistake was made with the inscription on the plaque on the statue that says ‘he was the discoverer of the Northwest Passage’. Discovery of the way through was credited to Roald Amundsen 50 years after the failed Franklin exploration.

We headed onto the town with the name that has always intrigued us for some reason, Skegness.We aren’t sure why but the name has conjured up thoughts as to what it might be like.

The name is of Viking origin and the word ‘skegg’ is the old Norse word for ‘beard’. Put together the name of the town refers to ‘beard like headland’ which was not obvious to us when we walked down to the seaside but perhaps we were looking in the wrong direction.

The town was full of people out shopping and because it is also a holiday town there were a lot of older people (schools have gone back now) strolling the main street and beach promenade. Butlins first holiday camp was set up here in 1936.

Off the coast was a sizeable wind farm which we think the Greens would never allow to happen in NZ.And although they did provide a different view to what you would normally see of the coast they were also quite symmetrical and gave a different perspective to the horizon.

As we headed north up the coast we passed a number of caravan and mobile home parks with acres of accommodations indicating just how busy this place must get in the height of summer. Along with the parks there was also the Butlins Park complete with a super big top that looked like a permanent circus tent together with entertainment rides and swimming pool with a tall waterslide.

We were frustrated in finding somewhere to stop for lunch so that we could get a sea view from the car (it was still a bit chilly with a breeze although the temperature had warmed to 16C) as the camps took up the entire coast from the town to where the road headed inland.

We carried on up the A1031 to another seaside town, Cleethorpes which was similar to Skegness. The town is on the edge of the vast Mouth of the Humber and as it was low tide it was almost impossible to see how far out the sea had receded to.

Next was Grimsby and we had intended to take a walk but the roads in the centre of town had been dug up and the sky had clouded over again with some rain in the air so we continued onto the A46 and back home to Thorpe on the Hill.

We had had a long day out and were ready for dinner. It was just as well we went out a little earlier than usual at 6.30pm because the Railway Inn back in the village had a small dining room that was full and we got the last table in the bar area to eat our order’s of steak and ale pies which were just delicious. We enjoyed an hour or so watching the locals in action on the pool table speculating just how good we might be if we put up a challenge........we didn’t.

---