Walk 104 -- Friskney to Skegness

Ages: Colin was 62 years and 45 days. Rosemary was 59 years and 188 days.

Weather: Hot and sunny with a lovely breeze.

Location: Friskney to Skegness.

Distance: 10½ miles.

Total distance: 813½ miles.

Terrain: Overgrown tracks and field edges across private land. Beach, dune-marsh, and eventually concrete prom.

Tide: Out.

Rivers: No.40, the Steeping River near Gibraltar Point.

Ferries: None.

Piers: None – we decided to save Skegness Pier for the next Walk.

Kissing gates: None.

Pubs: The ‘Jolly Sailor’ in Wainfleet-All-Saints. Although it is recommended as the main pub for the nearby Bateman’s Brewery, it had no real ale when we went in! So we didn’t stay. (Isn’t there a song about the pub with no beer?)

‘English Heritage’ properties: None.

Ferris wheels: No.2, in Skegness! Unfortunately it was CLOSED!! It had been going on Sunday, but not on a Tuesday evening. We shall have to hope it is open at the beginning of the next Walk. (Nearly a year later, we rode on it!)

Diversions: None.

How we got there and back: We were camping at Burgh le Marsh. We drove – with bikes on the back of the car – to Skegness where we parked in a residential street for free, avoiding the £4 charge in the car park. (These Councils shouldn’t be so greedy!) Then we cycled to Friskney where we padlocked our bikes to a post.

At the end, we walked into Skegness at 7pm on a Summer’s evening to find practically everything was CLOSED – even the toilets!!! The seafront lights looked good, except that they weren’t on! There were loads of people about – most of them repulsively obese – but all there was for them to do was play Bingo or visit a chippy. The latter is what we did, and a horrible greasy meal it turned out to be. We returned to the car for a cup of tea, then we drove back to Friskney to collect our bikes, and at the ‘Jolly Sailor’ only to discover that they had run out of beer!

The next day, after a wet and windy night, we packed up our soaking wet tent – which fortunately has proved to be sturdy and 100% waterproof – and returned home.

We did a bit of research before we started today’s Walk. If we kept to public footpaths we would have to walk a long way inland putting miles on our route, so we were prepared to risk continuing along the sea bank which was private land from the very start of the Walk. (They can only ask us to leave, after all.) The difficulty was the Steeping River that needed to be crossed by a footbridge which was marked on the map. We wanted to find out if this bridge really did exist, and if we could get across it. If we reached the Steeping River and couldn’t cross it, we would have to backtrack miles and it would be worse than if we had stuck to the public footpaths in the first place—so it was very important that we found out.

We drove to a place called Gibraltar Point, parked and walked a hundred yards along a private track to the Skegness side of the footbridge. Yes, there was the bridge, BUT—it had a tall padlocked gate with spikes all round half way across it, and on our side was another tall padlocked gate with rolls of barbed wire along the top!! Talk about unfriendly, it looked impossible! While we were looking at it all in horror, a lady wearing an apron came out of the only house nearby and asked if she could help. Colin explained that we were trying to walk the coast of Britain, and today’s Walk was intended to be from Friskney to Skegness. We had been wondering about walking the seabank, but we now saw that we couldn’t get over the river. “Oh, we don’t mind coastal walkers!” she exclaimed, “we get all sorts through here!” (I’m sure she was going to say “all nuts” but changed it at the last minute!) “That bridge belongs to the Nature Reserve—old Mr ‘Jobsworth’ over there! The gate on the bridge isn’t really locked you know, it looks as if it is but you will only have to gently push and it will open. And if you don’t fancy climbing this gate, you can always go the fox’s way!” “What’s the fox’s way?” I asked. “Just look at the fence as it goes towards the river,” she replied, obviously enjoying herself, “and you will see it gets lower and lower. The fox goes that way because he doesn’t like climbing fences any more than you do! If you walk through the long grass right to the edge of the river bank, the fence is so low you will be able to step over it without any climbing at all!” (I remembered doing a similar thing on the Isle of Sheppey to get out of a farmyard where we had taken a short cut!)

Our ‘saviour’ then continued to rant on about ‘Mr Jobsworth’ at the Nature Reserve, how she was the fly in the ointment as far as they were concerned and they wanted to get rid of her and demolish her house because it was upsetting the wildlife (“What about the Yanks bombing the hell out of everything?” I asked. “Quite!”) and how she was going to set up an amusement park (all this was ‘tongue-in-cheek) and have a huge Ferris wheel with hundreds of coloured lights and loud music, etc, etc. She was quite a character! We thanked her, and as we left she called out, “Don’t let Mr Jobsworth see you, and remember I don’t know anything!” We assured her that, if challenged, we had never met her!

By the time we had parked in Skegness and cycled to Friskney, it was lunchtime. The inner seabank we had walked yesterday—chosen because it was furthest away from the jets bombing the marsh—is a public footpath as far as the lane where we had experienced the double rainbow. It continues northwards, but is private from there on. We walked about a hundred yards up it, and decided to sit down in the long grass, surrounded by beautiful wild flowers, and eat our lunch where we were relatively secluded. The Yanks were still bombing the marshes to the East, and there were some agricultural workers in a field way out over by the seabank. We conjectured that they were immigrant workers, and as such wouldn’t be at all interested in our trespass—so we didn’t mind if they saw us.

So far so good. Then a tractor was driven out from the farm and started running up and down a field much nearer to us, spreading fertiliser or some such. That was a more serious threat, because if we stood up the tractor driver would see us immediately. This was less likely if he was at the far end of the field, especially if he was driving away from us, so Colin started timing his ‘laps’! We would have less than a minute to scoot about two hundred yards to the next bit of ‘cover’, but we didn’t have to do it because he ran out of fertiliser—or whatever—and returned to the farm. We got up immediately, and walked as quickly as we could without appearing to be in a hurry. It was real ‘cloak-and-dagger’ stuff! Our hearts were pounding fit to bust, we ought to know better at our age! The track became quite overgrown, so we walked along the field next to it. Since the track was on a bank, this meant we had a low profile and we felt more comfortable. We kept the bank between us and the isolated farm buildings we saw, just in case someone was there.

We came to another lane, our last ‘let-out’ to a legal path. The track continued as a tarmac road to a farm, and the entrance was plastered with PRIVATE ROAD KEEP OUT notices. We ignored them, and continued walking along the field edge. A ‘services’ jeep took us by surprise as it sped up the road to some place hence. The driver must have seen us, but he took no notice. He was not the landowner, so we supposed he wasn’t bothered who we were.

Then we came to a covered reservoir which was right up against the road. We dithered for a while, not knowing whether to risk exposing ourselves on the road or walk round it on the field side. Just beyond it were a couple of buildings which could have been cottages—then our number would have been up as we boldly walked in front of their windows! (They turned out to be empty farm buildings after all, but we couldn’t tell that from our side.) We decided not to risk the road, but found our way was all prickly and stinging nettles. So we changed our minds and returned. We were just about to step out into the road when Colin urgently whispered, “Quick! Duck!” We threw ourselves into the long grass as a car sped past on its way to the farm! We couldn’t stop laughing—there we were, a couple of old crinklies, aged 59 and 62, behaving like the ‘Famous Five’ on an adventure! The only thing missing was ‘lashings of ginger-pop’!! We were rolling in the grass shrieking with laughter, we had a crazy five minutes.

When we had calmed down, we thought more seriously about the consequences of being ‘caught’. We could play the ‘we are lost’ bit, but couldn’t claim to know that the gate on the footbridge was unlocked. That would mean extending our Walk by several miles and we couldn’t bear that. So we returned to Plan A and fought our way through the prickly undergrowth round the reservoir. At one point Colin’s foot disappeared into a hole where there was a hidden ditch, but fortunately he came to no harm apart from stinging himself on the leg. We regained the field edge by the road where it was easier walking, and we were shielded from sight by the bank the road was on. But then we had to cross an open track in full view of the farmyard which seemed to be full of people. It was about a hundred yards away from us, but if any of the people happened to be looking in our direction they would surely have seen us. We peeped round like two naughty schoolchildren up to some prank, and decided to go one at a time. Colin’s eyesight is better than mine, so he went first, signalled to me to stop—then to come. We both got across unseen—phew!
After that our confidence grew. There were no more buildings, the seabank was overgrown and there was absolutely no one about. The sun was shining and the flowers were blooming, including a whole bank of wild orchids! Everything was fine, except Colin’s stinging leg was troubling him. So he did his ‘Ray Mears’ trick—he rolled up a couple of dock leaves in his hands and squeezed them until green juice ran out. This he applied to the sting, and because it was in concentrated form it afforded much better relief than just rubbing the leaf on the affected area. I was eulogising about all the flowers, especially the poppies which were growing in profusion, and we both felt very pleased with ourselves. We ‘scrumped’ a few fresh peas from the field edge, and they were sweet and delicious. (Naughty! Naughty!)

A tarmacked road came from somewhere yonder, through the seabank we were walking next to and continued along our side for about half a mile before it disintegrated into a track. We couldn’t think of a reason for it, but it made walking a lot easier. Our seabank was fast converging on the real one, the one in between (remember from yesterday, there were three) having disappeared about a mile back. Surly nothing could go wrong now! Except there was a deep drainage ditch, too wide to jump over, on the other side of our bank, ‘Mr Jobsworth’ was leaning on a bar outside his Visitor Centre on the Nature Reserve staring at the marshes where we were walking, and would the gate on the footbridge really be open?

We needn’t have worried. The drainage ditch went through a culvert where the two seabanks met, and we were slightly north of the Visitor Centre where the warden was staring at birds so he was not actually looking in our direction. After crossing the drainage ditch, we walked along the other side of the seabank so he couldn’t see us anyway, and the fearsome gate on the Steeping River bridge was unlocked just as the lady had said! We reckoned she had broken the padlock herself because she was fed up with rescuing people who were trying to cross this tidal inlet and getting themselves into trouble. I often refer to a book called, ‘Two Feet, Four Paws’ by Spud Talbot-Ponsonby because this lady walked the entire coast of mainland Britain with her dog, Tess, in one year! Here is her description of crossing the Steeping River:

“The seawall continued to the River Steeping, which I had been told we could cross via a sluice. But when we arrived here the gate was padlocked. I was determined to avoid the five mile detour inland, and knew I could negotiate the spikey palings somehow. First I had to make Tess think small and fit through a square hole at the base of the gate, about the size of a cat flap. But folding Tess up enough was a little like trying to thread a needle with baler twine, and I sat back with a defeated air, wishing for the first time that I had a miniature Chihuahua for company.
As I began to accept our position a man came out of the only house on the other side of the river. He had the air of one who had seen a good few people in the same predicament. “The key’s held by the NRA,” he told me.
“I was told it was open!”
“It is for one day of the year! For the annual run from Boston to Skegness!”
We were joined by the man’s wife, who was a homely figure wearing an apron. “I’ve just been cooking a chicken, perhaps if I get a piece we could persuade her through?” she suggested. That was all that was needed. Tess took one sniff at the woman’s hand and popped through the hole, where she was duly rewarded. I scrambled over the spikes, and we set off happily along the dunes to Skegness.”I am sure it was the same lady we had spoken to that morning—no wonder she made such disparaging remarks about the Nature Reserve people if they insist on keeping the gate locked. Don’t they realise that people like us will come anyway, and some may put their lives in danger rather than turn back at that stage? We negotiated the ‘fox’s way’ round the second gate, waved a ‘Thank you’ towards the house, and turned along the road towards the Visitor Centre.

We had done it !

We met a school party at the Visitor Centre, which made me smile for I had given up supply teaching seven months previously—after a 37 year career as a classroom teacher—and had not entered a school since. It’s a nice feeling that the ‘little darlings’ are no longer my responsibility. We used the toilets and filled our water bottles. Colin even had a chat with the warden, ‘Mr Jobsworth’ himself, and found him to be very pleasant and informative. (He obviously had no idea which way we had approached Gibraltar Point.)
We followed the path across the dunes to a nice sandy beach—AT LAST! But soon after we turned northwards along the dunes / marsh, we seemed to lose it again. It was very elusive! In fact we got lost amongst the dunes several times, they were so high and confusing. We were also very tired, of course, and unable to think properly. They seemed to go on forever! Every so often we could see the Ferris wheel in Skegness on the skyline—that was our goal and we tried to keep it in sight, but it didn’t seem to get any nearer. Even when we knew very well we were in Skegness itself, we had to climb a high overgrown bank of dune before we descended into ‘civilisation’. There a passerby asked us what were our ‘uniforms’ about—eh? He meant our gaiters! When we informed him why we wore them, he wasn’t very impressed. I walked on, but Colin stood and chatted to him for about twenty minutes. I was so tired, and sat on a concrete wall to wait. All I wanted to do was finish the Walk and get something to eat, but Colin never does know when to curtail a conversation and get moving.

That part of Skegness was neglected and overgrown. Further on the Pleasure beach was closed—empty cars were going round the log flume, we thought to test it—and the Ferris wheel was not going! Nearly everyone we met was obese, some were grotesquely so. The only outlets open were fish ’n’ chip shops—four consecutive buildings in one street—and Bingo. None of the fairy lights on the seafront were on, and even the toilets were shut!! This was about 7pm on a Tuesday evening in late June—it was all very disappointing. We did concede that the beach was beautifully sandy, and the gardens were well kept and fun, but Colin—who had spent several holidays in “Skeggie” as a small child—was particularly disenchanted.

That ended Walk no.104, we shall pick up Walk no.105 next time by the Pleasure Beach, and hope that it will be open then, whenever it is. We had decided to celebrate the success of our Walks by treating ourselves to a fine fish ’n’ chip meal in this famous East coast seaside resort. We chose a place called “Harry’s” because they advertised “ the best fish ’n’ chips in town”. But Colin was in a real state because the toilets were all shut, his pad was full and he couldn’t sit down without it leaking out. The proprietor told us they had no toilet on the premises, but he thought there was a ‘night toilet’ open down by the car park. So I minded the rucksacks while Colin went off to search—he was gone nearly half an hour, but he did find one in the end. Just one cubicle, and it was smelly! At last we could tuck into our fish ’n’ chips—and a horrible greasy meal it turned out to be. We returned to the car for a cup of tea, then we drove back to Friskney to collect our bikes, and to the ‘Jolly Sailor’ only to discover that they had run out of beer! It obviously wasn’t our day. It started raining before we reached the campsite, and we both had indigestion all night.The next day, after a wet and windy night, we packed up our soaking wet tent – which fortunately has proved to be sturdy and 100% waterproof – and returned home. We were cold and damp, and so treated ourselves to a roast meal in a pub near Boston.

Whatever happened to Summer?

Walk 103 -- Freiston Shore to Friskney

Ages: Colin was 62 years and 44 days. Rosemary was 59 years and 187 days.

Weather: Very heavy thundery showers with hot sunny intervals between. We were treated to a magnificent complete double rainbow at the end of the Walk.

Location: Freiston Shore to Friskney.
Distance: 10½ miles.
Total distance: 803 miles.
Terrain: Grass river banks, some tracks.
Tide: Out.
Rivers: None.
Ferries: None.
Piers: None.
Kissing gates: None.
Pubs: None.
'English Heritage’ properties: None.
Ferris wheels: None.
Diversions: None.

How we got there and back: We were camping at Burgh le Marsh. After a day’s ‘rest’ we were feeling in much better spirits. We drove – with bikes on the back of the car – from Burgh le Marsh to Friskney where we parked in a lane. Then we cycled to Freiston Shore Nature Reserve where we secured our bikes to an official rack.
At the end, we came out into the lane by our parked car. It was teeming down with rain, but the sun seemed to be shining everywhere else – it was most weird! The intensely coloured rainbow which had formed over the marshes gradually extended itself until it was a magnificent complete double bow! Colin magically produced a cup of tea from inside the car, and still it kept raining. The rainbow faded before the rain, so we never did get a photo of it. When it did eventually dry up, we drove back to Freiston Shore to collect our bikes, then back to our campsite at Burgh le Marsh. We discovered that nowhere else was as wet as Friskney – but then perhaps no one else had the rainbow spectacle either!

Today is the 15^th birthday of our grandson, Jamie. It is difficult to believe that we have a grandchild of that age! When he was born in 1989, his mother (our ‘rebel’ daughter) was still only 16 years old. When I first saw the little scrap it was with very mixed emotions, and I really did fear for his future. But our daughter, after a shaky start, pulled on inner strengths and came up trumps. Jamie is an emotionally stable young man, a delight to know and full of fun. He is intelligent but lazy with his school work — a typical boy. But he can’t help being a teenager!

(By the way, on our last Walk we crossed the Greenwich Meridian yet again and didn’t even notice. It was around the area where we were being buzzed by that kid on a motor bike, and we didn’t think about it then nor when I was writing up the journal. Perhaps we have crossed it too often—we are now in the Eastern Hemisphere once again.)

We were in a much better mood than two days ago, despite the fact that it is not at all like Summer. Today is the longest day and the first official day of Summer, but the temperature in our tent last night went down to 5°C! However, it turned into quite a nice day, we managed to leave the campsite relatively early and do our cycle ride in the dry.
Freiston Shore was once a big seaside resort. In the 19th century they used to have horse races on the wide flat beach, and there were two hotels with more than a hundred rooms between them!
Nearby Skegness was recommended as a ‘quieter resort’ in the 1820s, but by the 1860s Freiston Shore was in decline due to the receding shoreline and growth of the marshes. Skegness expanded, and was promoted to become a major resort. Today, Freiston Shore is a quiet nature reserve with a spattering of houses, accessed by a very minor road. The ‘Plummers Hotel’ has been converted into fancy mews, and the other hotel is a derelict shell. There is nothing else there, not even the sea!
The only interest on today’s Walk was at the beginning. A lagoon has been formed at the nature reserve due to the deliberate breaching of the seawall. We sat on a bench there to eat our lunch. We watched a pair of avocets proudly taking their four chicks for a walk—four grey balls of fluff on long spindly legs. They were gorgeous! Then we watched a raptor—Colin thought it was a hobby—being harassed by a pair of gulls, but it still managed to sneak in and steal a chick from under their very noses. Fascinating stuff, but we were really glad it was a gull chick that got eaten, not a graceful avocet.
We got going, and once more it was a long boring Walk. Marshes to the right of us and fen-like fields to the left of us for ten and a half miles. Occasionally we had oystercatchers circling round us and chirping because they thought we were too near, but no other wildlife of interest. Unsurprisingly, we met no one. We could see a big black cloud which got nearer and nearer—suddenly the heavens opened. There was a tiny coppice on the edge of the field to our left, so we dived down there looking for shelter. It was chucking it down and still pretty wet even under the trees. After twenty minutes it stopped as suddenly as it had started, and we carried on in warm sunshine! There were some interesting colour effects in the sky because of the storm.
It was very clear and we could see the whole of the Wash. Hunstanton stood out in the sun, even the lighthouse under which I had stood and pointed unerringly to Skegness in the mist last February. Then our peace was shattered by military jets screaming overhead, bombing two rusty ships which were lying in the marshes. What a row! Colin noticed that the planes had stars and stripes on them—why can’t the Yanks go and bomb their own marshes? We were not very happy, the Americans are well known for their bungling warfare and so-called ‘friendly fire’! We thought they had packed up at 4 o’clock as there was a lull in their activities, but then it started up all over again.
As we approached the bombing range, we had a choice of three parallel paths. The one nearest the sea (and the bombers) was not a public footpath, the next one inland was only a public footpath for about a hundred yards, and the third one was a public footpath almost all the way to the car—just a hundred yard stretch in the middle, for some strange reason, was not. We chose this third path, not wanting to be blown to smithereens by the clumsy Yanks, and found that the hundred yard stretch was no different at all. Quite a puzzle. The sky began to darken once more, and the jets stopped—peace!
Colin decided to go on ahead of me so he could get the tea going. He didn’t quite get to the car before the rain started, and I had to stop and put on all my wet-weather gear. It was a real downpour again, but I arrived at the car just as he produced the tea. He handed me mine, and I went and stood under some trees to drink it. I couldn’t get in the car because I was so wet, and the rain continued for nearly half an hour. There was a perfect double rainbow—absolutely beautiful—but we couldn’t photograph it because it simply would not stop raining. All around us seemed to be in sunshine and even the sky above us turned blue. We couldn’t see where the rain was coming from—it was most weird.

That ended Walk no.103, we shall pick up Walk no.104 next time on the lane where we had seen the perfect double rainbow. Eventually the rain stopped, by which time the rainbow had completely disappeared. We returned to Freiston Shore to pick up our bikes, and there were dry roads in most places. On the way back to the campsite we saw a barn owl on a post—then it dived down to catch a vole out of a drainage ditch and flew off with it in its claws. Our best sighting of a barn owl to date!

Walk 102 -- Boston to Freiston Shore

Ages: Colin was 62 years and 42 days. Rosemary was 59 years and 185 days.
Weather: A darkening sky with sharp showers and a cold wind. It rained steadily for the last part of the Walk.
Location: Boston to Freiston Shore.
Distance: 9½ miles.
Total distance: 792½ miles.
Terrain: Mostly grassy river banks. Concrete in Boston.
Tide: Out, coming in.
Rivers: Nos.37, 38 & 39, the South Forty Foot Drain, the River Witham & the Maud Foster Drain (who’s she?) – all in Boston.
Ferries: None.
Piers: None.
Kissing gates: None.
Pubs: ‘The Red Cow’ at Fishtoft which we visited on our cycle ride. Colin had Bateman’s mild, and I enjoyed a glass of Strongbow cider.
‘English Heritage’ properties: None.
Ferris wheels: None.
Diversions: None.
How we got there and back: We came up the day before and camped at Burgh le Marsh. This morning we were tired and dispirited, so we made a late start. We drove – with bikes on the back of the car – from Burgh le Marsh to Freiston Shore where we parked in a nature reserve car park. Then we cycled to Boston via Fishtoft where we stopped at the ‘Red Cow’. Soon after we left the pub, the heavens opened and we got soaked! We tried to shelter under a tree, then we carried on through Boston to the industrial estate where we finished the last Walk.
At the end, we walked along a track from the sea bank to the nature reserve car park. We drank a cup of tea feeling thoroughly cold, tired, wet and miserable. Truthfully we both wanted to go home because we were so tired and the cold wet weather didn’t help. (The fatigue was not due to the Walk, but to a number of other factors that have affected our lives in recent weeks.) We drove back to Boston to collect our bikes, then back to our campsite at Burgh le Marsh. We were so late I had to cook in the dark.

We were really too tired for these few days walking, but I thought that if we didn’t fit it in this week we would never do it. The weather was against us as well, one of the wettest and coldest June weeks we have experienced in years. We left Bognor late when we came up yesterday because of our inefficiency in packing, and we got caught in traffic around Cambridge which delayed us more. Then we couldn’t find a campsite. I had picked one from the book, but when we got there it was jam-packed with caravans—no space. A man told us of a pub nearby that ‘did tents’, so we went there to find electric hookups but no toilets or showers. Eventually we happened on a site at Burgh le Marsh—a nice big field but only two toilets in sheds with cold-water basins. We were asked to pay £6 a night despite no hot water or showers, but it was already getting dark so we didn’t have much choice. I ended up cooking in the dark!

So, why were we so tired and dispirited? Well, just over a month ago our new son-in-law, Mark, had major heart surgery. He is only 33, and about four years ago he started having palpitations and pains in his chest. It turned out he had a congenital heart defect—a leaky valve in fact. Blood was sucking back as he pumped it, so his heart was having to work much harder. Being a muscle, with the extra work it had to do his heart started to enlarge. But the heart can only enlarge inwards making the chambers smaller, so that compounds the problem. He was becoming more and more seriously ill. Fortunately the operation to repair the valve was a success, and he is now well on his way to recovery.
Annalise has always been an emotional person, and they have been married just under a year. I was her ‘sounding board’ through all the drama of Mark’s major operation—and I was quite worried about him myself (no one seemed to appreciate that). Also, we had to look after Jamie and Kelly (aged 14 and 12), who were very good but it was exhausting having two extra people in the house—especially as they are such picky eaters. It was their exam week at school, and the lazy tykes wouldn’t do any revision. I was too tired to insist, Annalise got annoyed, and at the end of the week Steven (Kelly’s real Dad) got angry because Annalise forgot to tell me they were supposed to be going to him for the weekend. It seemed I couldn’t do anything right, and I was ready to explode! Colin stuck his head in the sand, in the usual male fashion, but he was getting quite narked too.
We only had a few days respite before my Canadian cousin Rosemary, with her friend Elaine, came for a long-promised visit. We were delighted to have them and we had a lot of fun with them, but our feet hardly touched the ground for a whole week! We took them all over the place and we had a ball, but we were exhausted! Two days after they left, we drove up to London to stay with our friends, Keith and Valerie. That was another long-promised visit, and great fun on the ‘London Eye’ and the open-air theatre in Regents Park, but when do we get a rest? We didn’t, because two days after our return we travelled down to Cornwall for a camping trip we had promised ourselves. The weather was lovely for a change, the campsite was good and we did a lot of walking. On the way back we stopped for a couple of nights at our favourite campsite in Dorset—Eype Mouth. Fantastic weather, views and walking, particularly pleasing as we had cancelled our trip there in early May due to adverse weather—like howling gales and torrential thunderstorms! Not much resting, so I suppose we were a bit silly to spend only three nights at home before coming on this Round-Britain walking trip.

We took too long getting going this morning, got soaked on the cycling bit, and didn’t start the Walk until 2.25pm—we never learn! We were really hungry by the time we locked our bikes to a gate in the industrial estate, and when we found an upturned oval table-top on the river bank we used it as a ‘seat’ to eat our lunch. The river turned a bend almost straight away, and once more we found ourselves walking through a field of heavy horses with their foals! They were lovely—and so gentle. A little further on the river curved the other way where some terraced houses backed on to it. A man (with a fag hanging out of his mouth) came out of one of the back gates on to the bank, and told us he was looking for seals. Apparently he had seen them quite often in that part of the river at certain states of the tide. We didn’t see any, only a heron and shelducks.
We came out on to the road and crossed a bridge over South Forty Foot Drain. On the opposite bank was Boston Dock – ‘Port of Boston into Europe’ it told us proudly. We were hoping that we might be able to take a short cut over the railway bridge into the dock, but it was ‘no-go’—the swing bridge was open and looked as if it was staying that way. So we carried on to the road bridge over the River Witham—such a busy route with traffic thundering by all the time.

Boston Parish Church, St Botolph’s

(Affectionately known as ‘The Stump’)We visited Boston the following day so that we could give ourselves time to wander around. St Botolph’s Parish Church really stands out on the horizon, looking very much like a cathedral though it isn’t one. The reason that such a big church was built in the town is because it was designed at the end of the 13th century when Boston was a large port, second only to London. The wealth of the wool trade paid for it. But it’s history starts way back in Anglo-Saxon times when a monk named Botolph came to the area to preach, and then founded a church—probably a very simple affair. The place was called Botolph’s Stone, but later shortened to Boston. No trace of this original church remain, but the foundations of a later Norman church lie three feet under the south aisle of the present church. The church we see now was built in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.

There is about thirty feet of soft silt under the church, so the early builders had considerable trouble with the foundations. However, by lengthening the chancel, re-roofing and carrying out many repairs to the east side of the nave—where the whole building was leaning—they seemed to solve the problems. Amazingly, there has been little difficulty with slippage over the past five hundred years! The tower was started about 1450 and took seventy years to build. The first architect (there were at least four) took no chances and ordered the foundations to be dug down to the firm boulder clay underneath—this was about five foot lower than the bed of the river. All this digging had to be done by hand, of course, but it paid off because the tower still stands today. We went up it!
There are various theories as to why it was called ‘The Stump’. It is often said that it is unfinished, but the walls of the lantern were built too thin to support a stone spire. Some say the tower resembles a tree with its boughs lopped ready for felling, and that is how it got the name. But it could have been a sneer on the part of Boston’s neighbours, for the importance of the town receded even as the church was built. There is an 18th century rhyme which goes:

Boston, Boston, Boston,
Though hast nought to boast on,
But a Grand Sluice and a tall steeple,
A proud, conceited, ignorant people,
And a coast where souls are lost on.

(Does that last line refer to us?) We were told that they couldn’t build any more on the tower, otherwise it would have sunk into the Fens.
The church has over sixty medieval hand-carved misericords, which we are both finding increasingly interesting. They are a ‘video’, if you like, of medieval life. We got talking to one of the wardens, and he showed us some of the most interesting. Then we climbed the tower, which the warden opened with a big key. There were only 209 steps, but they were big ones and fairly steep so we found it hard going. It was worth it, though, for a birds’-eye view of the roof of ‘Kwik-Save’!! It is so flat around here we could see forever, but in effect not very much. We could see across ‘The Wash’ to the Norfolk side, but it was just a thin misty line on the horizon.

We didn’t turn into the docks because we knew there was no way out. We continued along the road and passed a rather beautiful old building behind magnificent iron railings which is now used as an education centre for slow learners. Nothing wrong with that, you might say, except that it was dwarfed by a number of HUGE storage cylinders. Imagine having those at the bottom of your garden! According to our map there was a footpath leading to the bank of ‘The Haven’—which turns into the River Witham in Boston—directly after the bridge across the Maud Foster Drain (who on earth was she?) but we couldn’t find it. About a hundred yards further on there was a path which led to a T-junction on the river bank. One of the arms of a PUBLIC FOOTPATH signpost pointed directly at a high fence with a trough of barbed wire along the top! Fortunately we needed to turn the other way to get back out to sea again. (What’s the sea? It’s a very long time since we’ve seen it!) We walked past the church we had seen from our starting point on the opposite bank, and passed a girl out walking her dog. We sat on a seat to eat our meat pies (a second lunch) and suddenly we were surrounded by dogs! So many people were out walking them today, and didn’t seem to realise their darling pets were being bothersome. Two of the owners—women of uncertain age—sat down on the bench with us and told us how wonderful their ‘naughty’ dogs were, still oblivious to the fact that they were a wretched nuisance while we were trying to eat our pies!
One of the women told us she had seen a barn owl down by the sewage works (we still had that treat to come!) where they had put up an owl box. She used to treat injured owls, so she told us. The other woman told us she was a ‘Lincolnshire Yellow-Belly’, which meant that she had been born in Lincolnshire. She didn’t really know the origin of the phrase, but it could refer to the laudanum local people used to take when feverish. Another possibility is that it refers to the yellow waistcoats worn by the Lincolnshire Regiment.
We escaped from the canine hounds without giving up any of our pies and without upsetting their doting loopy owners—a great bit of diplomacy there! Continuing down the river bank, we were continually buzzed by a wretched kid on a mini-motor bike. Aided and abetted by a man we took to be his father, he was constantly riding up and down the footpath for the next mile of walking. Perhaps our tolerance level was low, but we just wanted to shout, “Go away!” When we got to the sewage works, he did—perhaps it was too smelly for him! We found the owl box, but it was disappointingly empty.
Further on we came to a memorial to the Pilgrim Fathers. In the early 17th century, a group of Puritans were being persecuted for their religious beliefs. Led by a man called John Cotton, they tried to flee by boat along ‘The Haven’, but they were caught by the authorities at that very spot and imprisoned. After their release, they did manage to escape to Holland. Subsequently they joined others in Plymouth and sailed to America on the ‘Mayflower’. There John Cotton founded the city of Boston, Massachusetts. The memorial stone is in a little park. The inscription reads:

NEAR THIS PLACE
IN SEPTEMBER 1607 THOSE LATER
KNOWN AS THE PILGRIM FATHERS
SET SAIL ON THEIR FIRST ATTEMPT
TO FIND RELIGIOUS FREEDOM
ACROSS THE SEAS

Then it started to rain. Nothing seemed right today, and Colin was getting upset. His incontinence problem was just getting worse and worse which, understandably, was making him very irritable. It is now twenty months since his operation for prostate cancer, and whilst we are both relieved that the cancer has completely gone he is finding the incontinence increasingly difficult to live with. He has tried everything the medical people have suggested to improve it, but the surgeon has at last conceded that essential nerves were permanently damaged during the operation and he will never get control of his bladder back. His one ray of hope is a pioneering operation to fit an artificial sphincter, but first he must go for numerous tests to find out if that is a suitable solution. Then it is another major operation and then they can’t guarantee it will work. His problem today was that he was so out of control he had to find a suitable bush behind which he could change his pad every half hour of the Walk, and he was afraid he hadn’t brought enough spare pads with him to last—or find enough bushes for that matter!
We made our way through a herd of cows all over the path, with a mooing Mum who had been separated from her calf. (Can you really trust such large animals under these circumstances?) Then we actually reached the sea! It was the first time we had seen it since Hunstanton, the other side of The Wash. But it wasn’t with us for long because it soon disappeared behind the marsh. By then it was raining quite heavily and everything was a miserable grey—we didn’t really care any more. On the map the actual sea wall is not marked as a public footpath, but we found that in the field it is signposted as one—so that was all right.
We turned north-east and climbed over a wet stile. There was a large herd of sheep grazing all over the sea bank. As we walked forward, they moved ahead of us baaing away and making an awful racket. We were unintentionally ‘herding’ them, and this went on for two miles! Every so often a batch of them would veer off to the left, go down the bank and allow us to pass them. So our ‘herd’ got smaller as time went on. It was really quite funny, except that we were cold and miserable. Some of the sheep who were behind us kept following, joining in the cacophony with added urgency. We realised that they were Mums, and their half-grown lambs were still ahead of us. None of them had the intelligence to sort this out, and we just kept on walking, our heads down against the rain.
There was, apparently, a young offenders institute somewhere off to the left of us. At one time the lads had done a lot of work building up the sea bank, and there was a stone erected as a tribute to this effort. I’m afraid we took little notice of it because we were so wet by then. Just before we left the sea wall, we saw a barn owl flying about. That cheered us both up no end, it’s amazing what an exciting wildlife sighting will do! At Freiston Shore—where we eventually got rid of the last of the sheep—there was a notice on a gate telling us that we couldn’t go any further along the sea wall because they had breached it to form a marine lagoon. There wasn’t a footpath marked on our map anyway, so we took the track going inland for a quarter of a mile and regained our car at the nature reserve.

That ended Walk no.102, we shall pick up Walk no.103 next time at the nature reserve at Freiston Shore, and in better weather, we hope. We were cold, wet and miserable. It seemed to take forever to collect the bikes and return to our campsite at Burgh le Marsh, and I ended up cooking in the dark again. Quite frankly, we both wished we were at home!