An idiots guide to an idiot: Walking the ground.

An idiots guide to an idiot: Walking the ground.: I drove past road signs to Naseby the other day and it got me thinking about battlefields I've walked round.  Not very many to be honest...

Walking the ground.

I drove past road signs to Naseby the other day and it got me thinking about battlefields I've walked round.  Not very many to be honest and all in England at that! 

So what is it about walking the ground? I'd say I'm quite unimaginative generally but give me a battlefield and it comes to life!  You can read book after book  but to stand at the hedge where Okey's Dragoons  fired  into the Royalist cavalry flanks at Naseby and understand the terrain is something else.  The very streets of St Albans were the battlefield at the First Battle of St Albans during the Wars of the Roses in 1455 and  the road  layout and  alot of the buildings  still exist! 

You can still find your way round the Battle of Barnet (1471) and understand why certain things happened the way they happened. It's my ambition to walk more battlefields in the UK & in Europe. With such a wealth of records available now I could find  where my Grandad was on the first day of the Somme in 1916, I could walk the ground at Bullecourt where Tara's Grt Uncle disappeared on 3rd May 1917 and of course I'd love to see and explore the D-Day beaches plus the earlier battles like Waterloo, Agincourt, Crecy et al.

Walking the ground is vitally important to grasp and understand what happened, not to mention the fact that in no small measure you are walking the path of heroes. There's really nothing like it!

   

The perils of a pub dinner.

 There was two pubs in the village of Saltfleet, both walkable from the cottage we were staying in. Happy days!

The New Inn backed onto a caravan/mobile home/holiday park site so they've pretty well got a  captured market. It was OK. We were amused to be asked  to sit in a different bar as we had Ida with us. The bar we could sit in was just as tatty & underwhelming as the non dog bar! Anyway, bit of a wait on food  but we were told this from the off so no problem there. Tara had her  two choices off the menu, even though I'd contacted them prior to see whether they did  gluten free and veggie. Two choices isn't exactly much of a choice! Tara had mushroom stroganoff  which was  fine and I steak & stilton pie......there're still looking for the stilton, there certainly wasn't any in my pie!  Choice of beer wasn't great either. A thoroughly underwhelming experience but worse was to come. 

As I said there was another pub in the village so all was not lost, or so we thought. On going up to the bar in The Crown  first of all the handpump beers were off, not a very inspiring start that just got worse. Pretty basic menu, only item flagged as gluten free & veggie was a pizza. Fine! pizza it is......'Sorry! Not doing pizzas tonight.' Anything else gluten free & veggie? 'Well there's chicken salad' said  our waitress who looked like she had Groucho Marx moustache as an eyebrow. I kid you not. What a dismal experience. Mission  abandoned  we went back to the cottage and rustled up  some grub that was both gluten free & veggie, with a very acceptable red wine.  

We'd just about given up on eating out but found a pub in nearby North Somercotes called the Axe & Cleaver.  I'd   phoned to book, went through our usual rigmarole of asking about their food and making sure we could take Ida. All good, we booked for  that evening. Though bizarrely when we got there, we were told someone had phoned an hour before and cancelled the booking! Even quoting the gluten free needs  etc, well it wasn't us!    However the staff couldn't have been more helpful and friendly and we were quickly found a table. Great food, a  good selection for Tara to choose from, all the staff just a delight. Had we been staying longer we'd have gone there  again, a sumptuous three sausage  ( Lincolnshire sausages of course!) mash and onion gravy for me and quorn shepherds pie for Tara  followed by sticky toffee pud and custard for me and Tara had probably the biggest Pavlova I've ever seen!  Here's the link to their website if you are ever in that area.https://www.axeandcleaver.com/ Well worth it! 

Ida and I had a pleasant walk along the sand dunes just before the weather broke on the last full day of our stay. We walked inland to a place called Hardy's Pullover, walking from the beach towards a red flag  in the car park. Next to the red flag was a sign  that stated not to go past this point if the red flag is flying it's an RAF gunnery range..... the direction from which we had just come! 

 We'd had a pleasant time in Lincolnshire though the roads even by Bedfordshire's low standards were pretty potholed and uneven  all adding greatly to T's discomfort. There's not a great amount to see or do on the Lincolnshire coast, we made the mistake of driving through Mablethorpe that seemed to be full of obese families  eating fish n chips, drinking Watney's Red Barrel & wearing Kiss me quick hats.   Absolutely great if you like that kind of thing. Saltfleet was a pleasant little place  but had a main road running through it which was a shame.

 

An idiots guide to an idiot: The perils of a pub dinner.

An idiots guide to an idiot: The perils of a pub dinner.:  There was two pubs in the village of Saltfleet, both walkable from the cottage we were staying in. Happy days! The New Inn backed onto a ca...

An idiots guide to an idiot: Church

An idiots guide to an idiot: Church:  Walked to a disused church today. Very pleasant walk to it over fields and along what they call drains but are streams of varying size. The...

Church

 Walked to a disused church today. Very pleasant walk to it over fields and along what they call drains but are streams of varying size. The church of St Botolph's was closed n the 1970's though it appears burials still take place here, strangely the building has been completely gutted. I thought maybe the altar and font may be in situ but they've gone as well. As have the windows, this could be to deter vandals though there's some graffiti on the inner walls.

There's six graves of Merchant Seaman washed up during World War Two, only one of them has been named. This is to Ordinary Seaman Roderick John McPhee McDonald an 18 year old Glaswegian killed on 21st Oct 1939 when his ship the SS Orsa hit a mine off Flamborough Head. She was taking coal from from the Tyne to Bordeaux. 16 sailors perished.

Continued our walk, only about 3 miles but it was nice and peaceful.

     

Took another walk later in the date over toward the sea. Its too far out to walk to so we just walked the edge by the dunes. Very pleasant.

An idiots guide to an idiot: Lincolnshire

An idiots guide to an idiot: Lincolnshire:  A few days away in a coastguards cottage in Saltfleet on the Lincolnshire coast. We can enjoy it properly this time too as there's no p...

Lincolnshire

 A few days away in a coastguards cottage in Saltfleet on the Lincolnshire coast. We can enjoy it properly this time too as there's no pressure of being out of a job, its also far nicer than the place we had in the Peaks a month or so ago, in fact things are looking up. It was a long drive and there's no doubt more people are holidaying in the UK  as there was queues to get into both service areas we tried to stop at!

Had a nice walk from the cottage yesterday that took us over countryside and coastline and much to my pleasure we happened upon a World War Two pillbox. A Lincolnshire 3 chamber pillbox to be exact. Containing a central open area for a light anti aircraft gun and two chambers either side for Bren guns. There is loopholes facing the sea and facing inland. Never used in anger of course but these things do fascinate me.