May 15, 2012
Bardney and Wragby
The idea is to set off early, but it's almost noon by the time Roy and I have organized ourselves.
We pedal via the Cathedral and do some photography at Pottergate and on Lincoln's super-steep Steep Hill, replicating a couple of Patterson sketches.
Then the sun goes.
Then the rain starts just as we cycle out of town, so we seek shelter in a park named the Arboretum where we sit and have a late lunch of bacon and mushroom sandwiches in a café, waiting for the dark clouds to blow over.
It's mid-afternoon by the time they do and we leave Lincoln with me wondering about the plan for an early start.
We ride east, near where I used to live as a child, and up an irrelevant incline that as a child saw me pushing my three-speed bike. It's then a little drop into a dip at the edge of Lincoln and I recall whizzing down it at what had seemed great speed.
The other side used to be mission impossible and no one I went to school with at that time could ride up the 100 metre slope. I tell Roy about it and he's obviously wondering how such a little hill could have caused me to walk, as he effortlessly cruises up it at 15 km/hr, but of course he isn't ten years old and has lots of low gears at his disposal.
After the village of Fiskerton we start on a bike path built on what was once a railway line after crossing the River Witham at Five-Mile Bridge.
Trains would have stopped at the small station that's now gone and passengers would have got off and gone across the water by a small ferry.
We have a back-wind and it's quite sunny, although clouds do drift across the sky and cast shadows as we make our way to the village of Bardney, where I guess goods trains used to go to collect sugar made at a factory. That's before lorries replaced them.
The village has a lot of new-ish housing, but the church dates way back. Just around the corner from it is a street called Finch Way, so Roy and I pose for a snap by its sign before making our way north to Wragby.
We didn't stop once we get to the village and instead head towards Lincoln on the busy main road. This isn't the sort of road for cycling along and I remember having a torrid time as a child, pedaling back to Lincoln into a head wind and this is the same kind of experience before we turn off the A 158 at the first left.
Not far along the narrow lane is a sign simply stating historic church and it points into a field of yellow, shoulder-high rape.
We go down the grassy track to have a look and find the red brick structure open and its interior tidy, the woodwork painted a matt gray. Once, back in medieval times, there was a village around it, but Goltho has completely disappeared with this church the only thing left standing.
Today's ride: 45 km (28 miles)
Total: 2,797 km (1,737 miles)
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