In the footsteps of Tennyson
On becoming motorhome owners, Andrew and I began exploring many parts of the UK that were previously a blank page for us. In search of another ‘unknown’ destination, I stumbled across the Lincolnshire Wolds – rolling chalk hills rising between the Humber and the Wash. My interest was piqued further when I read that Alfred Lord Tennyson, the Victorian Poet Laureate, grew up in a Wolds village and that much of his verse was inspired by this environment.
On a map the area looks pretty empty and undeveloped and I gain the impression of a place where villages and countryside have changed little over the past two centuries. Might we find here a bucolic olde-worlde England that ‘progress’ has obliterated elsewhere?
The landscape is extraordinarily flat as we drive across north Lincolnshire on the M180. It appears totally two-dimensional, except for the deep ditches draining the sodden fields.
Then, suddenly, on the A1084 at Bigby, we twist up a steep hill on to the north tip of the Wolds. The rain stops at Caistor – and so do we. For centuries wool was a major product of the surrounding uplands and the largest sheep fairs in England were held here, with 60,000 sheep sold in 1858 alone.
A curate, who is preparing for a christening, welcomes us into the ancient church of St Peter and
