We leave Nettleton Country Park via its north exit and join the main road to Caistor to pick up the Viking away again. It’s rush hour, but not too busy thankfully. As we approach the town, the road climbs steeply. We were not expecting this: Rich says the buildings obscured the contours on the map, but the name Caistor should have given it away, as Roman forts were, unsurprisingly, built on top of hills.
Caistor is another wolds settlement that, like so many of the villages here, looks like a film set of a typical English conurbation. It is historic, quaint and very smart. We pop into the Co-op to buy lunch and are excited to find the Co-op New York Deli sandwiches, hula hoops and a packet of Eccles cakes. We are easily impressed these days. We leave Caistor down another hill and steeply up the other side. The Lincolnshire wolds are giving us a final work out it seems. From the top of the hill, we can clearly see the Immingham refinery and just get our first glimpse of the Humber estuary.
We descend and follow a fairly level section for a few miles. Crossing a field, I spot a roe deer hind sitting in the wheat. She watches us pass without incident, then leaps off into the woods once we have passed. Surprisingly, this is the first wild deer we have encountered.
We climb a final hill and leave the Viking Way as it goes along the side of the hill and we are going up to Searby Top. As we descend, we have a view of Humberside airport which looks somewhat incongruous behind the bucolic landscape. We even pass a cornfield containing the approach lights that guide aircraft in to the runway. We turn onto another track and, as we reach its conclusion we come across The Bridle Path, an unmanned farm shop with an honesty box and a freezer full of ice-cream, so we stop for a break.
We follow footpaths almost up to the airport, circumnavigating the Hampton by Hilton hotel where we are staying tonight. We have an uncomfortable few hundred metres walking along the verge of the A18 (not least because it is starting to rain) then turn into the hotel car park. The reception staff are a bit bemused by this pair of walkers arriving at an airport, but they’re very welcoming, dinner is available later and our room is large and comfortable. It’s also the first room we’ve had with air conditioning! We have said goodbye to the Lincolnshire wolds, but I’m looking forward to crossing the Humber bridge and entering a new county tomorrow.
Total distance so far: 151 miles
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