Wolds World - Good to be home!

Its summer in the Wolds and the trees are in full leaf. June is the favourite month of the year for me and following a recent trip to the deep south I reflected that we are very lucky to live where we do.

We went to Brighton, generally regarded as London by the Sea. I stood by the pier and thought I really would have to go and get a couple of tattoos and a piercing to fit in!

People rushed everywhere, but one of the aspects I liked was that it is such a multicultural place with the unconventional all about me.

I stood on the station platform trying to master the ticket machines and thinking that here my senior railcard was totally out of place.

We wondered where to stay for a couple of nights; Newhaven for the continent or Eastbourne for the incontinent! As I’ve mislaid my passport it had to be the latter!

Without getting in to the debate, it occurred to me while on the south coast and gazing out to sea, that 75 years ago so many young men were willing to pay the ultimate sacrifice to set our continental neighbours on the path back to freedom. We will remember them!

On our way to the channel coast we tested the Dartford Crossing and managed to get over in the regulation half an hour, though paying the toll by phone took a little longer.

The M25 was another reminder of the roads of the Wolds. If there are four cars waiting at Holton le Moor level crossing we regard it as a hold up; try the M25 near Heathrow!

I got peeped at Holton recently for not getting a move on after the barrier was raised. I got peeped and shouted at in Winchester-posh city of the south, but not a patch on Lincoln.

Standing on the crowded station at London on Sea, I reflected that unless you support Lincoln City, as my friend Gordon keeps reminding me, then there is little danger of getting lost hereabouts in a crowd.

A Scunthorpe or Grimsby supporter getting a sense of crowd is not a recent experience. The crowd on Brighton Station was bigger than a Scunthorpe home gate!

Thankfully we made it back home to the Wolds where we can still take pride in our landscape and heritage.

There were three of us waiting for the ‘express’ on Barnetby Station and five cars queuing in Bargate going in to Grimsby.

Time moves slowly here just like in the roadside fields.

The yellow rape faded while we were away and the planters in Caistor Market Place are ready for their fill.

Cricketers are playing with their bats and balls down at the sports ground in Caistor and I have returned to the golf course - only to play as badly as ever. The compensation with that is that I get to explore and appreciate the rich diversity of flora and fauna in our local woodland.

The West Lindsey Churches Festival and the Wolds Walking Festival have come and gone in May and the volunteers in both deserve huge credit for making them such a success once again.

It will soon be Lincolnshire Show time and the ladies of Binbrook WI will be making their jam!

Thankfully in June in the Wolds we can all breath in the fresh Lincolnshire air and enjoy the long evening light.

Celebrate high summer, take a holiday yes for you will ever more be grateful for the ‘green green grass of home - thankful annually for ‘Weed and Feed’ - but that’s another story!