To Horncastle

August 12, 2024

We get a prompt start to the day, finishing our eggs and pastries and packing up to leave before 10. If we we didn’t have to wait for a trip to the bike shop though we’d have tried to be out significantly earlier because it’s a 25 mile ride to Horncastle on a day that’s supposed to approach 90. We’re on the road right at 10, gingerly walking our bikes down steep Steep Hill Street one last time. It’s been good to be up here where we can easily get up to the historic center of town, but if we ever come back to Lincoln we’ll plant ourselves lower down near the river.

After a block we turn off to Michaelgate and I start pedaling while Rachael keeps pushing because she doesn’t want to tackle the cobbles. As I bike I’m pleased that my chain doesn’t get thrown off again. Maybe it’s stable as long as I don’t shift, and I’m thinking that if we can’t get serviced here we might try biking anyway. There’s a lot of flat between here and our ferry to the mainland, and I won’t need much shifting anyway.

The lighting is poor but I took this shot outside our hotel because I liked the angles of the brickwork.

Even knowing where it’s located from the map, it’s still a little hard to spot where F&J Cycles is located. It doesn’t really have a footprint on the street but is tucked down at the end of an alley, a slot slender enough that there’s barely room for two bikes to pass each other. We know we’ve found the place though by the heavily rusted bike frame hanging from the brick wall, looking like it got fished out of a nearby canal. A lineup of used cheapo bikes for sale filling the back end of the alley completes the picture.

F&J Cycles is Open this morning. Good news so far.

It’s not the most promising look, and makes me anxious about what we’ll find here. Also, after looking at the map again I’m surprised by our location. If we could walk through beyond the walled off end of the alley we’d be at the entrance to Wildwood, the restaurant we had lunch at when we arrived. It looks like those bikes are leaning against the outer wall of its dining hall.

Surprisingly, even though it’s 10:05 when we arrive we aren’t the first, ans there’s another man already there at the entrance dropping off his bike. And while we’re waiting our turn a woman with an eBike queues up behind us. Good thing we got an early start.

I didn’t catch the name so I don’t know if I’m speaking to the F or the J half of the team but the burly, mop-headed guy who greets me says it’s doubtful they have time to help when I ask but then looks over the bike and asks what the issue is. He doesn’t see any problem at first and thinks the derailleur looks fine, but then agrees to give it a look. He writes down my name and our French SIM card number and says he’ll give us a call.

With no idea how long we’ll be waiting, we walk back out to the street and find a wall to sit on, at least partly protected by shade from the already hot sun. Before leaving the alley though I go back to the shop and look in to see if they’ll let me leave my panniers somewhere. I’m thinking here that it could be quite a wait, and I might be lugging them around while we look for a cafe to hole up in for the duration. When I do, I’m happy to see that my bike’s already up on a rack and he’s spinning through the gears giving it the eye. I watch for a few seconds, but he reminds me that he’ll give me a call when he’s got a verdict - he clearly doesn’t want an audience.

While we wait two more bikes arrive in an SUV driven by a lady with her baby in the seat beside. A guy from the shop comes out giving her curb service, grabbing the two bikes and wheeling them up the alley. We chat with her for a few minutes while we wait. she and her husband do quite a bit of biking themselves - they’ve ridden the C2C together, she tells us - and she’s interested in our story. We tell her we’ve been lodged up on Steep Hill, and she tells us of an annual event that happens here with a pack of bikers racing up the cobbles from down by the river, past here and on up to the top of the hill. That must be one crack-up of a scene.

Another five minutes, and here comes Mister F or Mister J pedaling my bike out the alley, hunched over on a frame too small for him and coasting down the hill. He turns a corner, comes back into sight soon and pedals back up, greatly impressing me when he takes a sharp right turn into the narrow alley by hardly slowing down at all. On a strange, missized bike! I wonder if he ever misses, but it makes a good performance.

Hey, there goes my bike! I hope it returns some time.

He cuts quite a figure on that funny looking bike. At first I thought he was even barefoot.

Two minutes later he rushes out of the alley, on foot this time on an errand of some sort - I think he’s off to get a snack. As he passes he says he’ll be back in a few and says the bike’s good and we can start packing up. Hooray!

When he comes back he shows me what the problem was. It’s something if I’d noticed it I could have dealt with it myself, something new that can go wrong that I’ve never seen before. The derailleur cable had somehow gotten lifted up and hooked over the top of the cage so it couldn’t shift naturally. It must have happened on the train somehow. He just lifted the cable off, readjusted the gears, and took it for a spin.

No charge. He shakes my hand and wishes us luck when we go, and once we’re out of earshot Rachael says he gave her a kiss on the cheek and she doesn’t plan to wash her face for awhile.

So - we’re back on schedule again, just with a delayed start on a hot day. It’s not even 11 yet, a far rosier outcome than I’d dared imagine. We head down toward the river three blocks away to pick up the bike path, and only 20 minutes later we finally find our way around the confusing bit near the station and across busy Broadgate and we’re finally on the road.

The River Witham, along a stylish section near the foot of High Street. I think that’s the High Street Bridge just ahead.

I like these acrobats. We haven’t seen a thing in Lincoln but the historic hill district, but I think we’d enjoy coming back for a longer exploration some year.

We’re hardly out of town when another bike traveler going our way appears. He asks if he can ride along with us for a ways, so for the next seven miles we enjoy the company of Nigel, a native of Lincoln out for a cycling escape. We ask how far he’s going, and for how long: he doesn’t know the answer to either, but he thinks for several days at least, and maybe as far as Norwich. He’s hoping he’ll make Boston tonight if it doesn’t rain. Nigel’s done plenty of cycling, is chatty, and for the next half hour out spills a string of good stories about rides he’s taken throughout Western Europe - the Pyrenees, the Alps, Croatia and Montenegro - usually on shorter duration tours of a few weeks at a shot. He has an especially memorable story of riding downhill from the Spanish side through the Vielha Tunnel, something I didn’t even know was legal and nothing he said about it made it like something I’d want to try.

Nigel, on the same steel-framed classic he’s ridden for the last 25 years.

We mostly ride and rely on the GoPro for documentation, but I do stop when we come to this confluence with what the map says is the Old River Witham, presumably its original course before it got straightened.

We’ve passed by several attractive public art works lining the path, nd finally I stop for one.

We part ways with Nigel when we come to Bardney and have a choice of two routes: the Winter Route, which diverges from the canal and stays on pavement, and the more direct but unpaved Summer Route that stays by the river and gets too sloppy to ride in the winter. He opts for the dirt and gravel of course, and we stick with the pavement.

Back on the river again, I hold back to let Rachael lead for a bit so I can get a shot of her riding the interesting slightly sinuous trail.

Another roadside attraction, its shape suggesting the shape of the trail we’re riding.

Rachael doesn’t like to lead though. She says it’s because she likes knowing where I am, which I know means she wants to keep her eye on me so I don’t stop with the camera too often. Probably just as well, as we’d never get there.

Her turn for a trail portrait. Look at the sky though! Its turning overcast, which together with the breeze is giving us more comfortable conditions than we’d feared.

Behind my back I hear GoPro Take Photo!, which produces the snap above. This command is quickly followed by Go Pro Start Recording!, almost immediately followed by an exclamation spoken in a charmed voice: What are you?

Later we’ll pore through her footage to see if we can spot what she saw dash across the trail maybe fifty yards ahead of her. And we find it, barely - it’s on the very first second that the reel was running, and whatever it is dashes into the brush before the next second. It’s a miracle that she captured it.

It’s too far out and too fleeting to get a real look at, so we keep trimming and trimming the clip to isolate it down to just that one second; and then we zoom in to the point that a blurry image starts to become recognizable. It’s maybe the size of a midsized dog, has a funny running style, and a white tail. After studying a guide to the wildlife found in Lincolnshire, my best guess is that it’s a Muntjac deer. Any other opinions?

A few miles on we’re surprised when Nigel overtakes us again. Even though it’s shorter, apparently the Summer Route is the slower one. Eighteen miles into the ride we finally leave the river and Nigel and bike alone on the small roads north for seven miles to Horncastle. As we bike we marvel at the novelty of biking such a long ways over such easy terrain. Thinking back, the only day we can remember like this since leaving Tucson last winter was that short ride from Exeter to Exmouth two months ago.

This is a crop I don’t recognize. About the shade of lavender or maybe chicory, but it’s neither.

I can’t get close enough for a good shot, but I’ve got enough of a zoom to identify it as Phacelia, a cover crop I’ve never heard of before.

The weather turns a bit peculiar toward the end of the ride. It’s quite hot and humid but the breeze keeps it manageable, but as we approach Horncastle we notice a few stray sprinkles. We arrive at our place, the Admiral Rodney Hotel, and have lunch there while waiting for our room to come available, and while we’re eatng we’re startled by a deep rumble. It’s thunder, and the few drops we felt biking into town have developed into an unexpected rain. We’ve gotten here just in time.

Later, Rachael heads off for an overdue trip to the laundromat. But this feels like enough of a report for the day. We’ll be here three nights, so this seems like a sensible place to break off. Were just so happy to be here, after the anxiety we’ve been living with for the last day.

Video sound track: Adrift, by Yasmin Williams

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Today's ride: 25 miles (40 km)
Total: 3,206 miles (5,160 km)

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Graham FinchYou rode along the cycle path past Washingborough -- I know it sooo well.

I stayed in that same hotel in Horncastle a few years ago. My room was huge.
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3 months ago

Scott AndersonTo Graham FinchIt really is an enjoyable ride, and such a change of scene for us after the past two months. I suspect we’ll get tired of the plain terrain soon enough but for now it’s very therapeutic.
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3 months ago