vinculafido

  The Gorilla.  Where the Grantham canal meets its nemesis - the A1! The gradient of the lane away from the canal towards Barrowby appears slight, but is illusional. As you begin to breast the wold, what looked insignificant now makes the walker blow, or at least this walker.   To be fair the guy in singlet and shorts who was running it ahead of me seemed not to slacken his pace at all.   Inside the village limits a man is picking litter.   As I pass I say thank you, because even if Barrowby has been a three-time winner of ‘best-kept village’, it’s a horrible, unrelenting, painting-the-Forth-bridge sort of a job.   He doesn’t reply, not even a grunt. Well, he may have been deaf, or thought me sarcastic or condescending. Or I wonder, maybe he’s doing a different kind of ‘community service’, and really doesn’t want to be there at all, except it’s preferable to a few days in chokey or a large fine. All Saints’ church is locked, and as I sit on the bench to...

  On a crisp and sparkling morning, I cross the canal bridge where Woolsthorpe’s wharf would have been. As soon as I hit the towpath, there are John and Dave, both uber-cheerful and by their accents, neither of them from round here. John twits me about the compass dangling conspicuously from my neck.  ‘You won’t be needing that’, he says. ‘Well, I might, if I go ‘ off piste ’,  I counter. ‘Not much chance of snow today,’ says he.  And so on.   They’re volunteers for the Grantham canal, the restoration of which is an ongoing project. You can walk its length, pretty much, but it’s closed off at the West Bridgford (Nottingham) end, and also as it arrives near Grantham, because the big gorilla of the A1 blocks the way. Today the only barges working it are for pleasure, courtesy of the Grantham Canal Society. They provide income to support the restoration, and the 2024 season begins this Sunday at Woolsthorpe’s ‘Dirty Duck’ , so get yourselves down there, folks!...