vinculafido

  'Peace doves' installation: Lincoln Cathedral: Peter Walker The drive from Grantham towards Lincoln is just an extended memory lane. My pilgrim’s route has already taken me on foot through most of these villages. As I motor on, what stays with me is no replay of aching muscles or pinched toes. Rather, I feel a golden-hued nostalgia for the beauty and kindness I met. Every day was filled with sunshine, or so it seems. But then, as previously observed, I’m a glass-half-empty person, and a fair-weather rambler. At Waddington I take a few moments to see what St. Michael’s looks like when there’s no jumble sale in the offing. It’s spiritually comfy: there are echoes of my own childhood religion in the surroundings – 20 th century modernist architecture, an infant-friendly depiction of God’s care for his creation, the bones of Christian theology laid out in front of the congregation – but I’m remembering a different era and a different denomination.   So then, not ‘change and deca

  I negotiate refuse trucks and nervous drivers and then find a safe place to park in Coleby’s narrow streets. It’s said there can be distant views of the Boston Stump if you go to the village junction with the A607, but though the pollution cloud of the last few days has cleared and the morning is bright, there’s still too much haze to see that far. The path is flat today along the top of the ‘Cliff’s’ little escarpment, so I’m taking it easy in Merrells. Across the green I pass an enormous disconnected arch at the back entrance to Coleby Hall. Does it celebrate some battle triumph of an erstwhile owner? Maybe they saw action at Waterloo or Cr è cy, or would have liked to. The stones which support its span are huge, robbed out from some grand long-gone building. I head north, fields to my right and a secluded tennis court to my left.   The crops are mown to stubble now, and there’s been no rush to plough them in. In the end, after all the dampness earlier in the summer, the harvest