Hello and welcome back to my blog 😊.

It was a beautiful, sunny, blue -sky day this morning as myself and Mick met up in the Lincolnshire village of Skillington. Our original plan was to park in the village hall car park but we arrived to find the gates locked. – not a good start! Undeterred, we drove on and easily found parking in the village.

Chris, the third member of the Three Amigos, was not around for this walk but he was in spirit!

The walk today was new to us and billed as a 6.5 mile circular walk. It was great to be exploring new territory.

Easily finding the path out of the village we crossed a number of fields and then reached a wider track which we followed.

A red kite was circling quite low above our heads – lovely to see😊 . Our path skirted some woods and then brought us to a track called The Drift. The Viking Way route runs along this track.

This was a good spot to enjoy a cuppa and a scotch egg (my favourite snack!). I commented on how dry the route had been so far, given that we had had torrential rain a couple of days earlier. Later on the walk I would wish that I had kept my thoughts to myself!

Walking along The Drift we came unexpectedly to an airfield – we discovered it is Buckminster Gliding Club. Previously it was Saltby RAF base.

Our route took us past the end of the concrete runway. We passed 4 gliders that were on the ground – I think it was probably too windy to fly a glider.

We passed a memorial to those who had worked at the former base.

The airfield started operational life in 1942 as a training unit initially with Hampden bombers and later Wellington bombers. In 1943 the base was handed over to the USAAF who, with the 82nd Airborne division, were preparing for D-Day.

Moving on we passed the storage area for the gliders and the main office block.

Leaving the glider club The Drift started to show signs of the heavy rain. We had to negotiate around several very large puddles. I wished that I had kept quiet earlier.

As we walked on the path was getting badly chewed up by vehicles involved in timber logging. We ended up climbing on the side embankments to avoid the deep pools of water. Hope I don’t slip off this, I thought. The day was warming up so off came the jackets – maybe a sign of better weather to come? I hope so.

There was some undulation through this section. Eventually, we left The Drift and headed across a field full of sheep and cute lambs. All were enjoying the sunshine.

We picked up a path called Buckminster Lane which, with a little bit of up, brought us back into the lovely village of Skillington and the finish of our walk.

We had enjoyed a 6.5 mile meander through the countryside enjoying the spring sunshine. The highlight of was stumbling across the Gliding Club.

Happy Walking! 😊🚶‍♂️