Hello and welcome back to my blog 😊.
Following a very wet start to the day the rain eventually stopped and myself and Mick were able to enjoy a lovely 10 mile circular walk.
We drove down the A1 and ended up stuck in a traffic jam for about a mile – the A1 is a notorious accident prone road through Lincolnshire. Parking in the Lincolnshire village of Swinstead our walk would take us to Creeton, Scottlethorpe and Edenham. A good deal of the walk today was across the Grimsthorpe Castle Estate. https://grimsthorpe.co.uk/
What was particularly nice about the walk, for us, was that we weren’t expecting a large estate with castle and so this was a pleasant surprise.
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Leaving Swinstead we took paths across fields and reached a valley with a small stream running through it which we crossed via a wooden bridge.
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We were pleased that there were no wet crops in the fields – we had got quite wet on our last walk .
We headed up Gorse Hill towards The Drift (a long distance track). The Drift runs parallel to the East Coast Mainline Railway and so, we watched numerous trains passing us -its a busy line!
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We reached the small hamlet of Creeton where we happened upon a bench and took time to enjoy a cuppa.
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Leaving Creeton Mick spotted a small herd of wild Deer in a field. Finding wild deer is definitely becoming more commonplace in England.
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Along the way we would find numerous notices warning that shooting of deer was taking place, although we didn’t hear any munitions today.
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We passed through some nice wooded areas in the Estate and Mick thought he had spotted a wood-pecker.
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One or two drops of rain started to fall but it didn’t amount to anything 😊. Our route took us through the small hamlet of Scottlethorpe and we were soon walking into the village of Edenham where there were roadworks occurring.
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We walked through the village , past the pub (looked nice) over a bridge across the river , through a field containing well behaved cows and another containing sheep.
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Shortly, we could see the large lake belonging to the Castle and then the castle itself. Our route took us around the outside of the lake.
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The castle is the home of Jane Heathcote-Drummond-Willoughby, 28th Baroness Willoughby de Eresby. Grimsthorpe has been the home of the de Eresby family since 1516. The park is 3,000 acres and is 5 miles across at its longest point. Apparently the castle was a filming location for the latest series of Bridgerton.
We were enjoying the views of the castle and lake. At this stage we had walked 9 miles and not met a soul.
It wasn’t long before we were walking back into Swinstead.
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Arriving back at the car we both agreed that it had been a cracking walk. It had been quite undulating so we were feeling it in ours legs. I am sure we will be doing this walk again.
Happy Walking! 😊🚶♂️