Hello and welcome back to my Blog 😊.

Today, myself and Angela drove to Spalding – a market town on the river Welland in the South Holland district of Lincolnshire. We did a 7- mile circular walk which followed the river Welland, the Coronation channel and Vernatts Drain.

It was a sunny but chilly morning as we left the car park and headed to the river Welland. The river is lined with trees which is nice to see, especially in Autumn.

We passed the church with its fine steeple.

I spotted an old shop sign outside a building – it used to be a cabinet makers workshop.

We followed the Welland for about half a mile and then turned left where we met the Coronation channel.

The Coronation Channel flows north from Crowland, through Spalding and out to the Wash. Land in Spalding had been reclaimed from the wetlands in medieval times. Consequently, Spalding was subject to frequent flooding. The Coronation Channel diverts the excess waters around Spalding and ended the flooding.

We walked along a high embankment which was built from the spoil taken out of the channel. The channel is quite wide – I wondered how deep it was? It was very pleasant walking in the sunshine.

The channel banks had been breached in places from the recent heavy rain.

There were quite a few bridges over the channel including a disused railway line. We stopped on one of the bridges for a cuppa – there was a distinct lack of benches on this walk.

‘What’s that smell?’ said Angela as a particularly obnoxious odour enveloped us. It was coming from a factory adjacent to the bank and was foul! Angela moved into top gear and scooted along the embankment to get away from the smell. I think the factory was an Abattoir.

Continuing along the embankment we could hear church bells ringing and we soon found the church where it was emanating . The ringing was very pleasant on the ear.

We passed some large sluice gates. We had seen a couple of Herons and cormorants along the way.

Further on we passed Spalding Power station. The new £425m, 860 MW combined cycle gas turbine Spalding Power Station, owned by InterGen, was built on the former site of British Sugar in October 2004. A second 300 MW expansion to the existing Power station opened in 2019.

The route we were following was from a guide and clearly it needed updating. The route took us to the very busy A16 where roadworks were occurring and there was little in the way of a path for walkers. We did not enjoy this section which led us to Vernatts Drain (named after one of the engineers who drained the fens).

Walking on the footpath adjacent to Vernatts Drain proved troublesome with overgrown shubbery restricting access. Angela was not happy when she got stung by nettles. Funny smells, no benches and now poor paths, Angela was not enamoured with our walk today.

Eventually the path improved.

We passed a nice house by a bridge and then proceeded along our route to where we needed to cross the railway line.

We found that the old railway crossing had been fenced off so, had to find a different route back through Spalding. Most frustrating.

On our way back to the car we passed a fine looking building with an unusual weathervane- the building is used by Spalding Gentlemen’s Society as a museum! https://www.sgsoc.org/.

So, a mixed bag of a walk and one that we probably would not do again. Still we enjoyed the sunshine and a stretch of the legs.

Happy Walking! 😊🚶‍♂️