underhump

Despite passing over this at least every secondary schoolday, I've probably only been through the underneath of this forty or fifty times. Fairly shortly after we moved to the area there was some sort of organised or sponsored walk from Horncastle to Woodhall along this path, part of the county-spanning Viking Way and locally termed the Spa Trail, after which it was several years before I went through it again. The section near the village we went through all the time, despite the efforts of the golf people to annex even more of the original rail bed than they started with, then went less frequently beyond Sandy Lane as the quality of the path went down significantly. Similarly the Horncastle end was a boggy path on the levee beside the river round the back of the swimming pool, but there was never a need or reason to go between the two except on occasions of special exploration and when the D of E bronze expedition, after camping overnight at Low Toynton after going over Fulletby from Tetford, continued to Woodhall along the path as far as Iddesleigh Road.
When I sometimes walked home from Horncastle after an evening in the pub or round at the Stow's I'd usually just go along the road, as it seemed slightly more direct and was slightly less completely unlit. Likewise when practising walking for school camping trips I'd just go along the road, sometime switching to the path at the picnic area just Woodhallwards of the bridge. I took Nicky along here in 2007, just after they'd started investing slightly in resurfacing, then tried to get along each visit thereafter if there was a bike available as some of the nastier bits were eventually resurfaced, including the section on the opposite bank of the river leading to the swimming pool, with a new entry point between some new houses and Bush tyres at the bottom of Langton Hill. There are now a few sculpturey bits, benches and information boards here and there, rather than just nothing except the old station shelter half a mile behind where I took this. Just to the north-east there's a familar small clump of pine-looking trees, visible from the road the school bus took, including one broken by a lightning strike which always looks half-dead but which has survived in its current bent/cracked state for about forty years.
I won't have time on this visit to get everywhere, so I set off early to see some exemplary bits of the narrow and poorly-surfaced but generally peaceful and very cycleable quarter between the Stixwould road and Horncastle Road, passing Reed's Beck, through Horsington, Wispington, almost Minting then Edlington and Thimbleby before heading back through Horncastle. It rained medium-pervasively all the way, though the majority of the crap clinging to the bike when I got back was from the Spa Trail section, despite the occasional patch of classic Mud On Road going past Waddingworth. The most direct alternative route to Horncastle through Old Woodhall is nice, but quite short and sometimes busier with farm traffic, so I wanted to go out a fair way to make the way back a fair way too.