20260507-08 Peterborough to Boston to Lincoln

Thursday May 7th. The route from Peterborough to Boston was very flat, following canals (the Fens) on sparsely travelled roads. It was cool but sunny, and we were kept company only by the cattle on the sides of the canals. When we arrived in Boston, the streets were filled with a massive carnival midway because, apparently, Henry the Eighth had declared that there should be a fair in Boston every year, and carnival workers and people still come from all around the country to be a part of it.

We checked into the hotel, secured the bikes, and checked out the excellent museum in the Guildhall before it closed. Boston is where the “Separatists” (vs. the ‘Puritans’) were centred, and were jailed when they tried to emigrate to Holland to avoid religious persecution. Emigration was illegal, so they were imprisoned in the Guildhall. A few years later they successfully made it to Holland, only to be treated badly, under-employed as menial workers. In Holland they arranged to buy two ships in Southampton, the ‘Pilgrms’ made their way back across the channel to prepare for a voyage to the ‘New World’. One of the ships proved to be unseaworthy, but the ‘Mayflower’ crossed to Provincetown, Cape Cod. From there they made several rowboat excursions, eventually settling on Plymouth as a place to begin their new lives.

The tower of Boston’s St Botolph’s church, or ‘The Stump’ was visible to us for quite a while as we crossed the Fens.

We heard a lot of Polish being spoken as we walked around Boston.It has the largest population of Polish-speaking people outside of Poland!

57 km. 6400 steps.

Friday May 8th, we left Boston and followed a route alongside canals and disused train lines (read, “flat”). Halfway to Lincoln we spied a butcher’s shop with red and white awnings. Inside, we procured a still-warm-from-the-oven sausage roll, and some carrot cake muffins and savoured them, standing outside the shop, in the sunshine.

Carrying on, we spotted Lincoln’s massive cathedral atop a hill in the distance about 11 kilometres from town. We followed impossibly steep streets through the city up to almost the top of the plateau, checked in to our B’n’B, and then took ourselves on a walkabout. We found our pal Richard Harrop’s recommendation for dinner – Hobbson’s Pie Shoppe (formerly Mrs. Brown’s) on “Steep Street” (that name was not a misnomer) and made a reservation for dinner. There seemed to be a lot of people in town, probably because Lincoln’s famous Grand Prix 28 mile and 100 mile bicycle races were on the schedule for Saturday and Sunday.

We had a tour of the magnificent Lincoln cathedral and then caught Evensong (full choir, including 8 young boys – some of them scalliwags. (Also, the fastest performance of Jesu Joy we have ever heard!!!)

The plasterwork in the cathedral bears the mark of some plasterers with wonderful senses of humour. Sadly, we neglected to look for the infamous Lincoln Imp. Dinner at Hobbson’s did not disappoint: British comfort food. Chicken pot pie, mashed potatoes, gravy, peas. Then we toddled back down the hill to our B’n’B and fell fast asleep.

57 kilometres + 7800 very, very, very hilly steps.