A Lovely Walk in the Country

Well, Friday is a no-class day--for everyone! The students are off to London and elsewhere on the first of their 13 three-day weekends. Many of them went on their own rather than with the college tour, so they seem to be a seasoned bunch of travellers already.

It was absolutely gorgeous here today, so I set forth to visit The Dirty Duck, aka The Rutland Arms, a pub some five miles distant from the manor. How did I get there, I hear you cry? I walked. A mile or so out the lane to the entrance of the manor, across the road and down The Drift to the old Grantham Canal, a 33-mile waterway built in 1797 to carry goods between Grantham and Nottingham. Abandoned in the 1936, it lay derelict for almost 50 years before restoration work began in the 1980s. Today, major stretches of the canal have been restored and the tow path doubles as a cycle path (not psycho path, mind you) as part of the National Cycling Network.

I entered the canal path at the Harlaxton Drift bridge and began walking west toward Woolsthorpe.

Cast iron markers at every quarter mile measure the distance to the River Trent

This gives you an idea of the beauty of the pathway. I had beautiful weather as well, 60 degrees and blue skies.

This is the bridle footbridge that carries the public walkway across the canal and toward Denton.

Some of the locals. A swan pair. Don't know if you can see that the one in the rear has one foot tucked up by its tail out of the water and is propelling itself with just one leg.

More locals. Bees swarming a flower that looks to me like a cluster version of a Queen Anne's Lace.

The first of three locks that step down the water level at Woolsthorpe. They are no longer operable.

And at the end of the rainbow, the Rutland Arms, aka, the Dirty Duck where I had a pint and a lovely ham ploughman's lunch. then it was back the five miles to the Manor and nice siesta.

All in all a very successful day.