Most of October had been mild, wet and sometimes windy until a ridge of high pressure passed through giving a brief window of calmer weather. Ahead was the weekend for changing the clocks so this made it a good time to get up before light as with the clocks due to go back it […]
The Autumn Equinox
Over the last two years I have spent many days discovering the special nature of the southern Lincolnshire Wolds, which is often only revealed under the right conditions and often well away from any roads. This quest to understand the special qualities of this still unspoiled countryside was to help me write my blog tennysoncountry.com. […]
Discovering Tennyson Country
With studying and exploring the southern Lincolnshire Wolds in detail for tennysoncountry.com and researching many events through time, both geological and historical that created this intimate environment, this blog is as much about the landscape with which Tennyson was so familiar as it is about the great poet himself. These events not only moulded the […]
Hill Wapentake
When at school I had to learn a hymn that started “There is a green hill far away”. The only green hills I was interested in back then were the Wolds, which I visited at weekends with friends on our bikes looking for steep hills and clear streams. The green hill I am standing on […]
Damp Dale & Ashby Puerorum
Whereas Green Hill is made up of free draining chalk, as are the hills that surround it, just five miles away Damp Dale is a valley of impervious clay surrounded by ridges of drier sandstone. Along the boundary between the two types of strata many small streams issue from the ground and coalesce in the […]
Gone is “All the land in flowery squares”.
All the land in flowery squares, This is a line from Tennyson’s The Gardener’s Daughter a relatively early poem by the bard. It is referring to the countryside in May, which he was familiar with while growing up in Lymndale. The squares are small hedged fields filled with meadow flowers and much more. After then […]
Widening the Wolds
Although the Lincolnshire Wolds AONB stretches some 50 kilometres from north to south (Caistor to Gunby) the distance across it south of Louth is as little as 11 kilometres. North of Claxby St. Andrew the eastern boundary follows close to the line of the 50 metres contour, which overlooks the marsh up to Little Cawthorpe. […]
Partney & Spilsby.
For a main road the drive along the A16 down Dalby Hill to Partney is one of the most pleasant in the Wolds. You pass through Dalby, which is mostly hidden by tall trees, and also hides one of the most pleasant walks in these parts. This takes you through the Dalby Estate all the […]
Tennyson Knolls
In Tennyson’s In Memoriam A.H.H. he spends a significant amount of time reminiscing of days spent with his close friend Arthur Hallam at his family home in Somersby. It allows the reader to get a glimpse into life at the rectory, especially at Christmas, but there is one section (XCV) which he describes spent in […]
Langton Old Road
Langton is placed in the middle of an area once nick named “Spilsbyshire” for it was distinguished for having so many grand houses or halls in the locality. Many still stand today in Langton’s neighbouring villages but some have been lost like Eresby Hall, the grandest of them all, on the edge of Spilsby. […]
Tennyson Country 