A brief explanation of the maps and cross sections included in this post. The map below is designed specifically to highlight the irregular distribution of hills in the area, which is unusual for a chalk escarpment in England and is due to the many different bands of sediment that lie between the top of the […]
Tag: Habitats.
Biscathorpe and the River Bain
The A 157 road from Lincoln to Louth is an attractive route to cross the Wolds and the climax to this is crossing Grim’s Mound Rigg just east of Burgh on Bain. This north-south ridge climaxes just north of the road at Grim’s Mound described by the Heritage Gateway thus – the earthwork remains of […]
Geological Profiles of Snipe Dales & Lymndale.
Overview The following series of profiles are cross-sections of Snipe Dales and its beck down to and including the River Lymn. They show how although the band of Spilsby Sandstone is only around ten metres thick, with it dipping gently from southwest to northeast, it continues the length of the dale from Winceby to Sausthorpe […]
Beyond Snipe Dales
Snipe Dales Beck starts near the small dispersed hamlet of Winceby. Here the spring line between the porous Spilsby Sandstone and impervious Kimmeridge Clay beneath is just below the 100-metre contour. Six kilometres east and after a descent of eighty metres Snipe Dales Beck joins the River Lymn where this same geological boundary is nearer […]
Making the most of the Wolds.
The Lincolnshire Wildlife Trust states in their Winter 2021 Lapwings magazine : “Bigger, more robust, nature reserves will be better able to withstand the effects of climate change and if we can link them into a coherent network, we will allow species to move across the landscape better and prevent fragmentation and isolation of vulnerable […]
Wet and Wild Carrs
After a spell at Louth George Tennyson took his sons out of the school there, that they hated, and set them up in a converted medieval bathhouse just outside their home village of Somersby. This old building was set in an old wood across a field from the rambling rectory where Alfred lived with his […]
The River Lymn and its Tributaries.
The small streams that come together to form the River Lymn run down from the hills west of Tetford. They pass through the village as a fast flowing stream which at this stage is the very epitome of Tennyson’s brook. Particularly just past Tetford watermill it babbles over rocks and roots as it hurries through […]
Traversing Lower Lymndale.
This traverse begins on the Ulceby Chalk Plateau. Apart from said hamlet this 100 metre high plateau for most of history was empty and windswept crossed by a few lonely roads. On old maps it is referred to as the Great Furze meaning mainly gorse scrub. It allowed until Tennyson’s youth for clusters of Stone […]
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 […]