Bartimaeus

Having enjoyed staying long enough to visit the windmill, we were lucky enough to have a nice day to cycle there. It is part of Route 1 and so it was interesting to see cycle signs that were the same as the ones in Edinburgh. We arrived just at opening time.

It was a calm day so the sails weren’t moving, but they are a working mill that is only open to visitors twice a week. People can walk round without a guide. There were no explanatory signs but items were in place that mostly allowed you to see the different stages, though we had a chance to ask questions at the end and that filled in the gaps. We took the opportunity to buy some cake and flour. There were three sets of milling stones but they usually ran 2 at a time.

At the top we could walk round outside and there were swifts flying past. We had a good view of the part of the canal that we had failed to reach.

We covered the miles, in fine weather and had good grebe and cormorant sightings. One cormorant was spreadeagling itself in a tree, nicely outlined. One flew over us as the same time as a model aeroplane and I snapped them together. The model aeroplane buzzed around beside us for quite a while.

That afternoon we were repeatedly deafened by RAF craft roaring overhead. The noise made me unwilling to moor up nearby but Shane had another plan. Perhaps he already guessed that they only ran 9-5. He was aiming for a stop at a pub and caravan site we had stopped at before, but not explored nearby. It must have been a weekend when no planes were coming over.

He asked if I could guess what he thought we might see. I suggested a pumping station and he said yes. On the up side it wasn’t a sewage pumping station this time. It was for fresh water. We moored up by the Packet Inn. I wondered if this was a pun on giving up, but there is a boat called a packet too. There was no visual to help. The sign at the water side was a bit broken and I thought it said Arden, but it meant Garden.

We arrived promptly just as they were putting up the signs to say they were open and assured us it was perfect timing. Originally this was a coal fired steam engine but it was currently run with a diesel boiler, and the old boiler is still there to see but not fuelled. It is the only functioning beam engine of its kind in the world. It uses a lot of diesel and they were keen to fund raise. There were stalls with tombola, home made preserves (I chose loganberry jam) and tea and home made cakes, all made by enthusiastic volunteers and from flour donated by the mill we had visited in the morning. To my surprise there was a trail of knitted dogs with name tags to collect plus several other puzzles. I was a bit slow to notice the connection was with the name Dogsdyke Pumping station.

It was indeed quiet overnight then noisy again after nine. Shane had managed to scope out another couple of interesting stops in the day. We arrived at the small village of West Lindsay and visited a small church, built over 100 years ago as a temporary structure by a local carpenter. I walked in to find it full with a “knit and natter” group. Craftsmen and craftswomen were clearly a big part of this tiny community.

Later we stopped short of our eventual mooring, at Bardney, where he had hoped to see a station heritage centre. It was clearly closed but not clear when it might be open. Shane had been reading some days and times on a sign in the building beside the gated car park, but that was a fish and chip shop and the opening hours were not helpful. Anyway we had stretched our legs. We moved on to our water point, lock and mooring at the end of a very hot day.

Our next stop was the guillotine lock back at Lincoln, which Shane operated, but luckily we hadn’t planned to stop in Lincoln this time as we saw no empty visitor moorings.

We arrived in Saxilby to overnight and I can attest that the cafe sells a good range of cakes as well as lunches. I was amused by their doorstop and wet floor warning sign in the shape of a banana. You have been warned it is slippy.

It was another hot day and sitting watching butterflies was a perfectly good hobby. A swan couple wanted both breakfast and lunch. I really liked the sig bird identification made by a children’s art club.