London to York, Pt 2

We survived London.

Our first destination was north, in Lincolnshire. St Botolph’s is a decommissioned church sitting on marshland near the tiny village of Skidbrooke, not far from the Lincolnshire coast. It was mentioned by a ghost-hunting friend of ours as one of the most haunted locations he had ever investigated, and while it took us a little further east than we were planning on the way to York, we figured we had time.

Once on the secondary highway, my biggest problem the first day was staying too far left. I’m still not certain why exactly – I think it was both the unfamiliar dimensions of the vehicle I was in, and the (probably not uncommon for Yanks) discomfort of having traffic coming at me on the right side. Sharon barked at me several times on that two hour stretch about being too far left, and indeed, I curb rashed the poor VW’s left front tire more than a few times. We stopped a couple of times in the handy little turnouts (one thing about British highways I was grateful for, especially as the secondary highways had next to no shoulder.) to catch a smoke. We didn’t smoke in the rental car – I think they threatened us with imprisonment or something. Probably just as well, I would have burned through my carton in about a day and a half. 

This was also the day I met the roundabouts. I think we counted 26 on that first day alone. I approached them a bit too cautiously and got screwed up on my entrance-lane choices more than once. The GPS was pretty good about sending us into the right exit from them (even if the signs referred to each exit by their road number, and the GPS used street names – another wrinkle that made the whole driving thing a daily exercise in cheating death), and Sharon learned quickly to tee me up by saying “ok, exit at 11 o’clock….12 o’clock”, using a clock face image to help me line up my roundabout escape. That worked well, and we stuck to that system for the next 10 days. 

Lincolnshire was mostly uneventful. Flat country, agricultural, not too much unlike driving through Illinois or Ohio. We had a number of tricky diversions and county roads to hit, so Sharon kept a close eye on the GPS.

…but did manage to snap a quick photo of The Stump, as we were driving around the ancient city of Boston. Ironically, the tower is attached to the ancient church of St Botolph's – but not the one we were headed toward.

The route to our St Botolph’s, which is kind of near the village of Skidbrooke (but in reality isn’t really ‘near’ anything), plotted us more or less around any major towns, but we came upon a motorcycle accident at a roundabout and was forced to head in to Louth. Our first encounter driving through one of England’s innumerable ancient market towns, and it woke me up.

Early afternoon Monday, and the city was buzzing – and, bang!,  hello to narrow streets lined with parked cars leaving about 1.4 car-widths for passage in either direction. After relaxing a little from the harrowing London experience, I suddenly tightened up again, trying to both negotiate the duck-in, duck-out rhythm of getting down two way streets designed for Roman carts now jammed with buses, delivery vans and Range Rovers, all of whom I imagined sensed and sneered at my CluelessYankDriverness. The city was beautiful – I felt like I wanted to just park the damn VW and get out and stroll the sidewalks, but we were already almost two hours behind schedule, and the thought of actually parallel parking the thing was just too much for my traffic-geometry overloaded mind to contemplate. I kept hearing “…you fookin’ piece of shit” in the back of my brain, and figured it was only a matter of time before I earned my very own.

A wrong turn or two after Louth, but we eventually made it to the church. 

Set amongst a small grove of trees, the church and its churchyard (two actually – one from the 18^th century around the church itself, and another more contemporary in front) sits quietly a quarter mile up a gated road, beside a barely-running brook. The church dates to Norman times and is empty and doorless, having been decommissioned in the 1970’s. 

The grounds were busy with dragonflies, as many as six or eight at a time sunning themselves on the 18th and 19th century headstones.

There was tractor activity on the private farm behind the church, but otherwise the place was magnificently still. Vestiges of the church’s post-Norman past – floor tile work, some wall carvings – still remained, although there was a little evidence of modern vandalism, including some infuriating carvings in the stone work. If the place is indeed haunted, it wasn't terribly active during the hour or so we were there. 

We did notice a steady symphony of bird noises – pigeons roosting in the ceiling, and songbirds birds outside in the trees whose cooing and chirping reverberated inside the empty church. It wasn’t hard to see how this place could be overwhelmingly creepy at night – but in the afternoon sun of a late summer’s day, it was merely peaceful and calmly at rest. 

       

Back on the road and well behind schedule, Sharon wanted now to make up some time and press toward York, afraid we’d check in to the hotel late and miss dinner. We made it over the enormous toll bridge at the River Humber and I pulled off the road at South Cave, at a little chapel and cemetery. We snapped some pictures around the graveyard, and we pushed on to York.