Horncastle to Donington on Bain

The past two days' walks had both been better than I'd expected, but today we reached the Lincolnshire Wolds and it was truly superb. It was dry and sunny all day, until just as we reached The Black Horse in Donington when we were rewarded for a few spots of rain by a magnificent rainbow. We had a leisurely breakfast at Oak House, chatted to Jonquil Gilbert, then walked back down to Horncastle for provisions (for lunch today and both lunch and dinner tomorrow), so we didn't leave the town centre until 10am. It's a nice little town. The route out of town took us through backstreets and around the edges of modern housing estates, close to where we had been staying at Oak House, with good views to the hillier landscape ahead of us.

We emerged onto the road to Fulletby and followed this for a short distance before turning left off the road (though we were going to Fulletby!) and following field boundaries to the ridge top, with lovely views to the village of West Ashby.

We continued along field boundaries for a mile or so until we reached a track to Grange Farm then a minor road to Fulletby. Fulletby is, apparently, the second highest village in the Lincolnshire Wolds, which explains the communications mast we had been walking towards. It's also a pretty place. The next village, Belchford, is in a valley so we descended to it. We stopped for lunch, sitting on a seat beneath a tree opposite The Blue Bell Inn, watching other walkers coming and going. There were quite a number of other people about, but no-one else seemed to be following the route that we then took to Scamblesby, despite the fact that it is also part of a 'Blue Bell' circular walk. We passed beneath the attractive Juicetrump Hill and kept straight ahead, eventually emerging onto a road through Scamblesby.

We crossed the A153 by the river, and found ourselves in an interesting section, with cows grazing on a flood plain, with hills beyond. We passed Asterby and followed another section of river to Goulceby, where we stopped for a break at a conveniently placed bench near the river, then we turned right and climbed, passing a little church and then a cemetery.

As we climbed, attractive views opened up in front of us, with lovely autumnal colours, lakes and a couple of communications masts. After a curious section in which we (correctly) walked almost right around a high-level field before descending, the route to Donington on Bain was quite straightforward. We had passed lots of attractive cattle today with beautiful furry red calves (possibly Red Poll) and now we passed a field of red, white - and red and white - cattle.

As we reached Donington on Bain, the Black Horse Inn, where we were staying, was very obvious, but we went for a quick look at the pretty church before going to the Inn. Richard had taken the precaution of checking what we should do if the Black Horse was closed when we arrived, which it was, and the landlord's mother came down and gave us a key to our room. The entrance to the bedroom block, and our room, looked most unpromising, but it was actually a spacious and comfortable room, and in the evening we had a pleasant meal.

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