Thursday, 24 August 2017

Day: 211 4/6/99 Fosdyke to Boston

Weather:  Showery

Distance:  16 km (9.9 miles)    Total Distance:   2750 miles

I was up and away from the Youth Hostel pretty quickly in the morning and stopped in a garage on the A16/A17 junction and had a cup of coffee and apple pie for breakfast. I parked the car near Fosdyke Bride in a car park that belonged to a fertiliser company.  I went into their offices, a sort of port-a-cabin affairs, to see if was OK to park there but the only person I saw was the back of a man on the phone and did not want to disturb him. 

It was straight into my over-trousers today because the grass was long and there was heavy dew around. Not much to report on today’s walk.  It was all low lying land with farms on the inside and marsh on the east side.

The path past Frampton Marsh area was particularly bad and at times the undergrowth was up to chest height on me.  It was also pretty wet by now but I remained very impressed how my light waterproofs were doing a great job at keeping the water out.

Once I reached The Haven I turned inland up towards Boston.  The path to the right was a no-through path and did not look very good.  Added to that it was raining so I decided that it was within my rules to ignore it and took the Boston path with a clear conscious.  The last couple of miles were none too pleasant, up the banks of The Haven to Boston.  Just when I thought the going was bound to get easier it actually got worse.  I went past a rubbish tip with a real gut-wrenching odour coming off it where the path was very overgrown indeed.   

Hitchhiking was again bad but at least I had a roundabout to stand by so the traffic was not too fast.  It was just a busy road and not the sort of road to get lifts easily on. There kept being heavy showers so I kept ducking in under a tree until they passed and then back out hitching again. I was afraid that I would never get a lift but in the end a man stopped in a Ford Fiesta who seemed to some sort of businessman – a pleasant enough gent.  He stopped on the turn-off for King’s Lynn and it was not too difficult a decision to walk the last couple of miles as it only took less than 30 minutes I think and I was not too tired.  I quickly got in the car and drove away before anyone from the fertiliser company spotted me.


I drove back to Coventry and had time to unpack before going to the station to collect Margaret and the boys who were due to arrive back at 5.30pm. There was no sign of them on the train however and I guessed they had missed the connection at Holyhead so came home again and waited for the phone call. They eventually called saying they were stuck at Nuneaton so I went to collect them there.   

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