Day 37:   BOSTON   to HOLBEACH 

Sunday 19th July 2020

Today miles: 17.2      Total miles: 571.7

       Despite the savage treatment my feet received two weeks ago I’m back on the ECP with a fresh determination and happy to carry on. After the 4 1/2 hour drive South I arrived safely in Boston and was kindly given permission to park in the secure compound at Boston police station. I set off through the Boston Quayside industrial estate and immediately I’m confronted with yet another diversion sign. I hope this isn’t a prophecy of how this entire trip is going to go.    I dropped into the local ‘Spar’ store and grabbed myself a small cheese sandwich and two 1/2 litre bottles of water, hoping this would get me to Fosdyke Bridge and an anticipated nice pub meal. After reaching the end of the Industrial estate I joined the Macmillan Way public footpath near to Slippery Gowt farm. It’s fine for the first few hundred metres but then I encountered a big metal fence which is blocking the path ahead. Sod it, I’m not taking another enormous diversion. It’s Sunday afternoon and l’m unlikely I’ll bump into any workmen today. I squeezed myself between two of the fence panels and continued walking along the path. For the next few miles I expected to encounter construction works but strangely they never appeared. A second metal fence was placed across the path close to Frampton Marsh. I was far more relaxed walking along the edge of the marsh and I met several bird watchers and a large herd of cattle on the sea embankment. I assume these cattle are used to seeing people walking on their path, they showed very little reaction to me as I passed by.
The sun was shining and I was getting through my water supply pretty quickly. I wasn’t overly concerned as I expected I could refill my water bottles at The Ship Inn which is now less then 4 miles away. The walk along the edge of the Fosdyke Wash was uneventful, bordering on boring. I reached Fosdyke Bridge around 6pm, desperate for a nice meal and a pint of ale at The Ship Inn. As I approached the front of the building I noticed the car park was empty and seconds later the locked door confirmed my worst fears. It’s still shut due to the current Covid pandemic and the sign on the door confirmed that they would reopen tomorrow, I cursed my bad luck as I sat outside for an hour and realised I was very short on options for either food or water. I had no choice then to just suck it up and carry on walking. I felt reasonably fresh despite the lack of water and managed to push myself on for another 6 miles along the sea embankment. As the sun began to descend in the sky I began to look for somewhere reasonably flat to pitch my tent. I eventually had to settle for a patch of long grass just off the embankment near Holbeach St Matthew. A double decker for tea tonight.