Page:Highways and Byways in Lincolnshire.djvu/267

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samphire beds and sea birds. There is a charm about "the waste enormous marsh," and also about the high and windy Wolds, which never palls, but before we journey along either of the highways from Louth I should like to introduce one of those byways which form the chief delight of people who love the country.

We will leave Louth, then, by the Spilsby road, and when we reach the second milestone, 147 miles from London, turn and look at the beautiful spire of Louth Church rising from a group of elms in the middle distance of a wide panorama. From our height of 300 feet we look across the whole marsh to the sea, ten miles to the east, and far on beyond Louth we look northwards towards Grimsby and the Humber, the perpetually shifting lights and shades caused by the great cumulus clouds in these fine level views, the many farmsteads and occasional church towers—

"The crowded farms and lessening towers"

of our own Lincolnshire poet—all combine to make a very satisfactory picture to which the wonderfully wide extent which lies unrolled before us, lends enchantment; and always the eye reverts to rest with delight on that perfect spire standing so high above the trees by the banks of the river Lud.

At length we turn and pursue our way, but soon quit the Spilsby road and go down the hill to the left, past the entrance to Kenwick Hall, till we reach the Alford road, and, turning to the right, come to the pretty little village of Cawthorpe.

This is not a bad centre for country walks. You can walk on a raised footpath all along the side of the curious water-lane, and if you go out in the opposite direction the road to Haugham takes you through two miles of as pretty a road as you could desire; it is called "Haugham Pastures," but it is really a road through a wood, without hedges, reminding one of the New Forest or the "Dukeries." On the right, going from Cawthorpe, the trees extend some distance with oak and fern and all that makes the beauty of an English wood; on the other side it is only a belt of trees through which at intervals a grassy tract curves off from the road and leads to the fields; and as we passed in September we could see the corn-laden waggons moving up towards us or the teams going afield among the sheaves. No county could supply a prettier series of