To make a change from the fens, we travelled today the short distance into the Lincolnshire Wolds.

To Brinkhill and the South Ormsby Estate, to be precise, where we spent a pleasant couple of hours walking the Tennyson trail.

This site offers a helpful primer if -- like me -- you know next to nothing about Alfred Tennyson. He was born, in 1809, in the Lincolnshire village of Somersby, and was the fourth son of the rector's 12 children. It was a troubled family, to say the least, struggling with epilepsy, mental instability, depression, addiction, and violence. Tennyson himself became embroiled in a bizarre scheme to support Spanish revolutionaries, faced financial hardship, adverse reviews, and the death of a close friend, and for many years led a "lonely and despondent" life.

Finally, the tide turned. He received a large advance for In Memoriam, publication of which "made him, without question, the major living poet"; he married; he became poet laureate; he accepted a peerage ("the first time in history that a man had been given a title for his services to poetry").

But Tennyson, like many of us, did not have the gift of an easy personality: "One of the saddest aspects of Tennyson’s life is that his growing fame was almost in inverse ratio to his ability to maintain intimacy with others, so that by the end of his life he was a basically lonely man. All the innate charm, humor, intelligence, and liveliness were still there, but it took great understanding and patience on the part of his friends to bring them into the open."

He died in 1892, and in the early 1900s, his reputation waned. But he subsequently came to be appreciated again: "After two world wars had called into question most of the social values to which he had given only the most reluctant of support, readers were once more able to appreciate that he stood apart from his contemporaries. Now one can again admire without reservation one of the great lyric gifts in English literature."

It's easy to imagine how this countryside would have provided inspiration:










This is pretty much the high point of the walk (although nothing is that high in Lincolnshire...):



The ground had been pretty good up to now. But as we headed down the hill, we hit some of the stickiest mud I've ever encountered. It wedged itself firmly into every ridge in the tread of my boots, leaving me no grip at all, and it stuck there like glue...



Apart from that accursed stretch of MUD, an excellent walk. There were even snowdrops at the end, by the church. Early, according to Tennyson, although I personally associate snowdrops with January:

Many, many welcomes,
February fair-maid,
Ever as of old time,
Solitary firstling,
Coming in the cold time,
Prophet of the gay time,
Prophet of the May time,
Prophet of the roses,
Many, many welcomes,
February fair-maid!