THE VIKING WAY (PART 1)

Lincoln to Oakham
- 75 miles

After a couple of 'Inn Ways' we decided that this year we would return to a more local walk.  

I had looked at the Viking Way a number of years ago, but for whatever reason had decided to go elsewhere.  A shame, really, because the walk is, in effect, the 'missing link' between a couple of others we have done - the Hereward Way that starts in Oakham, and the Wolds Way that starts at the Humber Bridge.

The whole route is 140 mile long, and we didn't have sufficient time available to cover that distance, but Lincoln is approximately half-way and can be reached relatively easily by train.  Similarly, Oakham is just a short train journey from out home in Peterborough.  Hopefully next year we will be back in Lincolnshire to do the second (or really the first) half.

Finding details of the route  itself was easy.  Lincolnshire County Council has made the official guide available to download free of charge.  Finding suitable accommodtion proved slightly more tricky, but with a little perseverence and a lot of searching online we finally hit on a solution that would work for us.

In the end we took six days - two short ones at either end (to allow for travelling) and four 'normal' ones.  Some of the accommodation was a little distance from the official route, and one evening we had to resort to a 'kettle meal', but we did find some real gems to stay and had some wonderful evening meals too.  Add in some fine walking - most of the route is flat, but surprisingly varied - and all-in-all we had a great time.

Of course the weather could have been better !   Generally speaking our walks in late May/ealy June have always been blessed with decent weather (the Dales High Way in 2010 being an exception), but for the Viking Way we had rain for several hours every day - in fact on the fourth day it rained all day bar 30 minutes.  Having said that, the poor weather didn't dampen our spirits ... it just meant we wore our waterproofs - particularly our leggings - a lot of the time.

C'est la vie .....