Liking Lincoln.

It had rained heavily through the night, but by about 0900 it had brightened up and we set off towards Lincoln.

The bit of wind was behind us and the rain held off as we proceeded upriver.

 by Anwick 

This is another of the sculptures on the Water Rail route. It is called 'Lady of Shallot' forge and represents ears of barley, at 4.5 mts tall.

5 Mile bridge is named so because, funnily enough, is 5 miles from Lincoln. It was erected to replace a chain ferry that served the Fiskerton Station that was the 'wrong' side of the Witham. Fiskerton was so named as it was a place for fishermen before the tide was topped raising to this distance from the sea.

I'm not sure whether this is a work of art or just a few railway sleepers placed on end!

All Saints Church, at Greetwell, dates from the 11th Century. The village was in the Domesday Book and an abandoned Medieval village was nearby.

A bailey bridge had been built across the Witham as it seems that a new eastern bypass is being built. It is a major scheme and judging by the lat time I drove around Lincoln it is definitely needed.

Like at Ely the Cathedral stands out from a long way off. In Lincoln the hill is much higher than at Ely though. It still dominates the town.

Stamp End Lock was waiting for us. We had to turn it round, but the top gate is a guillotine and the bottom gate has the windlasses attached to the gear so you don't need to take one with you.

We topped up with water above the lock and decided to go and moor behind the other boat in the picture. There were rings and not under trees as we are expecting gales tonight. The footbridge joins both sides of the river.

Stamp End was the industrial area of the town with factories galore. It is funny how the industrial buildings of other years are quite posh these days, provided that they are converted I suppose.

Once we were moored up we decided to walk up and have a look at the Usher Gallery. It was set up with a local benefactor called Usher and displays some of his amazing collection.

The first picture we saw was by Fred Elwell, who was from Beverley and well known to us. It seems that this is one of the best we have seen though.

Afterwards we walked up to the Museum of Lincolnshire Life where there was a good display of agricultural equipment that was made in Lincolnshire.

Because of there skills with engineering when the Land Ship committee in WWI were looking to develop a machinery to break the deadlock in the trench warfare soon asked them to produce their prototypes and develop them further. Hence the tank was born. It seems the name tank came about as due to secrecy the company told its employees they were building machines for carrying water in Mesopotamia. They were called tanks, and it stuck. 

The museum of Lincolnshire Life was built in 1857 as a barracks, armoury and store until the 1960's. It was loads to see and is will pass a couple of hours, and all for free. For those of a certain age you will see plenty that you will recognise from your youth.

There are also plenty of good pubs in Lincoln and we wended our way back to the boat via several of them!