A Week on the Estate: Cyclo-Cross, Mass Gathering & Cecile’s Wisdom

Speaking of cycling, British Cycling’s 2021 National Road Championships came to our county this week. The event kicked off on Thursday 14th October with a gruelling time trial around the heart of the Lincolnshire Wolds, starting and finishing in Tealby.

If you’d like to follow in the tyre-tracks of the time-trial, try our Albert’s Wolds Adventure cycle route. Starting at South Ormsby, this challenging 81.6km (50.7mi) route takes in Tealby and many other beautiful Wolds villages. We’ve devised a range of cycle routes around the heart of the Wolds for cyclists of all levels. To find out more about our routes, click HERE.

At the Hall, Simon from Skillington Workshop of Grantham was pictured repairing water damage to 18^th-century beams in the drawing room ceiling. The age and historical value of these rooms demand expert care and serious multi-level reinforcement.

Outdoors, Jack Waters and Clint Coughlan did some serious spadework at the compost bins, separating and burning woody waste and turning the remainder to boost the composting process. Looking at the amount of material they shifted, they probably built a bit of muscle too.

If you’re a fan of hand-crafted, artisan gins, don’t forget to tune into the Massingberd-Mundy Facebook page HERE at 7pm on Friday 15th October. Master Distiller Tristan Jørgensen will be running a Facebook Live session, sharing the story of his new Pumpkin Spiced Gin with expert tips on how best to enjoy this fine tipple.

Last but never least, the eighth and concluding chapter of ‘Granny’s at Brinkhill’, part of the ‘Our Days’ heritage series, can be found HERE. Cecile recalls her Auntie Edith taking accumulators for the wireless into Louth to be recharged – in effect holding boxes of battery acid level on bone-shaking buses on Wolds roads. Edith came back with such treats as Woodbine cigarettes and copies of John Bull magazine.

In a clear-eyed and moving finale, Cecile writes:

‘I was lucky, for these were hard times and not just because of the war. My family were not living in those mythical ‘Good Old Days’. The majority of men in rural and industrial occupations worked like donkeys and the women skivvied so that they could. It was the only way to survive. But rounded human beings are rarely, if ever, produced from the poor soil of exhausting labour and sheer drudgery. There must have been times when the utter frustration and impossibility of it all caused bad-tempered outbursts and living in an extended family is never easy – but I was unaware of any of this. I felt valued and I knew that they all wanted the best for me. As a child, I took them all for granted. As an adult, I feel gratitude and not a little admiration. And something else. It’s called love.’

If you’ve missed any chapter of ‘Our Days’ or ‘My Days’, you can find everything HERE.

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