So this is what a Roman road looks like? “What have the Romans ever done for us?” seems like a very reasonable question just now. Ermine Street Roman Road, as Google Maps calls it, is a muddy and wet dirt track between two fields.
Where it’s not rutted so deep that you couldn’t possibly pedal along it, it’s either knee high in grass, or a light brown quagmire. The quagmire of course is because the rain has been intermittently spectacular today.
At least where there are real, non-Roman, roads, they’re pretty flat. That’s a big difference from the roads nearer home in Cumbria. There’s another big difference – here among seriously big and productive arable fields, there are no insects. The wraparound glasses I’ve been wearing are redundant here.
I arrived at Grimsthorpe Castle soaked, and freezing. I was due to play in a marquee next to the tea tent, but the marquee has blown down and been destroyed. So would I mind playing in the tea tent itself?
Grimsthorpe gave me a panini to take away for my tea because, they said, the only pub in Edenham shut down last week.
I’m staying at the Vicarage – surely one of rather few remaining real Vicarages occupied by real Vicars – and playing at Edenham church. It’s partly a fund-raiser for their Christmas dinner charity. I like that degree of forward planning.
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