A couple of days ago saw me questing into unknown territory.

[sparkindarkness]

Well, presumably it was known, it being Lincolnshire and all. Probably by a few people. But it wasn’t known to Sparky.

Now, the first thing to remember here is that the Sparky is an urban creature. Yes, my reverence and love for nature is vaunted and extreme - but for comfort and preference I like to revel in nature’s majesty through a window. Preferably double glazed. With a coffee-shop within easy strolling distance. This is rather problematic in Lincolnshire, since the county does have capacious amounts of ruralness everywhere.

Anyway, Beloved and I ventured across the river into terra incognita to visit an old friend. Immediately there were... difficulties.



SatNav: Turn left
Me: *looks looks* left left? There’s no road left!
Satnav: turn left, turn left *picture of me turning left*
Me: There is nooo left!
Satnav: *recalculating* You must not return to your current location. let me bring you back here by directing you via Cambridge.
Beloved: Hey, is that the turning?
Me: I think it’s a track. For goats. Small goats. With mountain climbing equipment.
*watches car struggle across track*
Beloved: Nope, it’s a road.



Me: It’s been an hour since we last saw street lights or road markings
Beloved: Well, we have been going round in circles *pokes sat nav that has indeed told us to turn left 5 times in a row*
Me: I think Lincolnshire roads all run in a spiral and we have to be somewhere in the middle. They probably eat people there. (A natural assumption for the habits of deeply rural areas, right?)



Beloved: STOP!!!
Me: I SEE IT *breaks like a mad thing*
Bird in middle of road: *stares at bumber about 5 feet from it*
Me: This pheasant is too stupid to live. Even pigeons can fly away from cars.
Beloved: It’s a grouse, isn’t it?
Me: How should I know. MOVE YOU STUPID BIRD!
Pheasant/possibly grouse/maybe a partridge: Cluck (or whatever hell kind of noise pheasant/grouse/partridge make)
Me: I will run you over! I will KILL you!
Bird of unknown ancestry: *bird noise* *doesn’t move*
Me: *blows horn. Revs engine*
Bird: *tilts head* *ignores car* *stays put*
Me: I can’t believe I’m being held at bay by a fancy chicken.



Me: *drives along carefully at 15 mph*
Beloved: this is a road?
Me: Yes. Just keep saying that. It’s a road, it’s a road, it’s a road. We have to believe this.
Beloved: *looks at road* I’m having trouble believing this.
Me: Damn it, don’t look down! You’ll ruin the whole suspension of disbelief! It’s a ROAD!
Beloved: of course it’s a road. If it weren’t a large, 2 lane road there’s no way a giant lorry would be coming down it.
Me: Oh bugger...
Insane-Lorry-driver-who-hasn’t-slept-for-three-days-and-is-running-on-caffein-and-illegal-east-european-wakey-wakey-pills: ROAAAAR!!!
Me: Run away!! *reverse reverse reverse*
ILDWHSFTDAIROCAIEEWWP: *CHARGE* I am iiiiinvullllnerable!!!!


Beloved: *juggling map since the SatNav was freaked out by the near death by insane lorry driver* We should be in the village of Skimdale or something. Skimdale Cum something or other?
Me: *looks around at green fields* Nope, no village
Beloved: LOOK there’s the village sign, we ARE there! *points at sign*
Me: *looks again* There IS a sign. But there’s no houses. Don’t you need people for a village?
Beloved: there’s a house there.
Me: *looks at single farmhouse* I stand corrected. We have a village of one house. Must be a damn big family.



All in all I have concluded that it is a very silly place (though rather peaceful and pretty in a “YE GODS ARE THERE NO HILLS IN THIS LAND?!” kind of way. And it has a pretty pretty windfarm. We know, we circled it. Several times. It may be at the centre of the Lincolnshire spiral where the locals eat people) and it takes a ridiculous amount of time to travel even short distances. I’m going to cling to my asphalt for a while :)

Comments

[wyrdrune.livejournal.com]

Did you not know that the county bird of Lincolnshire is the Greater-Splatted-Pheasant?

:-)

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

Or will be verrry soon

[logophilos.livejournal.com]

Those 'goat tracks' are main roads over here!

Game birds are not afraid of cars at all. Which would explain the numbers of dead pheasants I saw during my sojourn in Blighty.

Ditch the satnav and use an AA guide like the rest of us. Those things are lethal!

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

And your dirt tracks are full of poisonous things. It is known

Their squished corpses just completely dotted the road. i suppose if my sole purpose in life was to fly up in the air and be shot by some bored rich people I'd want to end it all to.

Not nearly so lethal as Beloved's map reading. Trust me :)

[brownkitty.livejournal.com]

ll in all I have concluded that it is a very silly place

Well, that explains it. You're in Camelot, not Lincolnshire.

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

From this day forth, Lincolnshire will be referred to as Camelot

[amynnah.livejournal.com]

Awww pheasant! You should've brought Sugar-High Kitty (name escapes me). The bird would probably just look at her and kitty would have lunch. Normally I'm against kitties killing random birds, but this sounds like a case for Darwinism to me. Bird was too stupid to live. :)

Sounds like an interesting....trip... sort of...

If you ever visit the 'States (hint: I'm an hour and a half from Niagara Falls... with plenty of crash space for two... the most wildlife I get are the birds, the squirrels, the occasional skunk, raccoons, feral-yet-friendly cats, and one very curious robin that flew into my house last year, hung out with me and my roommate to watch tv for a bit, then flew back outside), there are a lot of cool places, both natural and urban, as well as in-between those extremes, that you can visit. :)

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

Nope, kitty would have been very very confused. And poked it. Then miaowed at it. Then wondered why it didn't drop dead already and be eaten.

Heee, not while they're going to finger print me, I won't be :) 'tis a shame because there is a lot to see

[amynnah.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I know... stupid Border Patrol... and they're 99.9% ineffective, too. Once they quit with the paranoia, you're welcome here. :)

And aw kitty! :D I could see her poking it. Socks would probably give it the Death Glare and then wonder why that didn't kill the bird.

[solid-squid.livejournal.com]

Sounds a bit like where my aunt stays. Three houses, a farm and (no joke) a tavern. Technically it was probably a hamlet though

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

Aye, did it have a name?

[tinimaus.livejournal.com]

Last time I drove in that area, the roads were so bad a rock flew up under the car and wrecked my exhaust. All the way home my li'l Ford Ka sounded like it had delusions of Ferrari.

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

See, who need expensive mechanics to make their car sound rockin'? You've got lincolnshire roads!

[cazmanian-minx.livejournal.com]

Don't ever try the north west corner of Scotland then - the A-roads are single track with passing places, you don't want to know what the back roads are like!

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

You can DRIVE in northern Scotland?

[suryaofvulcan.livejournal.com]

I've had similar experiences out and about in Somerset. In fact there's one village I've tried to find three times, and failed. There were half a dozen signs all saying 'Wambrook 1 mile', but each one I followed took me up a narrower road until eventually I was on an extremely narrow single-track road with high hedges either side and grass growing up the middle. No houses, no gates, no farms - nothing. Eventually I found myself turning back onto the A30, 20 miles from where I started.

I have a feeling it's the kind of place that appears out of the mist once every 100 years.

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

I'm sure I've found a few of them in the hills of Yorkshire, invisible littler villages that are just impossible to reach

[zero_pixel_count]

Had you mentioned, I would've warned you about most've those things... *grin* (Particularly the fact that fenlanders tend to drive like madmen. I think it's all the extra sky.)

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

They get so bored by the lack of hills they just CHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGE!

[gnarlycranium.livejournal.com]

........You call that nature?? It's just a big tangled mess of farms packed edge to edge to edge to edge with nary a space for a tree between. For miles... and.... miles.... and miles... and miles... and.... is there not a quarter inch of space on this damned island that hasn't been fucked with by 10 separate (possibly goat-drawn) bulldozers? *zooms in closer* ye gods... how does anybody get ANYWHERE?

*finally scrolls to Scotland* Well, that's a little better, in a... skeletal wasteland kind of way...

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

This is England. There is precious little nature here. There is only rural (rural isn't nature, it's tamed nature) which is as close as we get. Most of it was destroyed and tamed centuries before anyone understood about wilderness preservation

[gnarlycranium.livejournal.com]

So depressing. Gack.

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

There's sopme effort of nature reclaimation that isn't too bad but most of it was destroyed in the 17th and 18th centuries

[gnarlycranium.livejournal.com]

I've heard that Scotland used to be thickly forested. Who'da thunkit?

[polarbee.livejournal.com]

My boss just walked by and looked at me suspiciously as I tried to pretend I was coughing.
We have grouse all over the place up here. It's gotten to the point where I sadly don't know how many I've thwacked with my car.

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

heeeeeeeee :)


They just don't even try to move!

[allthepettylies.livejournal.com]

Everyone in the library is glaring murderously at me, but I can't. stop. LAUGHING.

You are made of insane amoutns of win and awesome.

Fancy chicken....*dies*

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

It's not my fault! I claim innocence :)