The Lincolnshire Show

Another Couple of Nights Away by Train

This little break in Lincoln began life when my wife had two meetings there with one day between them, and that day happened to be the first day of the 2025 Lincolnshire Show, so we decided to go to Lincoln together and attend the show for the first time in several decades; she would attend her meetings and I would do my own thing while they were in progress. The second meeting was postponed, so it turned out that one night in Lincoln would have sufficed, but we had everything booked and spent some more time together in Lincoln than planned. It is a great city, and the weather was dry, sunny and warm, so we enjoyed a really good break at the start of our summer.

We walked down to Stamford station with our little suitcases and a picnic lunch to catch the 11:55 to Peterborough which we discovered had just been held up by a signal failure and would have a considerable delay, probably enough to miss our connecting train to Lincoln at 12:28, so we swiftly decided to pop outside for a taxi to Peterborough which we shared with another passenger. This got us there just in time to take our planned train to Lincoln and for the other person to catch hers to London and we were back on course, although two-thirds of a taxi fare poorer. I would later claim Delay Repay once I discovered what the overall delay would have been had we persisted with the original planned train, and this almost met the taxi fare.

Back on track we had our picnic lunch on the train to Lincoln, including a can of white wine each, carefully kept chilled.

Our East Midlands Railway train in fact arrived five minutes early at Lincoln Central but by then we had seen that we would indeed have missed it by about half an hour and therefore would have been an hour late had we not taken the taxi to Peterborough.

Across the road to the bus station we took a bus up the hill to the Cathedral and walked round to the White Hart Hotel where we would stay for the next two nights. We were early but our room was ready and we were able to check in straight away. It was the same "cosy" room that we had had last time we stayed here, small but well provided with facilities (unfortunately not including air-conditioning, but we soon learn how best to keep the temperature down for a good night's sleep).

Alison went to her meeting which started at four o'clock at the diocesan office near the Cathedral and would include a light supper, so I wandered off for a while and then had my own light supper in the Colonnade bar at the hotel, which we'd never visited before. Very good.

The following morning was our day the the Lincolnshire Show. The Show in on a huge show ground a few miles north of Lincoln, and a shuttle bus service runs between Lincoln Central station and the show ground to take rail passengers straight to the the Show. Publicity about the bus service was rather thin and we had no idea whether it would serve any stops uphill on its way out of the city, so we played it safe and walked down to the station after breakfast to catch it from its starting point. It did indeed not pick up anyone on the way out, but then if no-one knew about it they wouldn't have been waiting it for it! In the feedback for the Show we mentioned that there might be better publicity about the bus service. Given how some people we met at the show were complaining about car parking queues, perhaps the fact that one could come by train and shuttle bus should be more prominent in Show publicity anyway. It worked very well: plenty of people boarded at Central station and the bus went swiftly out of the city to the show ground and its terminus right by one of the entrances.

It was a hot and sunny day and we enjoyed a great time at the show. Although not at all involved in agriculture for about fifty years now I still enjoy looking at machinery and equipment - animals have never been part of my life, though - and there was also very much else to see. Each of the Lincoln hotels, including our own, had a stand and there were many free samples of food and drink being given away, although we did pay for our lunch (churros, not very Lincolnshire and maybe not very healthy but it brought back memories of our recent trip to Spain!) and an ice-cream. We did spend a little time investigating possibilities for a new car to buy and enjoyed seeing some ancient and classic vehicles on parade. The Diocese of Lincoln had its usual tent and we knew a lot of people there. We attended "Hymns and Pimms" in the afternoon and then it was about time to make our way back to the bus terminal and to the city centre.

It took a while to get off the show ground in the bus because it used the same roadway as cars queueing to exit the car park. Stagecoach must have been using twice as many buses to keep up the departure frequency with so many of them stuck en route. Once on the road, though, we quickly sped into Lincoln and then decided on our evening meal.

We had heard from our daughter about a restaurant elsewhere called The Botanist with a garden theme and I knew there was one in Lincoln. We decided to give that a try and were not disappointed. The food was excellent and we were able to sit outside (there are two floors inside, too) and enjoy the life of the city centre. A special novelty was the shared dessert which came in three (imitation!) flower pots and was eaten with a pair of scaled-down spades!

This part of Lincoln city centre, Cornhill and Sincil Street, has been through a lot of careful-planned change recently and is well worth seeing. Some of the old shops in refurbished premises, some new shops, a cinema and a good sprinkling of decent restaurants and bars. The new bus station and multi-storey car park were among the first things to be complete, and with main traffic flows now routed further south the railway station is much more closely integrated with the city centre. A new hotel is the next project and I think that will be about it.

We took a bus back up the hill and enjoyed a stroll and then a cocktail in the Colonnade bar before bedtime.

After a leisurely breakfast we packed and checked out and made our way downhill to do a little shopping on our way to the railway station for our train home. 

We had a little time in hand at the station and had a cold drink in the coffee shop there - which is really good but rather tucked away and not easy to find. This time were were travelling on a LNER Azuma service via Newark which was very comfortable and left on time, arriving early in Peterborough. It was going to be a long wait for the connection to Stamford anyway, and now that we were early we decided to book a private-hire taxi instead of waiting for the train. It's not an comfortable as a train but were were at home unpacking before we'd even have left Peterborough on the next train, so although it cost extra money we thought it would have been worth it.