Lincoln Christmas Market 2019

Today's day out with my support worker didn't go quite according to plan; I still enjoyed my visit to Lincoln though.

We made an early start and called for breakfast at the Trent Port pub in Gainsborough. I had no complaints about the food there but the service was slow and rather surly. We had to wait five minutes at the self-serving area for our eggs...and those behind us would have to wait even longer for their bacon and sausages.

We then drove to the park and ride facility at the Lincolnshire Showground venue at Scampton and got on one of the frequent shuttle buses - it's quite a nice drive into Lincoln, going along the top of Lincoln Edge for most of the way.

When we reached the Christmas market the first things we looked for were rabbit or game pies...but we couldn't find any...I took this photograph of two giant  hares as a bit of therapy though.

We looked at the rest of the stalls in the area outside the castle bailey before going inside the craft fair - it's inside a rather beautiful building.

[Unfortunately the rest of my photographs have a rather obtrusive watermark - I shall now have to download a different free photo-editing program.]

We spent quite a bit of time inside the cathedral; it's very impressive but I don't like it as much as I do Selby Abbey which I visited last week.

We then visited the rest of the market stalls which were inside the castle bailey.

Siobhan was struggling on the slippery wet cobbles and so we didn't go very far down Steep Hill.

We went in a rather upmarket gentleman's outfitters, just for a look around, and I took a photograph of the Christmas tree, decorated with used shotgun cartridges.

We had our tea and cakes and then got a bus back to the showground...and that's when our problems started. We couldn't remember where we'd parked the car; there were hundreds of cars, many of them a similar silver/grey colour and no way of identifying where it might be. Some coloured, or numbered flags or poles would have been very helpful and not difficult or expensive to provide. 

It took us over twenty minutes to locate the car, eventually with the help of the marshals - even sitting in the back of one of the official cars as we were driven up and down the various lanes between the parked vehicles until we were successful. Siobhan was getting quite worried; she wasn't the only one though - a woman who was on her own and was slightly disabled started to cry.

It was dark by the time we passed through Bawtry on our way home; we thought the Christmas lights there were very impressive - far better than the ones in Doncaster, which tend to be a bit tacky.