Melton Mowbray to Spalding

 A Premier Inn breakfast all can eat continental not that healthy but it did include fruit. Blue skies and sun  and a light wind. Route took me out of Leicestershire into Rutland, does this still  exist as a county, one of the useless facts I learnt at Geography was that Rutland was the smallest county in England along with the fact I started off in the smallest city in the U.K - St David's. Having survived an education in Somerset this fact was never mentioned as Wells claimed to be the smallest city in England. Enough of pub quiz trivia I cycled along rhe side of Rutland water an onto Oakham.  The village on the way and afterwards were very picturesque,  built in a aoft yellow stone apparently an lias sandstone.  However at Baston I was down on the fens properly and had to cycle miles of straight level roads into a severe haed wind. This area is called South Holland and certainly reminiscent of our Dutch cycling holiday several years ago. I would say this wS more challenging than the hills in Wales. Even on the Somerset levels there are villages within a mile or two and livestock.  This was justice mile after me of arable agriculture particularly boring at this time of year, the only occasional highlight was a huge bit of agri mechanisation in the middle of acres of brown soil.  Eventually battled through the wind to Spalding a pleasant enough town developed along a river - The Welland which in some places also seems to be called the Exeter Drain.

Spalding claim to fame perhaps that it held possibly the first UK rock festival in the bulb auction shed. The promoter was booking the Move and Geno Washington  however the London Agent suggested he might give Jimi Handrix , The Cream and Pink Floyd a slot as well! This was 1967, tickets were £1.00, putting g this into perspective I could earn 5/- an hour and the following year my subsistence grant was £100 per term (10 weeks) with London weighting! It makes Glastonbury now looks expensive. Apparently over 10,000 people pitched up and Spaldind had arrived. I went into the Red Lion where Jimi Handrix stayed that night and asked a local at the bar  if he had been there and what did he think.  He said he was 5 years old at the time, he actually now looked as if he was 95!  A salutary lesson in the excesses of the demon drink.