An Adventure to Shelton and Sibthorpe

Swapped running shoes for tires today, as I decided to give my sore legs a day off and head off out into the sticks on my noble Rockrider steed - £45 from a roadside bikeman - to find places as yet unvisited.

I headed up the cycle track where a fair few common darters were flying up in front of me, but instead of following my usual long route to Thorpe on the Elston road, I went the other way to Shelton, a small village with a fine manor and Norman church, and a smattering of very affluent houses. Typically, there were no amenities other than a red telephone box with an actual working phone in it! A rarity these days.

I was hoping it was also being used as a phone box library, but sadly, no. An old house at the end of the village had obviously supported a colony of house martins during the summer, they were still circling today.

I could have turned round here, but decided to keep on going through a world of country lanes marked with old style signposts for villages I'd never heard of despite living less than 10 miles away from them.

Eventually, I took the road for Sibthorpe, which turned out to be a slightly larger village dominated with a medieval dovecote by what I think is the River Smite. It was seemingly an important settlement in the days of Edward I. It is another chocolate boxey affluent village now, and again, no pubs, no shops and not even a phone box this time.

Good luck being elderly out in these places. Assuming you can still afford to live there.

Si

Pylons into the distance

My noble steed

The other sort of steeds

Big money house

The red telephone box

Ivy cottage

Shelton church

Shelton Manor

Quo vadis, my lord?

Sibthorpe cottage

Medieval dovecote

Sibthorpe church

Across the fields

Tatty large white

Love the shading on the forewing