With foreign travel off our agenda for the time being, we arranged to visit places in the UK that we had (mostly) not been to before.

We first made for Lincoln, braving the Friday madness of the M25 & M11.

I had pulled out a couple of aces for our stay – firstly by booking an excellent apartment a few minutes walk from the cathedral, and also in reserving a table at the very acceptable grill at the White Hart Hotel.

Lincoln is perhaps best known for its magnificent cathedral, complete with the Lincoln Imp, a gargoyle that resides high up on one of the cathedral’s internal pillars.

We noticed a few imps dotted about the city – in fact part of an imp trail to keep kids young and old amused. It runs until 9th September and you can read about it here.

We awoke to the cathedral bells at 9. One of life’s acceptable alarm calls.

This was our first morning on holiday for 18-months so we were in no particular hurry to explore. However, when we did eventually surface we made a beeline for Lincoln’s primary attraction.

£9 per head to get in. The fee is officially a donation and by adding gift aid it turned our ticket into a year long pass. Not that we will be using it again……

Construction of the Cathedral Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Lincoln commenced in 1072. Not surprising therefore that it resembled the great Gothic masterpieces of France like in Reims, Troyes or Chartres.

At 54,000 square feet, Lincoln is the UK’s 4th largest after Liverpool, St Paul’s and York Minster.

The cathedral contains some splendid stained-glass windows, a very nice cloisters, and of course the imp.

I was intrigued by a particular street name adjacent to the cathedral. It appeared to be straight out of a Harry Potter book – perhaps relating to a scandalous headline penned by Rita Skeeter?