Summer is over, September has started. So we used the bank holiday weekend to get away. Not anywhere far, as one can’t travel anywhere nowadays without much trouble. The result was, we rented a random place in Lincolnshire, since the South of England is crowded and expensive. So we drove up North to a place called Boston, a town after which the well-known Boston in Massachusetts is named after, due to emigration. The cultural constrasts couldn’t be more drastic though, I haven’t been to Boston in the US but I imagine it might to be very different to this small, historic market town in agricultural Lincolnshire, the county where the UK gets most of its veg from.
When walking around the town one notices lots of Polish supermarkets, Bulgarian restaurants, and European food stores. I’m used to that from London, but in rural Lincolnshire? I wondered what that was all about since literally at every corner there is one of those shops. We went into a Polish supermarket, and I loved it. Generally, I enjoy these shops that sell different products to your conventional Tesco’s or Sainsbury’s, also I sometimes find Austrian products in these stores. I looked up why there is this large Eastern European community, in this rather quiet, random town in Lincolnshire. Turns out people come here for jobs, mainly in agriculture. And you could have guessed it the English Boston inhabitants don’t quite like that. I read on and got to learn that Boston is the town with the highest percentage of “leave” voters during the Brexit referendum, 76% to be precise. Oh and UKIP targeted this town specifically. What a lovely place to be in. The usual slogans such as that EU immigrants steal all the jobs were used by UKIP. Jobs that the locals wouldn’t ever do such as picking and sorting vegetables. Anyway, I found it very interesting and sad that instead of celebrating the fact that there are all these different food stores and cultures that bring life to the town, locals want to get rid of the people that make sure that they have vegetables available to purchase.
So I’ve learnt something new. Lincolnshire is where the hard Brexiteers live and they seem to be proud of it. I don’t know what they thought, that all of us would be shipped back to the continent once the referendum went through? Well guess what, it doesn’t work that way and our rights were secured until now.
Anyway, Lincolnshire is lovely and has more to offer than just vegetable fields. In and around Boston there are some historic windmills that produce their own flour and sell local products. We drove North to a town called Skegness. It’s a typical seaside town with funfair and all that stuff so really not much to see there but the beach is really nice. Miles and miles of sandy beach to walk on. Since it was very crowded we took the car and drove to a place called Chapel St Leonard, where the North Sea Observatory is. Essentially, that’s a modern building with a cafe and large windows that look out on the beach. They have nice cakes (even vegan options!) and after a slice of cake and a litre of tea each we went for a walk on the beach.
Before we went back to the big Shmoke we stopped in Norfolk. What a contrast, lots of camper vans and tourists. We walked the costal path between Weybourne and Sheringham which is stunning. So you see, there is a lot to visit in England and booking a random accommodation in a random place can sometimes be beneficial, you see new things, you learn new stuff about a region. And don’t mind the Brexiteers, they will understand sooner or late that Brexit isn’t as rosy as it sounds.
The Monikart Studio 
Will go and see once Covid has expired..
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Whenever that will be!
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