but when one arrives by road one seems always ensured of a hearty welcome.
Woodhall Spa is about as unlike the usual run of fashionable watering-places as one can well imagine. It is a charming health resort, but it happily boasts of nothing to attract the purely pleasure-seeking crowd, and on account of the absence of these attractions it appealed to us. The country around also is equally unlike the popular conception of Lincolnshire as it well could be; it is not tame, and it is not flat, except to the west. Woodhall Spa is situated on a dry sandy soil where fir trees flourish, and stretching away to the east of it are wild moors, purple in season with heather, and aglow with golden gorse. It is a land of health, apart from the virtues of its waters, supposed or real. The air we found to be deliciously fragrant and bracing; I do not think that there is a purer or a more exhilarating air to be found in all England, or out of it for that matter. There are no large cities, manufacturing or otherwise, within many a long mile of the district over which the wind blows unimpeded, fresh, and invigorating from every quarter, though sheltered to a certain extent from the east winds by the Wolds beyond Horncastle. So unexpectedly pleased were we with the place; with our comfortable hotel where we felt quite at home away from home; so friendly and interesting did we find the company one and all chance-gathered there (included amongst which was a distinguished novelist; besides a poet not unknown to fame), that we elected to stay at Woodhall Spa for a week though
