Holland

Walk Details:
Date: 23/7/2005
Total ascent: 16m/ 52ft (at 3 locations)
Total distance walked: 2.1miles (at 3 locations)
Walk difficulty: (i) 1.5/10; (ii & iii) 2/10
Enjoyment rating: (i) 3/10; (ii) & (iii) 2/10
Best bits: Surprisingly good views, flags
Worst bits: Evil stinging nettles, dispiriting having so many points that could be the county top
Walkers: Anth, Jim
Car Parking: For the mound at Spalding, there’s tons of parking either in the nearby shopping centre or at the even nearer McDonalds. In Surfleet Seas End there’s also plenty of parking at TF 280 293 – just follow the tourist signs for the reservoir (I’m assuming there’s not too many other tourist attractions around here then…)

Top details:
Name: (i) Mound at Spalding; (ii) Surfleet Seas End (Reservoir Road) or (iii) Surfleet Seas End (Dyke)
County top number: 85 of 207
Grid reference: (i) TF 26514 23872; (ii) TF 27917 29338 and (iii) TF 278
Height above sea level: A paltry 8m/ 26ft
How nice was the top? (i) 3/10; (ii) 2/10; (iii) 2/10
Views: (i) 1/10; (ii) 3.5/10; (iii) 4/10
Description/Notes: The “least low” point in Holland could, frankly, be almost anywhere. The three places we tried were as follows: (i) an artificial flag-topped mound next to the roundabout on the Spalding bypass linking the A16 with the A151; (ii) At an 8m spot height on the OS 1:10,000 maps at the junction between Reservoir Road & Reservoir Bridge in Surfleet Seas End; (iii) at the 8m spot height on the OS 1:25,000 maps at the south west end of the dyke south of Surfleet Seas End

The Walk:

Not to be confused with the Dutch region that’s become eponymous with the Netherlands, the “Parts of Holland” constitutes the south-eastern third of modern-day Lincolnshire. We had been wondering whether this (and the other “Parts”, Kesteven in the south west and Lindsey in the north) actually constituted counties in their own right, as maps showed them simply as subdivisions of Lincolnshire. Intensive internet research had proved that each “Part” had its own county council and was administered independently of the others. This, combined with the perennially popular “just in case” factor, convinced us to include the Parts of Lincolnshire in our county top bagging list.

Job one done, I now turned to job two – what was the highest point in Holland. Unfolding the battered old OS Landranger maps of the area in my local library and working out where Holland’s borders once lay, I was shocked to discover that – on the 1:50,000 maps at least – there was not one single contour line in the whole county. I’ve seen more bumpy pancakes. Sneaking looks at the 1:25,000 scale maps in Waterstones (unfortunately the library doesn’t stock these) I found that here and there there were a few 0m (!!) and 5m contour lines, but even these were few and far between. It was clear that this was going to be a case of going over the maps grid square by grid square looking for the highest spot height – or at least, the least low spot height. After spotting a large number 7m high “summits”, I finally found a spot height that was a whopping 8m up in the sky – on a dyke south of Surfleet Seas End. Subsequent investigation of 1:10,000 scale maps found another point on Reservoir Road in Surfleet Seas End also marked as 8m. Frankly, I felt that there could be points of similar height spread across the county that had just missed out on being surveyed, but I decided that I was happy with the two I’d found.

There was also a question of validity – normally hill bagging is done on a “highest natural point” basis, whereas a dyke and a road were clearly man-made. However, this whole county could be considered to be man-made – most of the land hereabouts has been created either through artificially draining marshland or by reclaiming land from the sea. We therefore decided that for this county only, man-made tops were not only okay, but actually rather appropriate.

It was easy to tell when we entered Holland, shortly after leaving our previous county top of Peterborough; the landscape changed entirely. Flatness stretched around us, so much so that even the slightest increase in altitude (say, the road going over a bridge) meant huge views. I’d thought that these tops were going to be boring boggy holes, but instead I now felt they might be surprisingly good.

Circumventing Spalding on the A16 bypass, we suddenly noticed a series of large mounds at the side of a roundabout. These appeared to mark the boundary of some sort of shopping complex, and were capped with flagpoles proudly displaying the centre’s logo. Normally it wouldn’t have warranted a second glance, but frankly they were the biggest “hills” we’d seen since crossing the county boundary. Given that our intended tops were artificial too, we thought that these hillocks were certainly worth checking out. The fact that there was a McDonald’s drive through directly opposite did not influence our decision to stop at all, honest…

We parked in McDonalds car park and with some difficulty crossed the busy A16 to reach the mounds on the far side of the roundabout. The largest was clearly the one nearest to the roundabout, but we couldn’t see a way to get to it – we were separated from it by a deep waterlogged ditch and a fence. We set off at a brisk trot round to the entrance of the shopping centre but slowed to a walk when we found it was further than expected. It was bizarre on a walking day to be strolling amongst the Saturday shoppers in a shopping mall – at least we didn’t have our walking boots on!

Leaving the far end of the mall we were surprised to find ourselves in a rather wonderful park, set with linear ponds and little bridges. On the far side a path lead through a thin strip of woodland to the mound. Despite the view of the A16 roundabout, it felt rather cool to be on top of this flag-bedecked mini-hill. From the hill it was easy to see a way across the fence and ditch that had frustrated us earlier, and we quickly returned to McDonalds for a Caramel McFlurry.

I’d taken an altitude reading on the GPS at the top of the mound. I knew that the GPS wouldn’t be accurate enough to give me a correct absolute altitude. But I thought I could use it to compare the relative altitude of the mound to the two spot heights in Surfleet Seas End. We now drove onto Surfleet through a landscape that was, if anything even flatter than that we’d seen before.

After a little navigational confusion we headed down the narrow Reservoir Road to the far end of the straggling Surfleet Seas End. As we turned off over Reservoir Bridge, we passed over the first of our 8m spot heights, and parking up we walked the short distance back to it. Reservoir Road is built up on a slight embankment, which gives surprisingly good views across the flat lands around. The GPS altitude reading here was identical to that obtained from the mound at Spalding, signifying that the mound was also 8m above sea level.

We now headed towards our third target point, atop a dyke to the south of Surfleet. From an access point of view it would be tricky, as there was strictly speaking no public access. However, turning right beyond Reservoir Bridge and heading out of the houses we could see the dyke just one field away. There were no fences, and there appeared to be a well-worn path around the edge of the field. The farmer had not planted his potato crop within about ten metres of the field edge anyway, so we would not be disturbing anything.

We walked over strangely sandy soil around the edge of the field to reach the dyke. It’s steep sides were exceptionally difficult to ascend being liberally coated with thistles, brambles and particularly nasty small, dark leaved nettles which stung so badly that they actually raised large white welts on my legs (normally I am relatively unaffected by nettles). When we climbed, it was to find that the top was even worse. We took an altitude reading & found it was identical to the two previous locations. Once again, even from this low altitude you could see for miles across this unusual land.

Simon Edwardes had suggested another potential location for the least low point of Holland. Apparently when George Bridge did the then county tops in the 1960’s, he found an 8m point near Hill Marsh Farm, a kilometre or so south west of where we stood. Frankly after the stinging nettles though, we just weren’t interested. We’d already been to 8m three times in this county. We had a sneaking suspicion that there were quite a lot of other 8m high points, and we saw no particular reason to visit one more of them. With three “high” points under our belts we felt the Holland county top was done, or at least as well done as it was possible for this county to be. We’d enjoyed the dramatically flat landscape of Holland, but now our time would be best spent moving on to another county – the Parts of Kesteven.