John Smith's swashbuckling life reads like something from a "Boy's Own" adventure. Born and baptised at Willoughby in 1579 he was then educated at Alford Grammar School, at that time situated in the room above St. Wilfred's church porch.
He next attended Louth Grammar School before taking an apprenticeship in King's Lynn.

The monotonous life there held no appeal and aged nineteen he left to become a mercenary soldier fighting the Spanish in Holland, and later the Turks in Eastern Europe. There his luck ran out for he was captured and enslaved but eventually escaped back to England. Then in December 1606, he learned of the founding of the Virginia Company and set sail for America, arriving in Chesapeake Bay in May 1607, where Jamestown (named after James I) was established. Within two years Smith was elected as president.

Even there his restless spirit pushed him into exploration, mapping the interior and writing of his travels and it was during this time that his association with Pocahontas the Indian "princess" arose. Captured by Indians, Smith was sentenced to death until Pocahontas (then aged eleven) begged her chieftain father to spare his life.

She afterwards visited him in Jamestown until Smith returned to England in 1609. He was back in America five years later, naming "New England" and identifying Plymouth (the Pilgrim Fathers eventual destination) as suitable for settlement. He and Pocahontas met once again in 1616 when she arrived in England, but as the wife of Norfolk settler John Rolfe. When Captain John Smith died in 1631 he was buried in Newgate, London only to have his gravesite lost in the Great Fire of 1666. The Willoughby Arms has a portrait of Smith on the outside and inside memorabilia includes a bell from the 'God Speed', one of the Jamestown expedition ships.

Lincolnshire's famous adventurer Captain John Smith

Walkers should visit Willoughby's St. Helena's church too. On one side of the south door is a commemorative plaque to John Smith donated by the Jamestown Foundation and on the other a colourful memorial window. This incorporates Smith's coat of arms, which contains three Turks heads, recalling those he had killed in single-handed combat. A village history information board stands beside the lane between the church and the inn.

The walk also utilises the former branch line from Willoughby to Sutton-on-Sea. This opened in 1886 as the Sutton and Willoughby Railway Company and was worked by the Great Northern Railway, who eventually took over the S&WRC in 1908. Goods services ceased in 1964 and the last passenger train ran on 5th October 1970. A section near Willoughby is converted to a nature reserve with public access and acts as a haven for wild flowers and numerous species of butterflies.

NOTES: Between Willoughby and Bonthorpe some arable fields are unavoidable; dry conditions are therefore preferable.

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ABOUT THE WALK:

Start. Willoughby Arms, Willoughby. Maps. OS Landranger 122 (Skegness) : Explorer 274. Distance. 5 miles : 8 kilometres.
Refreshments. The Willoughby Arms. (Or picnic beside the railway.)

THE WALK: From the inn carpark turn right to the church and a footpath signpost by the churchyard gate; enter and turn right. At the moat around the rectory turn left to a footbridge. Cross this and cut the garden corner to a stile by a gate, then keep forward across a meadow to a stile in the far hedge. Maintain this direction in the next field aiming for the right hand corner of some trees at the far side. Cross the footbridge there onto a track. The path now divides.

Take the right hand branch to a road, turn left and in half a mile turn left at a signed track. Walk down this for about 150 yards to a footbridge on the right. (You may reach this point over the fields if you wish and conditions underfoot are OK. Bear half left where the path divides and crossing a footbridge maintain a more or less straight line to reach the track and footbridge just mentioned.)

Either way cross the footbridge and then bear half left to a group of trees. From the next fingerpost aim for the right hand end of the trees seen on the horizon to eventually reach another fingerpost and bridge near an electricity pole. Do not cross the bridge but bear left veering slightly away from a ditch and aiming left of centre of more woods in the distance. On joining a track keep forward 200 yards until it bends right. From the signpost leave the track maintaining a line (very) slightly left to what you have been walking. This large field should have the path marked in any crops and this will lead you to arrive at a footbridge by a road.

Turn right, keeping ahead at the nearby "T" junction and continue through the hamlet of Bonthorpe. In about a mile where the road the bends sharp right turn left through a gate onto the old railway line.

In a further mile at a gate bear left a few yards to a track and go right along it to a road. Now turn left back into Willoughby. At a bend cross the road onto the village green and walk over it to the inn.

Map of the walk