Many tourists bypass the four major counties of the East
Midlands - Nottinghamshire, Leicestershire, Northamptonshire
and Lincolnshire - on their way to more obvious destinations, and
although there's much to savour it's true they miss little of
overriding interest. Nottingham, Leicester and
Northampton - three of the four county towns - share a long
and eventful history, but have been badly bruised by postwar town
planning and industrial development. Embedded in the modernity,
however, are a few historical landmarks - an especially fine church
in Northampton, the castle in Nottingham, and traces of Roman baths
in Leicester - but by and large these are the frills rather than
the substance, though Nottingham does have an aesthetic edge. And
if few would describe this trio of towns as especially
good-looking, the countryside surrounding them can be delightful,
with rolling farmland punctuated by wooded ridges and flowing
hills, all sprinkled with prestigious country homes, pretty
villages and old market towns. In Nottinghamshire, the star turn is
Hardwick Hall , an especially beautiful Elizabethan country
home, but Byron's Newstead Abbey runs a close second.
Furthermore, the eastern reaches of the county hold two appealing
market towns - Southwell and Newark - whilst west
Leicestershire weighs in with the fascinating mansion of Calke
Abbey . East of Leicestershire, the easy countryside rolls over
into Rutland , the region's fifth and smallest county, and
here you'll find two more pleasant country towns, Oakham and
Uppingham , though tiny Lyddington is even more
picturesque. Rutland benefits from the use of limestone as the
traditional building material and so does Northamptonshire .
Here, the rural parts of the county are studded with handsome, old
stone villages and small towns - most notably Fotheringhay
and Oundle - plus large country estates, the best known of
which is Althorp , the final resting place of Princess
Diana.
Lincolnshire is very different in character from the rest of the
region, an agricultural backwater that remains surprisingly remote
- locals sometimes call it the "forgotten" county. This was not
always the case: throughout medieval times the county flourished as
a centre of the wool trade with Flanders, its merchants and
landowners becoming some of the wealthiest in the land. Reminders
of the high times are legion, beginning with the majestic cathedral
that graces Lincoln , a dignified old city which, with its
cobbled lanes and ancient buildings, well deserves an overnight
stay. Equally enticing is the splendidly intact stone town of
Stamford , but the county's urban attractions pretty much
end there. Out in the sticks, the most distinctive feature is
The Fens , whose pancake-flat fields, filling out much of
the south of the county and extending deep into East Anglia, have
been regained from the marshes and the sea. Fenland villages are
generally short of charm, but the parishchurches , whose
spires regularly interrupt the wide-skied landscape, are simply
stunning, the most impressive of the lot being St Botolph's in
Boston .
In north Lincolnshire, the low-lying chalky hills of the
Lincolnshire Wolds contain the county's most diverse
scenery, including a string of sheltered valleys concentrated in
the vicinity of Louth , an especially fetching country town.
To the east of the Wolds is the coast , whose long sandy
beach extends, with a few marshy interruptions, from Mablethorpe to
Skegness , the main resort. The coast has long attracted
thousands of holiday-makers from the big cities of the East
Midlands and Yorkshire, hence its trail of bungalows, campsites and
caravan parks - though, to be fair, chunks of the seashore are now
protected as nature reserves.
As for public transport, travelling between the cities of the
East Midlands by train or bus is simple and most of
the larger towns have good regional links, too; but things are very
different in the country with bus services very patchy.