SHOUT HOTELS · LINCOLNSHIRE
Hand-Picked Hotels & Guest Houses in Lincolnshire
Lincolnshire is England's second-largest county and one of its least visited, and the emptiness is the point. No motorway crosses it. There is one small city. What there is instead is enormous sky: the drained Fens in the south-east, the chalk hills of the Wolds in the north-east, a long North Sea coast of wide sandy beaches and traditional resorts, and, up on its limestone ridge above all of it, the cathedral city of Lincoln.
Farming shapes everything here. Something like 37% of all the vegetables grown in England come out of the Fens, and the county's sausage, its plum bread and its Lincoln Red beef all come from the same soil. Because it sits off the main tourist routes, Lincolnshire stays quiet even in August.
For a visitor that means uncrowded beaches, empty walking country, stately homes without the queues, and some of the finest winter wildfowl watching in England out on The Wash. The honest trade-off is a car: in Lincoln, in Boston town centre or on the Skegness seafront you can manage without one, and pretty much nowhere else.
Choosing your part of Lincolnshire
This is a county-level decision rather than a single destination, so start by working out which of these six you actually want. They are genuinely different trips.
Lincoln and the cliff
The county's only city, defined by a medieval cathedral and a Norman castle standing together on a steep limestone ridge above the flatlands. Cobbled Steep Hill, independent shops, a university and a compact walkable historic core.
Best for: first-time visitors, history and architecture, and anyone who wants a city base with restaurants and rail links.
Skip if: you came for the coast.
How long: one to two days.
The Lincolnshire Wolds
Rolling chalk and limestone hills, chalk streams, quiet villages and market towns like Louth and Horncastle, designated an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty in 1973. The Viking Way threads through the middle of it.
Best for: walkers, cyclists and slow-travel couples who want scenery and pubs rather than attractions.
Skip if: you have no car, because this is the hardest part of the county to reach without one.
How long: two to three days to do it properly.
The coast: Skegness, Ingoldmells, Mablethorpe and Gibraltar Point
The classic English seaside. Wide beaches, arcades, Butlin's and Fantasy Island at Ingoldmells, and at the southern end the wild dunes and saltmarsh of Gibraltar Point.
Best for: families, traditional-holiday seekers and birdwatchers.
Skip if: you want quiet in August.
How long: a weekend for the resorts, longer if you are walking the reserves. See our Skegness guide.
The Fens and Boston
Flat, drained, hyper-agricultural country of dead-straight drains and huge skies, anchored by the market town of Boston and its landmark church tower. The RSPB reserves at Frampton Marsh and Freiston Shore are out this way on The Wash.
Best for: history-minded visitors, birdwatchers, and anyone wanting a quiet, good-value inland base.
Skip if: you need a beach.
How long: one to two days. See our Boston guide.
The south: Stamford, Spalding and the Deepings
Honey-coloured Georgian Stamford is the county's most handsome town, Spalding sits at the heart of the flower-growing Fens, and Burghley House is on the doorstep.
Best for: couples, heritage travellers, and anyone combining Lincolnshire with Rutland or Cambridgeshire.
Skip if: you want the coast or the cathedral.
How long: one to two days.
The Isle of Axholme and the north
The far north-west, an isolated area of drained islands between rivers and the birthplace of Methodism at Epworth. Northwards towards the Humber the county turns industrial.
Best for: genealogists, Methodist heritage and completists.
Skip if: it is your first visit to the county.
How long: a day.
Getting to Lincolnshire and getting around
By train. The county has no fast main line of its own. The East Coast Main Line runs down its western edge, so the practical railheads are Grantham, Newark and Peterborough, where you change onto local services. The Poacher Line, a 78-mile community rail route run by East Midlands Railway, runs from Nottingham via Grantham, Sleaford and Boston to Skegness, calling at nineteen stations in a little over two hours. Lincoln is served from Nottingham in about an hour.
By road. The spine is the A1 down the western side, with the A46 from Lincoln to Newark, the A15 running dead straight south on the Roman Ermine Street, the A16 from Boston to Grimsby, the A17 across the Fens from King's Lynn, and the A52 from Grantham through Boston to Skegness. The A16 and A17 corridor carries heavy lorry and agricultural traffic and congests around Boston, and the A52 to the coast clogs on summer weekends.
By bus. Rural coverage is thin, and this is the thing that catches people out. Lincolnshire County Council's CallConnect demand-responsive minibus covers most of the county, taking people from villages to their nearest town or rail connection from Monday to Saturday, booked by phone or online in advance. Evening and Sunday services elsewhere are very limited.
By air. Humberside is nearest to the north and East Midlands nearest to the west, both roughly an hour to ninety minutes from the middle of the county. Ignore any guide that still lists Doncaster Sheffield, which closed to commercial flights in November 2022.
Do you need a car? In Lincoln, in Boston town centre or on the Skegness seafront, no. For the Wolds, the RSPB reserves, the villages and touring generally, yes, and not as a nicety. This is a county where public transport thins out fast once you leave the towns.
When to visit Lincolnshire
The coast runs hot from Easter to September and empties sharply after October half-term, when many attractions move to winter hours or close altogether. From November to March the resorts are quiet and much cheaper. The Wolds are at their best in late spring for the chalk-stream valleys and the blossom, and again in autumn for the colour.
Then there is the winter spectacle, which is the county's best-kept secret. From October to February the marshes on The Wash fill with geese, ducks and waders, and RSPB Frampton Marsh alone peaks at a cumulative total of more than 45,000 wetland birds, with wintering short-eared owls, marsh and hen harriers, peregrines and merlins all possible in a single day. Nowhere else in England does this quite so accessibly.
On weather, the Fens and the coast are flat, open and exposed. Wind off The Wash makes it feel colder than the thermometer says, there is little shelter on the sea banks, and winter days are short, so plan reserve walks for the middle of the day.
The year in Lincolnshire
Lincolnshire Show — the county's flagship two-day agricultural show at the Lincolnshire Showground near Lincoln, reliably a Wednesday and Thursday in June. The 2026 show was on 17 and 18 June, and the 2027 show is confirmed for 23 and 24 June.
Boston May Fair — one of the oldest street fairs in England, filling Boston's Market Place for a week at the start of May and closing town-centre roads. The 2026 fair ran from 2 to 9 May; the 2027 dates have not been announced.
SO Festival — free international outdoor arts across Skegness and Mablethorpe, held from 12 to 14 June in 2026. The 2027 dates have not been announced.
Lincoln Christmas Market — worth knowing about because it no longer runs in its old form. The traditional market, which had run since 1982, was scrapped by the city council in February 2023 after crowding concerns, with the budget redirected to smaller year-round events. A new Lincoln Cathedral Christmas Market is due to debut in December 2026, though exact dates had not been published when this page was written.
Boston Christmas Festival — three days in Boston's Market Place in late November. The 2025 edition ran from 28 to 30 November; the 2026 dates were not yet confirmed.
What to see across the county
Lincoln. The cathedral is one of the great Gothic buildings of Europe and charges tourist admission during the day, with a floor tour included and roof and tower tours extra and seasonal. The castle next to it was begun in 1068 and holds an original 1215 Magna Carta alongside the 1217 Charter of the Forest, a Victorian prison and a wall walk right round the perimeter. The grounds are free; the rest is ticketed.
The great houses. Burghley House at Stamford is one of the grandest Elizabethan houses in England, built by William Cecil, with state rooms, Capability Brown parkland and a deer park open year-round. Belton House near Grantham is a Restoration country house with formal gardens and a large adventure playground. Tattershall Castle is a vast fifteenth-century red-brick tower with 149 steps up to the battlements and views over both Fens and Wolds.
The Wash and the reserves. RSPB Frampton Marsh and Freiston Shore near Boston are free to visit and among the best wetland reserves in the country. Gibraltar Point, at the southern end of the Skegness coast, runs to more than a thousand acres of dune, saltmarsh and lagoon with a visitor centre and a car park that takes cash only.
Walking and the odd corners. The Viking Way runs 147 miles from the Humber Bridge through the Wolds down to Rutland Water. Woodhall Spa is an Edwardian pine-woods village with the Dambusters memorial to 617 Squadron, the Petwood Hotel that served as their officers' mess, and the Kinema in the Woods, which opened in September 1922 and is believed to be the only full-time cinema in the country still using rear projection.
Food. This is proper food country. Lincolnshire sausage, coarse pork with sage; plum bread, a fruited tea loaf; Lincoln Red beef from one of Britain's oldest native cattle breeds; and Lincolnshire Poacher cheese, made on the eastern edge of the Wolds. Boston's Wednesday and Saturday markets have traded on the same square since 1545.
