Jockhedge Touring Site

The long sands of Skegness and neighbouring Ingoldmells are both five miles from Jockhedge Touring Park, and both have a lot more to do after soaking up sun on the beach. Soar around Skegness via kitesurfing or waterskiing; lessons and wetsuit hire are available for brave beginners at Skegness Water Leisure Park.

Tiddlers can try splashing about under the sprinklers of the Fairy Dell paddling pool by Skegness’s boating lake or toddling around the tots’ area at Captain Kids Adventure World indoors on the Grand Parade, one of several indoor play centres on this part of coast.

Also at Skegness, the Natureland Seal Sanctuary and National Parrot Sanctuary are colourful options for rainy days: if the kids want to get their beaks into more exotic feathered things, Squawk on the Wild Side at Burgh le Marsh’s Lyndhurst Garden Centre has regular shows and displays.

The Gibraltar Point National Nature Reserve, from the southern end of Skegness along the coastline, is where to see birds in their natural environment along its three-mile stretch to the Wash.

For all creatures great and small, Hardys Animal Farm at Ingoldmells can be used to calm down at after the jaw-dropping rides of Fantasy Island, which has the world’s longest suspended rollercoaster as well as Europe’s longest looping rollercoaster.

Europe’s biggest indoor market is here too (at Ingoldmells, not the rollercoaster): it’s a fairly sure bet that all ages will find something to bring home among its 220 stalls. If not, go to Alford wallet in hand: the ancient market town has a famed farmers’ market once a week, craft markets twice a week in summer, antique shops and Alford Pottery.

A bucketful of seaside and market towns are easy to reach from Skegness, such as the ‘bathing beauties’ (beach huts) of Sutton-on-Sea and Mablethorpe to the north; the capital of the Lincolnshire Wolds Louth, and the antique shops and twelfth century church of Horncastle to the west with countryside cycle path running along to Woodhall Spa.

Stop off at Woodhall Spa for an afternoon: pine woods surround this viewsome Edwardian village and include a cottage museum and the Kinema in the Woods, reely impressive as one of the first cinemas in Britain.

There are also two golf courses (the one at Woodhall Spa Golf Club has been called the best inland course in the country) and a squadron of aviation sites: the Dambusters flew from here and its officers’ mess is now Woodhall’s Petwood Hotel with Squadron Bar.

Finally, take at least a day in Lincoln, an hour’s drive from Burgh le Marsh, for its Da Vinci Code cathedral, the Magna Carta at Lincoln Castle and yet more shopping among its cobbled streets.