Lazy Acre

Fenland Aerodrome isn’t just for plane-spotting: you can strap on your goggles and take to the skies for your own flying lesson, before settling down to a homemade cake or a tipple at the Fenland clubhouse. Or reach for the skies from the ground instead with a clay-shooting session at the nearby Sinclair Shooting Range, one of several scattered about the area. Watch the sun dip down at scenic Spalding; as well as its sunsets, the town is known for its flowers, especially tulips (the district is known as South Holland), and there are regular farmers’ markets stuffed with produce including port and ostrich as well as traditional markets twice a week and plenty of plant and nursery centres nearby. The water taxis take visitors on a 30 minute cruise along the river finishing up at the Springfields shopping centre and the elaborate Festival Gardens, and for more shopping and plant purchases the town of Holbeach eight miles from Spalding has the biggest bulb centre in the UK. Tulips, not glass… Caravan connoisseurs – that’ll be most of us then – can have a horse-drawn drive or cook over a traditional stick fire at Spalding’s Gordon Boswell Romany Museum, which has old-style Vardos, photos and pictures of Romany life. Ayscoughfee Hall Museum & Gardens is also in the town for more gardens and local history exhibits. There’s heaps of history around Lazy Acre, Lincolnshire and surrounds: the Georgian town and castle of Wisbech in nearby Cambridgeshire; the medieval abbey at Crowland, one of four originals of the Magna Carta at Lincoln, and the Tudor mansion and Capability Brown parkland at Burghley House for starters. If ringing the tills is more your (shopping) bag, nearby Peterborough has the Queensgate Centre – but try and make it to the Norman cathedral there too... For small idlers, there’s the seaside town, funfair and Natureland Seal Sanctuary of Skegness to start off at, going wide-eyed at the Baytree Owl Centre (not surprisingly, there’s a garden here too) or taking the adventure trail at the Pink Pig Farm Adventure.