The character of Lincolnshire as it meets the sea is overwhelmingly flat. In the north of the county, the Humberhead Levels and the land reclamation reclaimed Lincolnshire Marsh are pretty much at sea level, while in the south the Fens give way to acres of salt marshes. The tide is prevented from re-flooding the land by miles of man-made earth sea banks. Looking inland from any point on the coast between Grimsby and Boston, the nearest visible geographical feature is a low line of hills, the Lincolnshire Wolds. There are more than thirty miles of sandy beaches, which give way in the north and south to acres of salt marsh and estuarine mud. The rivers Great Eau, Lud, Nene, Steeping, Welland and Witham all drain into the North Sea from Lincolnshire. The Humber form the northern and western boundaries of the county. Owing to the combined sediment carried by the Humber and the rivers of the Wash, and to the muddy clay sea floor, the waters off Lincolnshire are usually an opaquebrown.
History
From prehistory, the Lincolnshire coast was an important centre for the production of salt. At its peak in the 1950s, Grimsby was the largest and busiest fishing port in the world. In 1953, a storm tide overwhelmed Lincolnshire's sea defences, and the county was flooded as far inland as Alford. More than 300 people were killed in Lincolnshire and neighbouring counties. Coastal defences were extensively rebuilt after 1953, but the threat of inundation of low-lying areas by a rising sea in an era of global warming worries many residents of the Lincolnshire coast. In an effort to combat this threat, parts of the sea bank are deliberately being breached, and areas of the coast converted back to salt marsh in a process of "managed retreat". From the shoreline of Sutton on Sea and various other places along the coast it is possible to see the curvature of the earth's surface.
Tourism is still important for the area around Skegness – tens of thousands of holiday-makers and day-trippers from the industrial East Midlands and South Yorkshire visit the town each year. The town has been home since 1936 to Sir Billy Butlin's first Butlinsholiday camp, and the stretch of coast just north of Skegness has the greatest concentration of static caravans in Europe. Farming, the mainstay of the Lincolnshire economy, takes place right under the shadow of the sea walls. Grimsby is a centre for the UK's frozen food import and processing industry. It is known colloquially as The UK'sFood Town. Though the fishing industry has declined since the 1970s, Grimsby still has the UK's largest fish market, though little of the fish sold there is landed at Grimsby Docks. Despite the decline in fishing, the ports of Grimsby and Immingham are still a vital link in the UK's transport infrastructure. There is a wind farm near Mablethorpe, which generates 0.6 MW of electricity.
Transport
Lincolnshire's only stretch of motorway, the M180, terminates near the village of Barnetby le Wold, but the road continues as the A180 to Grimsby, thus linking the docks with Scunthorpe and the industrial towns and cities of South Yorkshire. The A16 joins Grimsby with Boston, while the A52 links Boston and Skegness. Skegness itself lies at the eastern end of the A158 to Lincoln. The coast is served by the Grimsby branch of the Sheffield to Lincoln line, the Cleethorpes-Barton line, and the Grantham to Skegness line. There are railway stations at Barrow, Barton, Boston, Cleethorpes, Grimsby, New Holland and Skegness. Lincolnshire RoadCar runs regular InterConnect buses linking the towns of the east coast with the other major population centres of Lincolnshire - the bus network is of vital importance in a rural county poorly-served by the railway network, and with an elderly population living in remote, scattered villages. Grimsby and Immingham are major ports ; The port of Boston is less important than it was. Humberside Airport is ten miles west of Grimsby.
