The Sea Buoy

Out on the mudflats near Boston stands a solitary buoy painted in bold red and white stripes - the sort of thing you'd walk past without thinking twice, except someone decided it needed to be art. The Sea Buoy is exactly what it sounds like: an old navigational marker that's been repurposed as a landmark, planted firmly in the saltmarsh where the Wash meets the Lincolnshire coast.

It's not a destination that'll eat up your afternoon. You're looking at thirty minutes maximum, including the walk out and back. The real appeal is the light and the emptiness of it all - those vast skies and the way the mud reflects the clouds. Photographers quite like it for that reason. Families with young kids might find the trek across the flats a bit tedious, especially if the tide's coming in, but older children who enjoy a proper walk will get something from the strangeness of it.

Free to visit, obviously. Just go at low tide or you'll be doing a rather soggy trudge. The walk from Boston takes you through genuine working marshland, not manicured parkland. If you're staying at Orchard Holiday Park or Appletree just down the road, it's a decent morning excursion before heading back for lunch. Big Sky Hideaway, being slightly further out, makes it a reasonable half-day activity if you're after a break from the camps.

Worth the trip? Only if you appreciate lonely, salt-scored landscapes and don't need entertainment laid on. Perfectly pleasant, but hardly essential.