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Many tourists bypass the four major counties of the East Midlands - Nottinghamshire, Leicestershire, Northamptonshire and Lincolnshire - on their way to more obvious destinations, and although there's much to savour it's true they miss little of overriding interest. Nottingham, Leicester and Northampton - three of the four county towns - share a long and eventful history, but have been badly bruised by postwar town planning and industrial development. Embedded in the modernity, however, are a few historical landmarks - an especially fine church in Northampton, the castle in Nottingham, and traces of Roman baths in Leicester - but by and large these are the frills rather than the substance, though Nottingham does have an aesthetic edge. And if few would describe this trio of towns as especially good-looking, the countryside surrounding them can be delightful, with rolling farmland punctuated by wooded ridges and flowing hills, all sprinkled with prestigious country homes, pretty villages and old market towns. In Nottinghamshire, the star turn is Hardwick Hall , an especially beautiful Elizabethan country home, but Byron's Newstead Abbey runs a close second. Furthermore, the eastern reaches of the county hold two appealing market towns - Southwell and Newark - whilst west Leicestershire weighs in with the fascinating mansion of Calke Abbey . East of Leicestershire, the easy countryside rolls over into Rutland , the region's fifth and smallest county, and here you'll find two more pleasant country towns, Oakham and Uppingham , though tiny Lyddington is even more picturesque. Rutland benefits from the use of limestone as the traditional building material and so does Northamptonshire . Here, the rural parts of the county are studded with handsome, old stone villages and small towns - most notably Fotheringhay and Oundle - plus large country estates, the best known of which is Althorp , the final resting place of Princess Diana. Lincolnshire is very different in character from the rest of the region, an agricultural backwater that remains surprisingly remote - locals sometimes call it the "forgotten" county. This was not always the case: throughout medieval times the county flourished as a centre of the wool trade with Flanders, its merchants and landowners becoming some of the wealthiest in the land. Reminders of the high times are legion, beginning with the majestic cathedral that graces Lincoln , a dignified old city which, with its cobbled lanes and ancient buildings, well deserves an overnight stay. Equally enticing is the splendidly intact stone town of Stamford , but the county's urban attractions pretty much end there. Out in the sticks, the most distinctive feature is The Fens , whose pancake-flat fields, filling out much of the south of the county and extending deep into East Anglia, have been regained from the marshes and the sea. Fenland villages are generally short of charm, but the parishchurches , whose spires regularly interrupt the wide-skied landscape, are simply stunning, the most impressive of the lot being St Botolph's in Boston . In north Lincolnshire, the low-lying chalky hills of the Lincolnshire Wolds contain the county's most diverse scenery, including a string of sheltered valleys concentrated in the vicinity of Louth , an especially fetching country town. To the east of the Wolds is the coast , whose long sandy beach extends, with a few marshy interruptions, from Mablethorpe to Skegness , the main resort. The coast has long attracted thousands of holiday-makers from the big cities of the East Midlands and Yorkshire, hence its trail of bungalows, campsites and caravan parks - though, to be fair, chunks of the seashore are now protected as nature reserves. As for public transport, travelling between the cities of the East Midlands by train or bus is simple and most of the larger towns have good regional links, too; but things are very different in the country with bus services very patchy.
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