Rolling history among herb-rich dunes

Gibraltar Point, Lincolnshire Nearly 5,000 years ago, this coastal fringe of the Wash was an immense freshwater wetland

Hanging from the eastern corner of Lincolnshire, where the neck of the muddy expanse of the Wash meets the wind-turbine colonised North Sea, is the coastal sandscape of Gibraltar Point. A sloped sandy beach is backed by saltmarsh veined with scything channels, and dunes rise behind the marsh.

These are not the vast yellow peaks bristled with marram grass that typify some dune systems. Instead the dunes have low ridges, with only the seaward edge of the first ridge being open and sandy. In the slacks between the next two ridges herb-rich pasture hosts shallow pools carpeted with mosses, stoneworts and the little green parasols of marsh pennywort.

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