Visit Grimsby website not updated since 1999, creating Humberside time capsule

It's unclear whether the site wants you to visit, or warn you about the dangers of doing so

(Visit Grimsby)

Grimsby: home of fish, ships and huge towers. If those sound appealing, and you want to head off to the Humberside town — you might head to the Visit Grimsby website. There, you would find a melancholy time capsule, untouched for the last 16 years.

The website — which shows up as the fifth Google result for “Grimsby” and the first for “Visit Grimsby” — is mostly pictures of Grimsby under various headings. The different pages, each decorated in the frames and garish colours of the internet in the 1990s, include headings like “Genealogy”, “A Fishy Journey”, “School Reunion” and “Cleethorpes”.

The site doesn’t seem to be official – and most of the page, at least the parts that continue to work, is made up of pictures rather than any useful information.

An “About” page offers some clues to how the site was made, and promises to return.

“The site was launched in December 1999 - the purpose - to show the world what a great place Grimsby is,” the site says. “Grimsby has changed quite a bit since these pictures were taken back in 1999, and we will be updating the site very soon.”

If the site enough to convince you to head to Grimsby, you might choose to click on the “Where is Grimsby” link. But you’ll get lost before you even set off — the page is broken, displaying a “404 - File or directory not found” error message.