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The World | |
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England | |
The North West |
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England,
The North West The North West: North West Tourist Board Swan House, Swan Meadow Road, Wigan Pier, Wigan WN3 5BB (tel: (01942) 821 222; fax: (01942) 820 002; e-mail: info@nwtb.u-net.com; web site: http://www.visitbritain.com). The North West's 250km (150-mile) coastline is characterised by dune-backed sandy beaches. The seven large resorts, the most popular of which is Blackpool, attract millions of holiday-makers each year. Other resorts include Lytham St Annes, Ainsdale, Fleetwood, Morecambe and Southport. All have extensive facilities and a wide choice of accommodation and entertainment. Blackburn, Bolton, Nelson and Burnley offer varied accommodation as bases for trips round the western slopes of the Pennines, while long stretches of footpaths and bridleways wind through the landscape of heather and wild bilberries. Throughout the area there are fine examples of the stately homes of England: 16th-century Speke Hall near Liverpool; Gawsworth Hall near Macclesfield; timbered Bramall Hall near Stockport; and Tatton Park near Knutsford, whose interior is familiar to viewers of the BBC television adaptation of Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited. The countryside includes the gentle Cheshire Plain dotted with small natural lakes, old water-wheels and distinctive villages with black and white houses. In the Peak District National Park, the limestone valleys and vast caverns of the White Peak give way to the dramatic moorlands of the Dark Peak. In the south is the Mersey Estuary and the port of Liverpool, home town of the Beatles. It also contains the Walker Art Gallery with Dutch, French, Italian and English paintings, the New Tate Gallery and two cathedrals, one Anglican and one Roman Catholic. Attractions in and around the city include the Merseyside County Museum and St George's Hall. From Liverpool there are regular ferry sailings to the Isle of Man. Across the river is the Wirral Peninsula with the resort of New Brighton and a large country park. From here there are views across the Dee estuary to the Welsh Hills. On the River Dee near the Welsh border is the historic walled city of Chester, well-known for its concentration of Cheshire's black and white 'magpie' houses. To the east of the city is the 4000-acre Delamere Forest and the rich pastures of the Cheshire Plain, a region which has a network of canals several hundred kilometres long. Northeast of Cheshire is the city of Manchester, in many ways the 'capital' of the north of England. Attractions here include the Opera House, the Palace Theatre, the Royal Exchange Theatre (in the building that, 100 years ago, was at the very centre of the world's cotton industry), the Bridgewater Hall and the mock-Gothic John Rylands Library. The city's cathedral was built in the 15th century, although most of the more immediately noticeable buildings date from the city's period of greatest prosperity in the 19th century. Further north is the Forest of Bowland, a vast and lonely area of high moor-backed hills which also contains the beautiful wooded valley of the River Ribble. The historic county town of Lancaster is to the northwest, a short distance inland from the resorts of Morecambe and Heysham. |