A visit to Lancashire, a county in North West England, can take you from the glitz and excitement of Blackpool's piers and pleasure beach, to pensive walls through silent moors, to explore the rich industrial heritage of its mills and working museums, or along the trail of England’s most-famous witches across Lancaster and Pendle.

The north is low-lying and agricultural, a series of resorts line the coast, while the south is industrial; to the east are the scenic Pennine moors and Forest of Bowland. Out of the moors surge rivers that in the Industrial Revolution were harnessed to drive mills, especially cotton mills, which Lancashire's soft water favours. Those mills spelt wealth for a few, but among those horrified by conditions in Lancashire were Mrs Gaskell, Marx and Engels, and Orwell. Those enchanted by its rural wilds included Balzac, Conan Doyle and Tolkien.

Towns and villages

• 1 Lancaster is the ceremonial county town of Lancashire. It has a castle and a Victorian centre.

2 Morecambe and Heysham is a traditional British seaside resort.

3 Carnforth is the railway junction used to film Brief Encounter. The lowland, cattle-farming plain is narrow here, with moors to the east and estuary marshes to the west.

• 4 Preston in practical terms is the county town, as most county local government is based here.

5 Garstang is a large village on the dairy farming plains of the Fylde.

6 Chorley hosts the largest LDS church in Britain.

7 Kirkham along with Freckleton and Wrea Green is commuterland but has an aviation industry.

• The coast has a string of resort towns, well past their heyday if indeed they ever had one. Linked by rumbling trams are:

8 Lytham St Annes has sandhills and a renowned golf course.

9 Blackpool the main resort, with its tower, and accommodation and amusements.

10 Cleveleys and 11 Fleetwood have muddy beaches.

12 Poulton-le-Fylde is a commuter village.

• 13 Ormskirk and Skelmersdale are large towns in the borough of West Lancashire.

• East Lancashire starts with industry and commuter towns bordering Manchester, but stretches north into the scenic upper Ribble valley and Pennine Moors. The moors are low at this point, creating the historic transpennine route through the "Aire Gap" — it was even possible to cut a canal across, the Leeds-Liverpool canal.

14 Rossendale is the steep-sided valley of the River Irwell where it flows out of the Pennines towards Manchester. There's a string of little textile towns along it, including Rawtenstall, Bacup, Haslingden and Waterfoot.

15 Blackburn, 16 Accrington, 17 Burnley and 18 Nelson are mill towns just north.

19 Clitheroe is where you finally shake off the burbs and industry, and break into open country. It's brooded over by Pendle Hill, home of the Lancashire Witches.

Other destinations

• 1 Forest of Bowland is an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, an expanse of upland countryside between Clitheroe, Lancaster and Kirby Lonsdale. It adjoins the Yorkshire Dales National Park to the east.
• 2 Arnside and Silverdale is a small Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty on the border of Cumbria and Lancashire.

Understand

Was there a "Red Rose"? In the 15th century, rival branches of the Plantagenet dynasty fell out, and for the next 30 years the Dukes of York and Dukes of Lancaster fought for the crown of England. The conflict only ended with the death in battle of Richard III in 1485, and accession of Henry VII and his Tudor dynasty. In Shakespeare's Henry VI Part I, the rivals pick white or red roses to show their allegiance. Historians quibble that, while the white rose always symbolised York, the red rose for Lancaster didn’t appear till Tudor times, and the term “Wars of the Roses” was invented in the 19th century by Sir Walter Scott. Such stuff! Fact of the matter is, neither duchy had much connection to its nominal city, and little of the fighting was in Lancashire: the battles were in Yorkshire, St Albans, Tewkesbury and anywhere but Lancs. So wouldn’t that mean that the Red Rose men usually had to turn out in an off-colour away-strip?

Lancashire takes its name from the city of Lancaster, which was the Roman camp (castrum) by the River Lune. It is known for its longstanding rivalry with the neighbouring county of Yorkshire.

Lancashire was much reduced by the 1974 local government re-organisation: northerly Barrow-in-Furness was re-assigned to Cumbria, while Greater Manchester and Merseyside (including the port city of Liverpool became separate areas. This means that the most heavily industrial areas have parted, while the rural charms have remained. However, most Mancunians still consider themselves to be Lancastrians, which manifests most noticeably in the rivalry with Yorkshire, though Liverpudlians do not and consider Merseyside to be a separate region. The county's balance has shifted in favour of the enchanting.

Britain's pre-1974 counties needed reform to catch up with modern ways of living and governing, especially in ramshackle Lancashire. Manchester and Liverpool were huge self-governing entities with their own centres of gravity. Barrow-in-Furness lay the far side of Morecambe Bay, yet was an exclave of Lancashire because stagecoaches used to go north by crossing the sands from Morecambe. So boundary change was necessary, but with it Lancashire lost 40% of its area, and an even greater chunk of its cultural history. The Beatles, Beryl Bainbridge, Ken Dodd, Jimmy Tarbuck, Bill Tidy: all gone to Merseyside, along with the seaside resort of Southport. Les Dawson, Samuel Crompton, Emmeline Pankhurst and Thomas de Quincey: all gone to Greater Manchester, along with LS Lowry’s Salford, Gracie Field’s Rochdale, Fred Dibnah's Bolton and George Orwell’s Wigan Pier. And Barrow went to Cumbria, along with its submarine-building yards, and Walney Island inspiration for Thomas the Tank Engine's "Isle of Sodor".

There was plenty left. The Blackburn of Barbara Castle and its infamous 4000 potholes, the Preston of Tom Finney, the Blackpool of Violet Carson aka Ena Sharples, and the Morecambe of none other than Eric Morecambe. More importantly, Lancashire had to re-think and re-balance itself. Blackpool declined as a resort but lived on as a conference centre; its airport closed to commercial flights but became an air-support base for the gas fields out in Morecambe Bay. Lancaster lost its lino factories but continued to expand its university, one of the “plate glass” universities of the 1960s. Preston North End played in football's lower divisions but the town's commercial and military aircraft industry prospered, and the polytechnic became a university.

And what the county never lost, and could now found upon, was its countryside. The mill towns were clustered in the southern valleys with limited spread onto the farmland and moors above. Nick Park of Preston created Shaun the Sheep to cavort amidst drystone walls in pre-lapsarian green fields. Lancashire gained some territory from Yorkshire, a rural area on the Aire / Ribble watershed, so upper Ribblesdale and the Forest of Bowland AONB now joined seamlessly to the protected scenery of the Dales. You won’t find many red roses growing up there, but you will find reasons to be pleased you came to Lancs.

• Visit Lancashire visitir information

Talk

People from Lancashire tend to speak English with a Northern accent called "Lancastrian" or sometimes "Lanky". The accent can differ from one town to another, although non-Brits are unlikely to be able to tell any difference. Traditional Lancashire accents are rhotic, as are most American and Irish accents.

As with most of the UK, very few natives speak other foreign languages. However, many ethnic minorities and immigrants now reside in the county, and languages such as Hindi, Urdu, Cantonese, Polish and Lithuanian are spoken within those groups.

Get in

Queen Mary 2 and Isle of Man ferry at Liverpool

By plane: Manchester Airport has a global range of flights, competitive fares, and frequent direct trains across the county. Liverpool John Lennon Airport is well connected to Europe.

By train: the main line between London Euston and Glasgow runs through Lancashire, with good connections to all the main towns.

By road: M6 runs north-south, with M55 branching to Blackpool and M61 to Manchester. M62 the main east-west transpennine route is just south of the county.

All major towns have at least a daily or overnight bus from London Victoria, by either National Express or Megabus.

By ship: Cruise ships call at Liverpool Cruise Terminal. Ferries ply to Liverpool from:

Dublin twice a day (P & O, 8 hours), though there are faster sailings from Dublin to Holyhead in North Wales.

Belfast twice a day (Stena Line, 8 hours)

Douglas Isle of Man three per day (Isle of Man Steam Packet, 2 hour 45 min); Douglas also has ferries to Heysham near Morecambe.

Get around

The county is well served by motorways. The M6 runs north-south through the county, there are various spur motorways linking the M6 to towns (e.g. the M55 to Blackpool, the M65 to Blackburn and Burnley, the M58 to Merseyside), and the M62 crosses the Pennines to Yorkshire.

The Leeds-Liverpool Canal is a picturesque but slower way to travel in Lancashire.

Lancashire is increasingly a cycle friendly place for on- and off-road cyclists. Visit http://www.visitlancashire.com/site/things-to-do/cycling for up-to-date information.

See

• Stately homes and gardens include Samlesbury Hall near Blackburn, Gawthorpe Hall by Padiham near Burnley, and Hoghton Tower near Chorley.
• Arnside and Silverdale - another Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty between Lancaster and the Lakes.
• Pendle Hill - moorlands near Clitheroe and Burnley, renowned for the historic Pendle Witches.
• Ashton Memorial - a monument in Lancaster's Williamson Park which can be seen when passing on the motorway and looks like St Paul's Cathedral set among woodlands. Lord Ashton (a linoleum industrialist) gave the park to the people of the city, and built the memorial to his wife. Contains an art gallery and a butterfly house.
• Cricket: Lancashire CCC play at Old Trafford in Manchester. All around the county are small (often picturesque) grounds, with matches from the Lancashire local league down to village and pub matches.
• Britannia Coconut Dancers or "The Nutters" is a colourful traditional folk-dance troupe. Based at Britannia in Bacup, Rossendale, the Coconutters take over the town on Easter Saturday, dancing from pub to pub along with their small band of musicians. Unusual in that they wear black-face make-up and skirts with 'nuts' attached to their arms and legs. The 'nuts' are cotton-bobbins and help create a number of highly distinctive dances. They can often be seen at other local events throughout the year.
• Helmshore Textile Museum (near Haslingden in the east of the county), a must to give you an insight into a working textile mill and past way of life in the county.
• Stonyhurst Catholic College is set in the beautiful Ribble Valley, north of Blackburn, near Clitheroe.

Do

• Walk in the scenic countryside areas listed above. There are extensive public footpaths.
• Visit the lively resort of Blackpool, or the quieter one Morecambe.
• Visit the old fishing town of Fleetwood with its seafront golf course, boating lakes, Freeport shopping centre and marina. You can also take a little ferry across the River Wyre estuary to Knott End.
• Lancaster Canal starts in Preston and winds its way north through Garstang, Lancaster and Carnforth before being curtailed by the M6 at Tewitfield. It has a good towpath and is navigable throughout. There are no locks, as it detours west to avoid Longridge and sweeps over the Lune Valley by an impressive Georgian aqueduct. There are spurs to the Ribble estuary at Lytham and to the Lune estuary at Glasson Dock, but no connection to the national canal network - goods were hauled across the valley at Preston by a horse-drawn tramway. North of Tewitfield by the M6 is a derelict flight of locks, then the canal north for some miles is in water but culverted in several places, and the last stretch into Kendal is disused. Plans to restore these northern reaches have so far come to nothing.
• Leeds-Liverpool Canal is still navigable coast-to-coast and has a good towpath for cycling. It meanders from Liverpool to Wigan (and, yes, Wigan Pier), and a spur heads north towards the Lancaster Canal but never makes it. The canal climbs through Blackburn, Rishton, Burnley and Colne to reach the summit at Barnoldswick and the boundary with Yorkshire. From there it's downhill all the way to Gargrave, Skipton, Bingley, Leeds, Castleford and the Humber.

Eat

The County has distinctive culinary traditions. Black pudding, cow-heel and tripe, and a wide variety of savoury pies are traditional foods, some of which have been picked up and developed by a new generation of chefs. Other local specialities include young lamb from the hill farms, Lancashire hotpot (a lamb based stew), soft Lancashire oatcakes; Eccles cakes and Chorley cakes. Local bakers remain a common sight.

Lancashire cheese is considered one of the premier products of the county. It is associated with the town of Leigh, and Ben Gunn, a character in the Robert Louis Stevenson novel Treasure Island, craved Leigh Toaster during his three-year exile as a castaway. Lancashire cheese can be classified as either "tasty", "crumbly" or "creamy". Matured Lancashire Cheese is referred to locally as "tasty". Creamy and tasty are the original Lancashire cheeses, crumbly being a 1960s invention to effectively compete with Cheshire, Wensleydale and Caerphilly. It is reputed to be the best toasting cheese in the world and as such is a favourite for Welsh rarebit.

Drink

• As well as typical British pub culture, there's Fitzpatricks Temperance Bar in Rawtenstall which the last bar of its kind to serve black beer, sarsaparilla, blood tonic, cream soda and other non-alcoholic drinks.
• Lots of interesting old country pubs throughout the county, each with a story to tell dating back hundreds of years and a food menu worth testing. Try staying in these, dotted through the beautiful Ribble Valley. An ideal location whatever the time of year and within easy reach of all the best the county has to offer.

Stay safe

A safe county to visit but like most places worldwide in these modern times, take care walking at night, especially in the cities or dark unlit areas.

City centre pubs and clubs are safe to visit but some can get a little rowdy due to the drinking culture.

Check your cab home is a registered cab and displaying a cab licence plate number on the back if in doubt.

The local police are helpful and friendly.

Go next

East into North Yorkshire, especially the scenic dales; north to Cumbria and Scotland, south to the buzz of Manchester or Liverpool; west to explore North Wales.

Or hop on a ferry to Ireland or the Isle of Man.