Blackpool Pleasure Beach
makes them that little bit special. If I had to pick my favourite museum in England, an easy winner would be the International Slavery Museum on the UNESCO World Heritage site that is the Albert Dock, which manages the almost impossible task of making historical exhibits come alive by making us, the viewers, responsible for the lessons imparted within.
workers in their tens of thousands, you’re in for a big surprise. Sixteen million-plus annual visitors tell their own story, but what makes Blackpool top dog is that brilliant combination of traditional bucketand-spade-by-the-sea with 21st-century high-tech amusements: I have never had my innards wrenched or my eyes water as much as on the collection of rollercoasters here. And even the cynic in me couldn’t help but find the Illuminations a wondrous site, even if they mostly serve to extend the summer season into temperamental autumn.
Liverpool’s museums also put paid to the scurrilous rumour that the city’s cultural credentials climaxed with the Beatles, although walking around the city centre it’s hard to ignore the Fab Four’s role in putting the city on the global map, just as it is difficult to ignore the role of football in the development of the city’s character – in this arena, at least, Liverpool’s candle burns just as brightly as the one down the East Lancs Road in Manchester. A visit to the grounds of either city’s pair of football clubs is always a worthwhile experience (although not nearly as satisfying as going to a match), but if you need a reminder of the Northwest’s role in the game’s origins, you’ll find it at the National Football Museum in Preston, home to the world’s first professional club.
There is only so much city this city-lover can take, which makes the Northwest’s green bits that bit more appealing. Gentle Cheshire and its ye olde Englande feel is great if you want a little rural pampering, but the extremist in me is pulled ever northward, toward the gorgerous Ribble Valley and beyond, into simply magnificent Cumbria. Sure, the Lake District National Park is worth every superlative, but the softer, less explored Eden Valley to the east is proof that England’s most beautiful county has more than one trick up its sleeve.
Just north of Preston is the Queen Bee of England’s traditional seaside resorts, but if you think Blackpool is a tired old relic of its 19th-century self, when it served as the preferred holiday destination for mill
Put simply, the Northwest has it all, whether you’re into a luxurious spa treatment after a long day’s hill-walking or a gourmet meal before a night of clubbing. It offers enough retail therapy to satiate
even the worst case – and you don’t have to even think about going to London. Even those heaving hulks of its industrial past have been given the once-over and turned into hotels, museums and entertainment centres, just another example of the progressive thinking that gave birth to them in the first place. What’s my favourite place? In England, it is unquestionably the Northwest, for all of the reasons outlined above, but it’s the people themselves that really make it special. One time, while having a spectacularly bad night on stage, a Liverpool comic was being heckled by the crowd. “Get off,” yelled one punter. Refusing to give up without something of a fight, the comic responded, “Come on, that’s not fair: give me something topical to work with!” Without missing a beat, the heckler came back with “get off now.” If steely self-confidence combined with self-deprecating humour are the measure of an admirable person, what can you say about a whole region that seems to embody those qualities? I want to go back now.
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