Book Review Neil Coates Best PUB Walks in Lancashire

BOOK REVIEW NEIL COATES BEST PUB WALKS IN LANCASHIRE 1991 Sigma Leisure.

A standard guide to twenty-five walks in the Red Rose County, ranging from five to eleven miles in length, but with little indication of the moderate to difficult nature of the terrain to be traversed.

Most pub walks end at the pub, enabling ramblers to have a few pints and a meal to celebrate completion of their trek, but Coates often sees the pub as the starting point for his walks, leaving ramblers having to work out for themselves what to do on crossing the finishing line. Few are circular trails, making a need for use of public transport essential.

He gives an interesting, if standard potted history of the county, taking in its role in the Civil War and the Industrial Revolution. He makes several digs at neighbouring Yorkshire. He rightly laments how Merseyside and Greater Manchester were broken away as separate counties in their own right, but fails to include any Manchester or Liverpool walks or pubs in his presentation.

The opening hours he lists are clearly out of date given the introduction of 24 / 7 licensing laws in the UK, though few bars do open all possible hours. To his credit, Coates includes only real ale bars – not keg beer sellers.

His maps are not very well presented and walkers would need to take the book or photocopies of its pages on a walk, but his step-by-step instructions are straight forward enough. He provides an entertaining guide and the walks are certainly well chosen, ranging in great contrast from the coastal Fylde to the Rossendale Valley, and the pubs are presented with some sense of their history and heritage, that makes me think getting out of the pub would be the toughest part of any of these walks. I’d just want to stay and drink in more of their atmospheres.

Arthur Chappell