Lancashire is often overlooked in favour of the Lakes, but stop in this neck of the woods and you’ll find idyllic countryside and lovely, far cheaper, places to stay
Stop. Do not pass go. Or, in this case, Carnforth. In their haste to race up the M6 to the Lake District, to its £130 standard rooms and £9 baguette sandwiches, people overlook beautiful parts of Lancashire, such as the Ribble Valley and the Trough of Bowland, and their accommodation bargains. Pull in, for instance, at Kirkby Lonsdale’s Sun Inn or Little Eccleston’s Cartford Inn and you will find a network of smart, comfortable stays that offer much better value than their nearby Lakes competitors.
To that list, you can add the Mill at Conder Green, a rural inn with 16 rooms four miles south of Lancaster, close to Glasson Dock. On a coastal plain of lush green fields right by the Lancaster Canal, and framed by a distant backdrop of Lakeland and Bowland fells (and, yes, the occasional factory unit), the location is pretty idyllic. Before breakfast, in warm late-summer sunshine, I strolled along the canal towpath. Ducks pootled around while, up ahead, swans reared up on the water without disturbing the contemplative silence. I’m a city-dweller, and the Mill’s ornithological info about local sand martins and little grebes is lost on me. But who could fail to be charmed by a scene like this?
Related: Let’s go to ... Lancaster
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