Northwest Travel Video Guide

Northwest Travel Itinerary

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Within the northwest of England lie some of the ugliest and some of the most beautiful parts of the country. The least attractive zones of this region are to be found in the sprawl connecting the country's third and sixth largest conurbations, Manchester and Liverpool, but even here the picture isn't unrelievedly bleak, as the cities themselves have an ingratiating appeal. Manchester , in particular, surprises many who don't expect to see beyond its dour, industrial heritage. Where once only a handful of Victorian Gothic buildings lent any grace to the cityscape, Manchester today has been completely transformed by a rebuilding programme that puts it in the vanguard of modern British urban design. Liverpool , set on the Mersey estuary, is perhaps less appealing at first glance, though Georgian town houses, grand civic buildings, its twin cathedrals and a burgeoning cafe scene soon change perceptions. To the south, Cheshire boasts the county town, Chester , with its complete circuit of town walls and partly Tudor centre. This is as alluring as any of the country's northern towns, capturing the essence of what has always been one of England's wealthiest rural counties.

Lancashire , which historically lay directly to the north of Cheshire, reached industrial prominence in the last century primarily due to the cotton-mill towns around Manchester and to the thriving port of Liverpool. Today, neither of those cities is part of the county, having been excised when England's first substantial county boundary changes since the Domesday Book were enacted in 1974. The urban counties of Merseyside and Greater Manchester chopped off the southern section of Lancashire while Cumbria grabbed a substantial northern chunk leaving Lancashire little more than half its former size. Its oldest town, and major commercial and administrative centre, is Preston - home of the national museum of England's national game, football - though tourists are perhaps more inclined to linger in the charming towns and villages of the nearby Ribble Valley . Meanwhile, along the coast to the west and north of the major cities stretches a line of resorts - from Southport to Morecambe - which once formed the mainstay of the northern British holiday trade before their client base disappeared on cheaper, sunnier holidays to Florida and the Mediterranean. Only Blackpool is really worth visiting for its own sake, a rip-roaring resort which has stayed at the top of its game by supplying

undemanding entertainment with more panache than its neighbours. For anything more culturally invigorating you'll have to continue north to the historically important city of Lancaster , with its Tudor castle. Finally, the semi-autonomous Isle of Man , only twenty-five miles off the coast and served by ferries from Liverpool and Heysham (or short flights from Liverpool), provides a terrain almost as rewarding as that of the Lake District but without the seasonal overcrowding.

Your Tips For Northwest

• East Anglia England Travel Videos
  England Travel Itinerary
  Strictly speaking, East Anglia is made up of just three counties - Suffolk, Norfolk and Cambridgeshire - which were settled by Angles from Holstein in the fifth century, though in more recent times it's come to be loosely applied to parts of Essex too. - England
  

• Northwest England Travel Videos
  England Travel Itinerary
  Within the northwest of England lie some of the ugliest and some of the most beautiful parts of the country. - England
  

• Northeast England Travel Videos
  England Travel Itinerary
  For England's northeastern region - in particular the counties of Northumberland and Durham - the centuries between the Roman invasion and the 1603 union of the English and Scottish crowns were a period of almost incessant turbulence. - England
  

• Cumbria and the Lakes England Travel Videos
  England Travel Itinerary
  The Lake District is England's most hyped scenic area, and for good reasons. - England
  

• London England Travel Videos
  England Travel Itinerary
  With a population of just under eight million, London is Europe's largest city, spreading across an area of more than 620 square miles from its core on the River Thames. - England
  

• Yorkshire England Travel Videos
  England Travel Itinerary
  Few visitors pass through Yorkshire , England's largest county, without spending time in history-soaked York , for centuries England's second city. - England
  

• Surrey Kent and Sussex England Travel Videos
  England Travel Itinerary
  The southeast corner of England was traditionally where London went on holiday. - England
  

• Hampshire Dorset and Wiltshire England Travel Videos
  England Travel Itinerary
  The distant past is perhaps more tangible in Hampshire, Dorset and Wiltshire than in any other part of England. - England
  

• East Midlands England Travel Videos
  England Travel Itinerary
  Many tourists bypass the four major counties of the East Midlands - Nottinghamshire, Leicestershire, Northamptonshire and Lincolnshire - on their way to more obvious destinations, and although there's much to savour it's true they miss little of overriding interest. - England
  

• Oxford and around England Travel Videos
  England Travel Itinerary
  Arching around the peripheries of London, beyond the orbital M25, the "Home Counties" of England form London's commuter-belt. - England
  

• Cotswolds and Somerset England Travel Videos
  England Travel Itinerary
  The rolling green swards of Gloucestershire and Somerset , a wedge of land linking the Midlands with the West Country, encapsulate a vision of rural England which has very largely survived the inroads of modern urban culture. - England
  

• Devon and Cornwall England Travel Videos
  England Travel Itinerary
  At the western extremity of England, the counties of Devon and Cornwall encompass everything from genteel, cosy villages to vast Atlantic-facing strands of golden sand and wild expanses of granite moorland. - England
  

• West Midlands and the Peak District England Travel Videos
  England Travel Itinerary
  The factories of the West Midlands were the powerhouses of the Industrial Revolution and Birmingham , Britain's second city, was once the world's greatest industrial metropolis. - England