Sights in Northwest England
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Sandcastle Waterpark
Across from the Pleasure Beach is this indoor water complex with 15 different slides and rides, including the Hyperzone, which has the complex's most popular slides - Aztec Falls, Montezooma, the Sidewinder and Master Blaster, the world's largest indoor waterslide.
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Rows
Chester's other great draw is the Rows, a series of two-level galleried arcades along the four streets that fan out in each direction from the Central Cross. The architecture is a handsome mix of Victorian and Tudor (original and mock) buildings that house a fantastic collection of individually owned shops. The origin of the Rows is a little unclear, but it is believed that as the Roman walls slowly crumbled, medieval traders built their shops against the resulting rubble banks, while later arrivals built theirs on top.
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Roman Amphitheatre
Just outside the city walls is what was once an arena that seated 7000 spectators (making it the country's largest). Some historians have suggested that it may also have been the site of King Arthur's Camelot and that his knights' Round Table was really just this circular construction. Excavations continue; during summer months there are occasional shows held here.
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Pleasure Beach
The main reason for Blackpool's immense popularity is the Pleasure Beach, a 16-hectare collection of more than 145 rides that attracts some seven million visitors annually, and, as amusement parks go, is easily the best in Britain.
The park's major rides include the Big One, the tallest and fastest roller coaster in Europe, reaching a top speed of 85mph before hitting a near-vertical descent of 75m; the Ice Blast, which delivers you up a 65m steel tower before returning to earth at 80mph; and the vertiginous Infusion, which features five loops, a double-line twist and a suspended looping coaster – which should help bring up that lunch just nicely.
The high-tech, modern…
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North Pier
Built in 1862 and opening a year later, the most famous of the three Victorian piers once charged a penny for admission; its plethora of unexciting rides are now free.
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Museum of Science & Industry
The city's largest museum comprises 2.8 hectares in the heart of 19th-century industrial Manchester. It's in the landscape of enormous, weather-stained brick buildings and rusting cast-iron relics of canals, viaducts, bridges, warehouses and market buildings that makes up Castlefield, now deemed an 'urban heritage park'.
If there's anything you want to know about the Industrial (and post-Industrial) Revolution and Manchester's key role in it, you'll find the answers among the collection of steam engines and locomotives, factory machinery from the mills, and the excellent exhibition telling the story of Manchester from the sewers up.
It's an all-ages kind of museum, but the…
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Maritime Museum
The 18th-century Custom House recalls the days when Lancaster was a flourishing port at the centre of the slave trade.
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The Lowry
Looking more like a shiny steel ship than an arts centre, the Lowry is the quays' most notable success. It attracts more than one million visitors a year to its myriad functions, which include everything from art exhibits and performances to bars, restaurants and, inevitably, shops. You can even get married here.
The complex is home to more than 300 paintings and drawings by northern England's favourite artist, LS Lowry (1887–1976), who was born in nearby Stretford. He became famous for his humanistic depictions of industrial landscapes and northern towns, and gave his name to the complex.
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Liverpool War Museum
The secret command centre for the Battle of the Atlantic, the Western Approaches, was abandoned at the end of the war with virtually everything left intact. You can get a good glimpse of the labyrinthine nerve centre of Allied operations, including the all-important map room, where you can imagine playing a real-life, full-scale version of Risk.
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Lancaster Castle & Priory
Lancaster's imposing castle was originally built in 1150. Later additions include the Well Tower, more commonly known as the Witches' Tower because it was used to incarcerate the accused of the famous Pendle Witches Trial of 1612, and the impressive twin-towered gatehouse, both of which were added in the 14th century. However, most of what you see today dates from the 18th and 19th centuries, when the castle was substantially altered to suit its new, and still current, role as a prison. Consequently, you can only visit the castle as part of a 45-minute guided tour, but you do get a chance to experience what it was like to be locked up in the dungeon.
Immediately next to…
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International Slavery Museum
Museums are, by their very nature, like a still of the past, but the extraordinary International Slavery Museum resonates very much in the present. It reveals slavery's unimaginable horrors – including Liverpool's own role in the triangular slave trade – in a clear and uncompromising manner. It does this through a remarkable series of multimedia and other displays, and it doesn't baulk at confronting racism, slavery's shadowy ideological justification for this inhumane practice.
The history of slavery is made real through a series of personal experiences, including a carefully kept ship's log and captain's diary. These tell the story of one slaver's experience on a…
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FACT
This well-established media centre has two galleries that feature constantly changing exhibitions, usually to do with new media and digital art. Three screens show a mix of art-house films, old classics and mainstream releases. The bar and cafe are popular daytime hangouts for the city's creative types.
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Dewa Roman Experience
Walk through a reconstructed Roman street to reveal what Roman life was like. It's just off Bridge St.
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Cottage Museum
Gives us a peep into life in early Victorian times.
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Central Library
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Bugworld Experience
Get up close and personal with 36 different species of bug and insect by clambering around six distinctive habitats; see the world from their eyes; and, for an extra special treat, sample some oven-baked tarantula, chilli locusts or a meal worm pancake. This is just part of the fun at this brand new interactive museum, which will surely have the kids pestering you to buy a book on insects and their funny habits when you're done.
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Blackpool Tower
Built in 1894, this 154m-high tower is Blackpool's most recognisable landmark. In 2011 it reopened after a major refurbishment, which saw the addition of the Blackpool Tower Eye and 4D Experience, where you watch a film on the town's history (and feel the spray of the sea and the smell of the donkeys) before taking the elevator 154m up to the new observation deck, which has splendid views and only a (thick) glass floor between you and the ant-sized people below.
Back at ground level, a new dungeon exhibit has opened to sit alongside the old Moorish circus and the magnificent rococo ballroom, with extraordinary sculptured and gilded plasterwork, murals, chandeliers and…
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Winckley Square
Not far south of Fishergate, set around a landscaped park, is lovely Winckley Square. One of northern England's finest examples of a Georgian square, it was established in the 1830s. Stroll and admire the fine buildings - now professional offices, but once home to businessmen who grew rich on industrial-boom profits. Great restaurants surround the square.
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National Football Museum
This crowd-pleaser opened in 2001 and is home to a superb collection of football artefacts and archives. Appropriately, a visit to the hugely popular museum is 'a game of two halves': first the history of the game and the hall of fame, then the fun hands-on stuff. Bend it like Beckham with GoalStriker, an interactive penalty shoot-out experience.
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Harris Museum & Art Gallery
Situated inside a beautiful, custom-built building dating from 1893, the Harris Museum showcases Preston's rich heritage. Exhibitions cover local history and archaeology, fine art, photography, costume and decorative arts. Diversity rules here: highlights include a prehistoric elk skeleton and the country's largest collection of French perfume bottles.
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World of Glass
Winner of a tourism award in 2006, World of Glass explores the history of glass-making at the old Pilkington factory. See live glass-blowing demonstrations and multisensory special-effects shows, explore the old furnace's underground tunnels and get lost in a maze of mirrors. There's also a collection of rare and beautiful glass pieces from around the world.
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Liverpool FC
Doff o' the cap to Evertonians and Beatle-maniacs, but no single institution represents the Mersey spirit and strong sense of identity more powerfully than Liverpool FC, England's most successful football club. Virtually unbeatable for much of the 1970s and '80s, they haven't won the league championship since 1990, but in 2005 they became European champions for the fifth time and followed it with an FA Cup in 2006.
The club's home is the marvellous Anfield, but plans are afoot to relocate to a new 60,000-capacity stadium a stone's throw away in Stanley Park before 2010. The experience of a live match is a memorable one, especially the sound of 40,000 fans singing 'You'll…
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