Carnforth

Micropubs by the railway

The Snug opened by the train station in August 2012 and was the North West's first micropub: one room, five real ales, no TV, no gaming machines, no loud music. The idea is that you talk to each other instead. There's usually a Best Bitter from Lakes Brew Co, over the border in Cumbria, on the bar.

It isn't the only one. Taps on the Green, five minutes' walk from the brewery that supplies it, is run by the local Q Brew and pours five of its own beers — Thunderbolt, Full Ahead, and Galactic Storm 2, which climbs to six percent. Also no food, also one room. For a roaring fire and well-kept ale there's The Shovel Inn, and opposite the railway station stands the Royal Station Hotel, which became "Royal" in 1900 after the Duke of York — later George V — stopped there on a shooting trip.

Books and a rainy-day farm

The bookshop is the other landmark. Carnforth Bookshop has been going since 1977, spread across three floors and a warren of rooms, selling new, second-hand and antiquarian books alongside maps, toys, stationery and art materials.

For food you head out of town to Greenlands Farm Village at Tewitfield, which has a butcher working local meat, a cheese counter and a Gourmet Pantry of jams, chutneys and lemon-infused olive oil. The farm itself is the rainy-day answer for families — 120-odd animals including pygmy goats and Kune-Kune pigs, a play barn, laser tag and a café, most of it under cover.

Canal paths, crag and industry

Walking starts at the water. Pick up the Lancaster Canal towpath on Kellet Road, just east of the centre, and follow it towards Morecambe Bay with the Lake District fells ahead; the circular loop south-west towards Bolton-le-Sands runs about 5.8 miles. Just outside town, Warton Crag is a limestone hill with peregrines, rare butterflies and views over the whole bay.

The town itself is a product of iron and rail. Domesday recorded it as Chreneforde, with no people, no plough teams and a value of nothing: waste. It stayed a small rural spot for another eight centuries. The ironworks arrived in the 1860s — Henry Bessemer was among the shareholders — and Carnforth grew into the junction of three railways before the main-line platforms closed in 1970.

Steam, cinema and the station clock

The engine shed, built partly by Italian prisoners of war, was the last steam depot in Britain to close, in August 1968. Enthusiasts led by Dr Peter Beet formed a company to save it, and it now runs steam charters on the national network.

Then there's the station. In February 1945 David Lean filmed Brief Encounter here, and Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard kiss beneath the platform clock — a clock made by Joyce of Whitchurch and hung in 1895. It was thought lost when the station fell derelict, until Alan Smith tracked down the original workings, hands, faces and pendulum at a dealer in Twickenham and paid to restore it.

The Brief Encounter legacy

The heritage centre recreated the 1940s refreshment room to match the studio set, down to the tea and cakes, and a small cinema plays the film on a loop. The clock came back to the platform in 2026, eighty years after the film — with, as Northern's Owain Roberts put it, "fans of the film travelling from far and wide to see it."