NOBODY but a resident or a Reform candidate dreaming of an MP’s salary would ever visit, but these two-stall market towns have Tourist Information Centres anyway. Why?
Garstang
Also covers five other regions and has the ‘Hidden gem’ seal of misery. Lists three local attractions, but if you’re not into farms, fishing, or flogging yourself over fells, you’re f**ked. Does have a Booths, a posh North-only supermarket chain the very existence of which would be unfathomable to Southerners. But not so much they’d want to check it out.
Batley
Like many other towns in the region, Batley’s attractions are something old and once industrial. There’s a museum, an interiors design outlet called Redbrick Mill in an old mill, and a place called The Mill that isn’t in an old mill. Expecting the Fox’s Biscuits Stadium to be the Yorkshire equivalent of the Wonka factory will lead to disappointment.
Accrington
Boasts the usual Northern tourist magnets: parks, an art gallery in an old house and a shopping arcade in an old mill. Accrington Stanley, one of the twelve founder members of the football league, has has survived by being on land not interesting enough to develop into a retail park. When said in Scouse, the town’s name conjures phlegm.
Northallerton
Located in a car park, Northallerton’s Tourist Information Centre provides visitors with fantastic reasons to leave Northallerton. Determined to stay? There’s an old house with gardens that isn’t yet a David Lloyd health club. Rishi Sunak’s the MP here. Tourist Information doesn’t know where, or if, he can be located.
Bolton
Is it in Lancashire, or Greater Manchester? Bolton doesn’t know. Largely empty, as most of its inhabitants populate mainstream TV and radio, visitors can hang about on Le Mans Crescent to be in the background on the latest Maxine Peake detective drama, or pretend to be Paddy McGuinness by going to Park Cake Bakeries and feigning interest.
Thirsk
The World of James Herriot, who wrote books about vets putting their arms up cow’s arses, is here. Cow not included. Otherwise you’ll be directed to the war memorial, a supposedly cursed and but to appearances very ordinary chair in the town museum, and to f**k off 36 miles south to York where there’s something to see.
