A Day in Lancaster

View Across Morcambe Bay, From the Tide and Tap

The Travelodge didn’t offer a cooked breakfast, so we drove to the local Toby Carvery for a buffet breakfast. It was nothing to write home about; we quickly decided not to go tomorrow. But it did fill us up, ready for the day ahead.

We then drove to Heysham to see St. Peter’s Church, which I’ll write about in the next post.

Then back to Morecambe to park the car and catch the bus to Lancaster for a visit.

Our first port of call was Lancaster Castle, a short walk from the bus station. There’s not much to see there; it was a bit disappointing. Luckily, it’s free to visit.

The weather was cloudy and dark, promising rain.

So we decided to go to the pub. In this case, the Tite and Lock at Lancaster station. We only meant to have a couple of pints before moving on, but the pub was so nice we stayed for a minor session. There’s a post about the pub later in this series.

After the session, we caught the bus back to the town centre, ready for a Turkish meal in the Anatolia Restaurant (TripAdvisor gave it a very good rating). The inside stank of cigarettes and cigars, so we left very quickly. We now had a problem: no backup food option. Stupidly, I’d only researched one restaurant in Lancaster.

We decided to go to the White Cross for beer and wine, to decide what to do. The pub’s in the Good Beer Guide (my pint was OK, but cost a massive £5.20). A pub we will almost certainly never visit again. We decided not to chance another restaurant.

We went to Gregson, a Good Beer Guide pub close by. It’s a fantastic community pub, one of the best we’ve ever been to. It was the pub of the trip, possibly the pub of the year. It’s one of my Desert Island pubs. I’ll be writing about it in a few posts.

Then it was back to Morcambe for a night’s sleep.

We decided we’d give the local Wetherspoons a miss, even though it was just a few hundred yards up the road from the Travelodge.

We only scratched the surface of Lancaster; we will return, though we won’t stay in Morecambe; we’ll stay in Lancaster. Worth it just for a visit to the Gregson pub.