Place Guides — John Scanlan

The guides can be downloaded from the Western Lake District & Coast website

These short place guides were developed in 2019 from research that I had previously undertaken for other (more academic) purposes to be used by Eden Arts of Penrith, as part of a consultancy process they undertook on the A66 coast-to-coast road. They were quickly put together and were not intended to be comprehensive place guides (of the ‘Rough Guide’ kind), but were rather given as illustrative examples of how one might develop itineraries that focused on attractions on the west coast of Cumbria for visitors taking day trips by car. They were intended to inform Eden Arts’ ‘Route 66’ initiative.

Now renamed ‘The 66’, the Eden Arts initiative is now a wide-ranging partnership designed to promote and develop the region defined and joined by the A66 road. It seeks to uncover the potential of the road as a key economic and social driver. These guides, along with my book West Cumbria: On the Edge and another article about the history of the A66 (published in the journal Places) could be considered as contributions towards efforts that seek to re-imagine / re-make the region’s identity.

Each guide was designed to suggest a route that could be accomplished in one day, say, for a day visitor travelling from the A66 through the northern Lake District to the west coast of Cumbria. As such, there was material shared between the three guides, although each one departs on its own itinerary towards a different destination.