The Discover Pendle Hill project aimed to develop the sustainable tourism offer in the Pendle Hill area – engaging businesses and volunteers and developing new visitor opportunities. We aimed to contribute to the 'Pendle Folk' website to capture information, images and stories about the LP area, its people, landscape and heritage. And to develop new tourism products and events to promote and interpret the heritage of the LP area to visitors.
The Project developed a Sense of Place toolkit for businesses to utilise - to provide a consistent message about the Pendle Hill area and to promote the local distinctiveness and special qualities. This gives invaluable tips and guidance to businesses on how to tell a story that links your business with the special features - the landscape and heritage - of the Pendle Hill area.
Follow this link for Further Information about the Pendle Hill Sense of Place Toolkit.
For additional information and resources, please see our Explore Sense of Place page.
Two seminars were delivered for tourism businesses locally, including sessions on Visitor Giving to support the Pendle Hill Legacy Fund.
Over the four years we supported the production of four village heritage Treasure Trails at Sabden, Barrowford, Chatburn and Gawthorpe Hall. These were designed with local primary schools and made available via local businesses in the villages, raising funds for future print runs via Champion Bowland the Treasure Trails follow the national franchise format, and help young people to discover heritage through an adventure, and completing a puzzle.
We also supported a number of new stories being uploaded to pendlefolk and our project blog.
Three 'Foodie Forays' were held, developing the trend set by the Clitheroe Food festival and branching out into foraging and herbal medicine events in the landscape as well as supporting local foodie businesses. We also ran a 'new to walking festival' in 2021 supporting and inspiring local people who had started exploring the landscape on their doorstep during lockdowns. This included training for 20 volunteers as walks leaders who can then go on to lead walks locally. The 9-day festival offered a whole variety of walks from archaeology to herbal medicine, mindfulness to traditional boundaries and family-friendly walks and was supported by several walk leader volunteers. We were delighted by the number of people who came along and enjoyed the walks, some of which had only been enjoying regular walks for a short amount of time. The feedback we received from participants was very encouraging and many reported that they had enjoyed the variety as well as gaining ideas of where to venture out in the future, along more peaceful paths at the foot of the hill. It also provided an opportunity for people to walk and talk and make new friends and connections.
Further events included star gazing and outdoor mindfulness: wellbeing therapy. In total this project ran 26 events attended by 762 people.
At the end of the scheme, we produced the beautiful Pendle Hill Story Map with Selina Ellis Gray of Hellion Toys, and this was also made available as a publication and poster locally.
You can view the Discover project image highlights here.
Contact: Hetty Byrne (Sustainable Tourism Officer, Forest of Bowland AONB) hetty.byrne@lancashire.gov.uk 01200 448000