LANCASTER , Lancashire's county town, dates back at least as far as the Roman occupation, though only the scant remains of a bath-house and traces of the fort wall survive from that period. It became an important port on the slave triangle, and it's the legacy of predominantly Georgian buildings from that time that gives the town its character, particularly in the leafy areas around the castle. It's no surprise that many people choose to spend a night here on the way to the Lakes or Dales to the north, and it's an easy side-trip a few miles west to the resort of Morecambe and to neighbouring Heysham village and its ancient churches.

Lancaster Castle (tours: mid-March to mid-Dec daily 10.30am-5pm; last tour at 4pm; £4) has been the city's focal point since Roman times, when there was a fort on this site. Currently, about a quarter of the battlemented building can be visited on an entertaining hour-long tour, though court sittings sometimes affect the schedules. The castle's neighbour, the former Benedictine Priory Church of St Mary (Easter-Oct daily 9.30am-5pm; free), has a (possibly) Saxon doorway at the west end and some finely carved fourteenth-century choir stalls. A two-minute walk down the steps between the castle and church brings you to the seventeenth-century Judges' Lodging (Easter-June & Oct Mon-Sat 2-5pm; July-Sept Mon-Fri 10am-1pm & 2-5pm, Sat & Sun 2-5pm; £2), once used by visiting magistrates and now home to two museums. Rooms on the ground and first floors house furniture by Gillows of Lancaster, one-time boat builders who, in the early eighteenth century, took to cabinet-making with the tropical timber which came back as ballast in their boats. Their high-quality work eventually earned them contracts to furnish the Houses of Parliament and the great Cunard transatlantic liners, the Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth .

Continuing down the hill and left onto Dameside you arrive on the banks of the River Lune - which lent Lancaster its name - whose navigable lengths inspired the growth of the port. The river was first bridged in Roman times: the latest span, an eye-catching steel suspension bridge for pedestrians, follows the line of the medieval wooden, later stone, bridge. The top floor of one of the eighteenth-century warehouses here is taken up by part of the Maritime Museum , St George's Quay (daily: Easter-Oct 11am-5pm; Nov-Easter 12.30-4pm; £2), entered through the Old Custom House on the riverside. The museum's ample coverage of life on the sea and inland waterways of Lancashire is complemented by the City Museum on Market Square back in town (Mon-Sat 10am-5pm; free).

For a panorama of the town, Morecambe Bay and the Cumbrian fells, take a bus from the bus station (or a steep 25-minute walk up Moor Lane) to Williamson Park (Easter-Sept daily 10am-5pm; Oct-Easter Mon-Fri 11am-4pm, Sat & Sun 10am-4pm; free), Lancaster's highest point. Funded by local statesman and lino magnate Lord Ashton, the park's centrepiece is the 220-foot-high Ashton Memorial , a Baroque folly raised by his son in memory of his second wife.

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