When asked where Lancashire’s most scenic areas are, laymen will probably say the Ribble Valley as the main ‘big hitter’, but an often overlooked pocket of our county may be worthy of the same reputation. Trawden Forest is about as close to Yorkshire that you’ll see a red rose flag flying! A civil parish, Trawden Forest comprises the village of Trawden and the nearby hamlets of Winewall, Wycollar, and Cottontree. It’s a landscape best described as untouched, it has visitor centres but is still far from being a Mecca for day-tripping families and serenity-seeking pensioners, like the classic Lancashire tourism hotspots are.
I visited on a recent autumnal Sunday hoping to seek a pulse-calming retreat from the weekday grind – my hopes were met. Trawden - the largest settlement in Trawden Forest. The main road running through Trawden (Image: NQ) The first stop on my travels was the forest’s main village of Trawden.
Driving in from the Colne side there’s a pub appropriately named the Trawden Arms at the bottom of the village, opposite a shop and library. It looks inconspicuous, but I soon found out, that like all great hostelries, it’s got a story behind it. A local, who seemed in the know about all things Trawden, told me that back in 2021, the pub made the news after residents raised half a million pounds to bring it under the ownership of the village, joining the local shop, library, post office, and community centre in being under community control.
The commu.
