I am coming to the Open at Royal Lytham St. Annes in two weeks but I know nothing about the town or area. All the hotels and B & Bs in the area went months ago, but how much of a schlepp would it be for me to stay in, say, Blackpool and drive to the course each day? There certainly doesn't seem to be any shortage of accommodation there.

Alternatively, can anyone suggest any other places to stay in the surounds, or know of any other online resources?

Many thanks in advance.

If you stay in Blackpool it would take you less than 30 by train to get to the course, driving would be a problem with the amount of traffic for an Open.

Oh, the train option sounds much better. Are they likely to be putting on extra for the Open? Any idea how far the course is from the station or are they likely to put shuttle-buses on for that. I would imagine Blackpool is more of a fun town anyway, or is it a cliched as portrayed?

The website is curiously short of these details.

It's about a 5 minute walk from the station to the course.

They probably will put extra on.

Blackpool, well, hmmm, it's erm, different.

Ah, I have now found the relevant info on the website. Blackpool it is then!

Any of these hotels recognized or recommended by anyone:

http://www.booking.com/searchresults.ht ... children=0

can offer jack-shit in way of useful info on Lancs but one must question when one sends texts and emails to another poster and one gets NO response, one wonders why?

I lived in Preston for a year
Nice night clubs

Which number? I lost both my HK and Sing SIMS and new ones are ion the way. My Indo phone still good though.

Lancashire lad here,lived in Preston for twenty odd years.
Blackpool is a bit of a dump but if you are going for the golf all should be ok. It is the capital of hen and bucks party weekend. That should give you an idea what to expect

Even worse, its a shithole overrun with drunken chav scum.

Blackpool is what Hell was aiming to be.

I'll repeat my comment on the similar thread about the US Open.

CNUT.

KG

PS - v. jealous.

try the hotpot

I've stayed at the Castle and the de Vere when working in Blackpool - the Castle is a dump, popular with coach parties from Glasgow - very basic food and rooms, all the tourists wear those plastic wristbands to show they're full board. The de Vere is kind of boutique-y but way out of town do you'd need to taxi to the railway station. All the rest are pretty much the same - slightly run-down but within a walk of the station (I think) and clean enough.

Blackpool's also cheaper than Lytham, which is kind of larnie, believe it or not. Entertainment is mainly pubfights.

I stay at the wife's mother's place. She lives there.

And the golf pro used to be at my old course, Gog Magog.

I stay at the wife's mother's place. She lives there.

And the golf pro used to be at my old course, Gog Magog.

Blackpool is fine for a long weekend, plenty to do there but stay in the most expensive place you can afford. If you're single or promiscuous then getting a shag will be quite easy, even for a fugly Saffa.

Go to Seniors for decent fish and chips.

Avoid Harry Ramsdens.

Only don't make the mistake of going to Lytham Station - the course is actually nearer either St Annes or Ansdell and Fairhaven. And the journey from Blackpool South (there are two lines out of Blackpool) is all of 11 minutes. There won't be any extra trains laid on, as the line is single track all the way and has no capacity to increase the one train an hour service that is current. The walk from St Annes is nearer 10 minutes. Blackpool is a shithole of epic proportions, I would really try to avoid it, especially at the height of summer. The area roundabouts is all rural and pretty lovely in a flat sort of way, maybe look at finding somewhere there and driving to a station on that line?

So stop name-dropping, call up the old lady and get DP a room for the weekend!

I recall once attending a night club in Blackpool (aged about 19) which was a sort of goth establishment - all black paint and The Cure - where a girl of no more than 14 summers, who was not unattractive but had recently vomitted down her front, was trolling the room for a snog.

At some stage of the night I went through a door and emerged blinking into a brightly-lit room. It was a Flintstones-themed club full of "sports-casuals". A large, crudely rendered likeness of Barney Rubble looked down on the revelry of the damned below, without judgement, like some suffering Christ.

The next day it rained. It was the kind of rain that only a faded British seaside town can host, washing away hope even as it washed away the peeling paint of the seafront houses. And the gutters channeled all evidence of the previous night's brief escape into the grey, lumpen sea.

Then we went to the Pleasure Beach and had a go on the rollercoasters.

Blackpool is everything that is wrong about the UK in one place.

CT,

Wet

From your search results I'd either go with the Metropol or the De Vere or the Norbreck (furthest away) at a pinch. Stay away from everything else unless you like being kept awake by drunken stag/hen parties.

I lived and worked in St Anne's on Sea for my RIBA pt 1 training year in 1990....it is not a good place to be when you are 20 years old. Blackpool is very close and I regularly used to go out there and walk back along the sea front in the early hours if I hadn't managed to pull a holiday-maker (which was too regularly) ......in the rain and the wind. Took fucking hours.......

To echo other posters' views, Blackpool is the hive of scum and villainy that Mos Eisley only wishes it was. Total shithole and avoid like the plague.

I live in Manchester and am travelling over for the Sunday of the Open, which is only an hour's drive, or slightly longer on the train. You could stay in a luxury hotel by Manchester Piccadilly station and head over without too much trouble, provided you're 'up and at 'em.

It's a lot further than you think when you make that drunken decision to walk home. I've made the journey in the other direction to Fleetwood many a time, mainly because Blackpool taxi drivers would charge the earth to take you there.

nothing near Southport or inland a bit ? the area around there are loverly tbh (even if in the north). Blackpool is interesting.

Bimbo is too lenient on Blackpool it is a vile shit hole, I am going to Nickelodean land at the Pleasure Beach on Sunday .
Driving will be a nightmare so somewhere near a train station would be a good idea.
The Vincent in Southport is nice but no direct train to Blackpool iirc.

it's full of Lancastrian pig dog filth

you don't need to know anything else.

just make sure you take you own glass, plate, knife, fork and spoon, and spit on anyone sporting a lancastrian accent. twice.

There's more than a few on here who're making the elementary mistake of treating Blackpool as a town and holiday destination rather than as an anthropological experiment.

He'd need to change at Preston, which is no hardship.

Bring an umbrella.

Any time I've visited Lancashire to visit my English relatives there, it's nearly always raining.
It's worse than Ireland for rain.

I've only been to Blackpool once, to visit a girl who was at some sort of college there.

I was told that it was a popular stag destination for people from Glasgow, which didnt sound that plausible, and that this particular weekend was known as glassing weekend (or it may have been stabbing weekend, I cant remember).

It's true. The fuckers come by the coach load every year.

That's a beautifully written memory, even Wordsworth would struggle to match such crafted prose.





Did you shag the Goth?

I've never been to Lancashire and I can't see that changing in the near future.