The ‘Red Rose’ county is home to some little-known climbing gems. Within the Arnside and Silverdale Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, Trowbarrow quarry is the pick of a bunch of limestone quarries with 100 foot high crack lines running up a vertical fossilized face. Further south near Preston, Craig y Longridge is a steeply overhanging old quarry that gives powerful bouldering and pumpy, long traverses. Further north and close to the border with Cumbria, you will find the small limestone outcrops of Fairysteps and Woodwell. Once in the obscure esoterica section of the Lancashire and North West climbing guide, these venues are now home to some of the UK’s hardest bouldering. For the sport climber, Chapel Head Scar offers a great collection of six tough, three-star routes to test your mettle.

In addition to the limestone, there are some excellent gritstone quarries, including Anglezarke Quarry with it’s impressive Golden Tower, the fine collection of climbs in the Wilton Quarries and the abundance of quality climbs in the impressively large Hoghton Quarry. Pule Hill is a 900 metre long outcrop with a mixture of natural and quarried gritstone and there are some remote natural outcrops where you can get away from it all on the windswept moors around the Forest of Bowland.