Our easy-to-use website contains details and locations of places to visit around this area. Please select from:

	Places to Stay: Bed and Breakfast Hotels and Guest Houses Pubs with Accommodation Self Catering
	Places to Eat and Drink: Cafes, Coffee & Tea Shops Pubs serving Food Restaurants and Bistros
	Places of Interest: Places to Visit
	Gardens Centres: Garden Centres/Nurseries
	Specialist Shops: Antiques & Restoration Arts and Crafts Fashions Gifts Home and Garden Jewellery Food and Drink Shops

Ashton

A couple of miles to the northeast of Ashton stretch the 4000 acres of Delamere Forest, a rambler’s delight with a wealth of lovely walks and many picnic sites, ideal for a peaceful family day out. In Norman times, a “forest” was a part-wooded, part-open area, reserved as a hunting ground exclusively for royalty or the nobility. There were savage penalties for anyone harming the deer, even if the deer were destroying crops, and household dogs within the forest had to be deliberately lamed to ensure that they could not harass the beasts. James I was the last king to hunt deer here, in August 1617, and enjoyed the day’s sport so much that he made his Chief Forester a knight on the spot. Even at that date, many of the great oaks in the forest had already been felled to provide timber for ship-building – as well as for Cheshire’s familiar black and white half-timbered houses. Since the early 1900s, Delamere Forest has been maintained by the Forestry Commission which has undertaken an intensive programme of tree planting and woodland management. Delamere is now both an attractive recreational area and a working forest with 90% of the trees eventually destined for the saw mills.