Wigan Pier

Now Wigan Pier is a decidedly funny thing - in that it's only about a foot long, jutting majestically out into the Leeds & Liverpool Canal.

So small, yet so famous. It's actually a metal rail at the end of the tramway at Wigan's canal wharf, designed to automatically tip up coal trucks to empty their cargo into the boats moored at the canalside. Its fame is thought to have originated as a music hall joke comparing it on favourable terms with the rather longer piers at Blackpool and Southport. And then, of course, George Orwell carried it on with his book 'The Road To Wigan Pier'.

In recent times Wigan Pier has morphed into the Wigan Pier Experience (01942 323666) - a 8 1/2-acre waterside leisure park. Apart from the famous pier, attractions include waterbus rides on the canal, Opie's Museum of Memories, and the Trencherfield Mill Engine - the world's largest original working steam engine originally built to provide the power for the cotton spinning mill. All set in an attractive waterside garden environment. The award-winning Opie's Museum of Memories showcases the Robert Opie Collection reflecting the changing pattern of domestic life since the Industrial Revolution - experience jazz and 1920s fashions, or try on some 1960s Carnaby Street fashions!

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