The first Saturday of 2026 I was out with the Ramblers for a walk along the coast from Lytham to Blackpool. We had a good day for it; cold and sunny with a bright blue sky, but walking along the beach there was a head wind, a northerly blasting us with sand (well, blasting is something of an exaggeration). It seems that it’s become a tradition for the Wigan and District Ramblers to walk along this section of coast for the first walk of the year, varying the route and direction from year to year.
The coach dropped the “long walk” group off near the Lytham windmill while those planning to walk the shorter route stayed on for a few more miles.
Initially, we turned inland to walk through Witch Wood that runs along the railway line for a mile or so. It’s obviously popular with locals, especially dog walkers as, on a fine day, there were plenty of people walking along the path in both directions, blowing away the cobwebs after the Christmas festivities.
Heather, one of the group, was keen to find the Witch’s grave – she’d been here a couple of times before and was unsuccessful, but this time managed to locate it. So this is where the witch was buried. The headstone doesn’t give anything away.
The Witch, was actually a horse, a favourite of the local big wigs, the Cliftons of nearby Lytham Hall, which fell and died in the wood on 5 January 1888.
Leaving the wood we made our way back to the coast by the boating lake. Nobody out on the water today!
We walked around the lake and a little further on along the prom we stopped for a break by the full sized Spitfire monument.
We had a considerably longer stop than planned as one of the group, wo really wasn’t up to the longer walk was well off the pace and was in danger of getting left behind. The group leader went back to talk to him and persuaded him to take a taxi to the end of the route. I think that was definitely the right decision.
We carried on now joining the route through the sandhills and along the beach to St Annes Pier.
It was busy with walkers.
On the Prom, just after the pier the Sunken Gardens, (also known as the Les Dawson Garden due to his statue located in the middle of the square) surrounded by sheltered benches, was the ideal spot to stop for our dinner out of the wind (and a quick visit to the loos on the pier – 20 p’s needed).
After a break we resumed our walk along the beach, head on into the wind, carrying on until we reached the Prom at Blackpool South Shore. The headwind made it a tougher walk than you’d think looking at the map and the fairly large group started to spread out. A couple of the group were starting to lag behind, and I hung back acting as an unofficial back marker to make sure they made it to rejoin the everyone else who waited at the start of the prom.
After regrouping, we carried on along the prom as far as the South Pier (Blackpool still has three of them) where we crossed the road to the facing pub where the short walk group had already just arrived.
We stayed in the pub for an hour or so before reboarding the coach which was parked up on the road nearby.
I’m not a great fan of Blackpool (unlike when I was young) which I find rather brassy and somewhat tacky. However Lytham and Saint Annes were always much more genteel and the coast along her (alongside the Ribble estuary at Lytham) is very pleasant and I enjoyed the walk. Relatively easy as it was essentially flat terrain, although the headwind and, in places, the loose sand underfoot, meant it waw a little more difficult than might first appear.
Down by the Dougie 