The Tickled Trout: the hotel on the Ribble east of Preston

The best known hotel name in the district, and the one people use as a landmark, not a destination.

The Tickled Trout is a hotel on the River Ribble east of Preston, beside the motorway crossing near Samlesbury. It is the best known hotel name in the district, and it functions locally as a landmark: people give directions by it.

Its position is genuinely useful. It sits where the motorway crosses the Ribble, which puts it within a few minutes of both Samlesbury Hall and the valley road east, while still being twenty minutes from Preston city centre.

It is a corridor hotel, which means a car is assumed.

The motorway position, and what it is for

Its position at the junction is the whole entry: the name works as a landmark for people driving past, and most of the trade it takes comes off the motorway. The road frame is on the places to stay sheet.

The Tickled Trout is the clearest case of that logic. It stands on the north bank of the Ribble where the motorway crosses the river, which puts it a minute from the junction and about two miles from the Flag Market. The trade-off is exactly what the position implies: the fastest access to the road network of any hotel in the Preston area, and a walk into the city that nobody makes.

Reaching the city from here

The river is the useful landmark, not the road. The Ribble path runs west from near here towards Avenham and Miller Parks, and the eastern arc of the Guild Wheel passes close by, so the site is better placed for the outdoor half of Preston than its motorway address suggests.

For the city centre itself, this is a drive or a short taxi. Nothing about the location rewards being without a car, which is true of most of the places to stay in this category.

What else is east of the centre

East of Preston is the Ribble corridor, and it is the most interesting side of the city for anybody with an afternoon. The river runs in a shallow wooded valley carrying six nature reserves, Brockholes sits close by on former gravel workings, and beyond them the land rises towards Longridge and the Bowland fringe.

Further east across the river are the two historic houses, Samlesbury Hall and Hoghton Tower, which were never town buildings and belong to families whose estates Preston later grew towards.