Barton Grange Hotel: the A6 corridor hotel at Barton, north of Preston

On the same corridor as the entertainment complex, and the reason Barton appears twice in this directory.

Barton Grange Hotel sits at Barton, north of Preston on the A6 corridor towards Garstang. It shares that corridor with The Flower Bowl entertainment complex, which is why Barton appears twice in this directory.

The A6 north is the older trunk route, running parallel to the motorway, and the hotels and roadside businesses on it predate the motorway era. That history is why a substantial hotel sits in what is otherwise open country.

The city centre is a drive south; travel covers the corridor.

The A6 corridor, further out

Barton is a straight run down the A6 into the city, and that corridor is the reason the place exists: everything here is arranged around arriving by car. The road frame is on the places to stay sheet.

Barton is the next settlement north along the A6 after Broughton, so this site sits on the same line as the Marriott but further from the city and closer to open country. The A6 here is a village road with a main-road history: it was the principal route to Lancaster and Scotland before the motorway took the through traffic, and the older buildings along it are the evidence.

Country, well clear of the city

What the position buys is the rural side of the district. The lanes east of Barton climb towards Beacon Fell and the Bowland fringe, and the Flower Bowl complex sits nearby at Barton. For anybody whose reason for being here is the landscape, this end of the corridor is the better one.

Preston city centre is a drive of six or seven miles down the A6. There is no useful walking or cycling route into the city from here.

What else is south of the centre

This stretch of the A6 is the transition between city and country. South of Barton the road runs into Broughton and then the university campus and the commercial centre; north it continues to Garstang and eventually Lancaster. East of it the lanes rise into the Bowland fringe past Beacon Fell.

For a stay that is half landscape and half city, this position does better than anything closer in, and it is a short drive to the river corridor on the eastern side of Preston.