With Cllr Liz Savage
THE past mayoral week has been one of celebrating what West Lancashire has to offer. There has been a mayoral tour of West Lancashire, Gingerbread Festival in Ormskirk and the Celebrating Skelmersdale Festival which continues this week.
On Wednesday, 13 mayors and their mayoress or consorts visited West Lancashire in line with my theme of promoting business and leisure across West Lancashire. Many thanks to all the businesses that sponsored our day and made the event such success.
We started at Midstream in Skelmersdale, a local social enterprise working with people with learning difficulties to develop skills both in administration and horticulture. Our guests were given a guided tour and finished in the garden centre which is open to the public.
We were then met by a vintage bus provided and driven by Merseyside Transport Trust who are based in Burscough. They took us across the road to Hotter Shoes where we had an informative tour and saw for ourselves how shoes are made locally. We finished the morning with a visit to Fairbanks who recently won a Queen’s Award for export.
It was then time for a lunch and we visited the Red Lion in Newburgh who also helped to sponsor the day. Over lunch we had a raffle for my mayoral charities and learnt about Lancashire Crisps, based in Rufford.
We then moved on to Cast North West, another social enterprise and the only indoor angling centre in the country.
From Newburgh we moved on to Ormskirk where we paid a surprise visit to Pangea Sculptures.
The mayors were in awe of the sculptures on display and a few expressed an interest in buying them at a later date.
We finished with a talk at Ormskirk Parish Church about the history of the church and the town.
We then also found out about Ormskirk Gingerbread and the festival that was occurring on Saturday.
The overall feedback from the day was that other mayors didn’t know much about what West Lancashire had to offer before coming, but that they are really impressed with what is going on in our area.
In last week’s Advertiser we inadvertently published an incorrect picture of Cllr Geoff Roberts. This was a genuine mistake and we wish to apologise for any upset it may have caused.