Guest Blog – Walks in Lancashire with Steve the Author

Scroll to the bottom to find out how to submit a guest blog

Hi, I’m Steve, and I’m passionate about getting people walking and exploring their local area, especially in Lancashire. I live in Lytham, and am lucky enough to be retired and still active. Almost every day I’m out walking in a different area of Lancashire. 

I’m also lucky to be alive – in fact it’s thanks to walking I am still alive. When I was forty I was told, very unsympathetically, by my (then!) GP that I would be in a wheelchair within 5 years. That’s what got me into the walking. My fitness levels grew exponentially and the feel good factor was – wow! 

In 2015 I was involved in a rather serious RTA, my family were told that if I recovered I would probably be paralysed, and probably brain injured. Well the doctors were amazed when I made a full recovery and put it down to my determination and fitness – hence my claim that walking saved my life! 

See my facebook post below to read my ‘Walking Saved my Life’ story.  

Before I retired I wrote a book about a 13 day long-distance walk I had devised and walked many times from Preston to Carlisle. I found a publisher and it sold rather well. But after a particularly bad accident I re-walked it and completely rewrote it as part of my recovery process. The rewritten book, The North West Way, finally published 4 years after my accident,  sold even more copies. 

I had also developed enough skills and contacts to move to self-publishing … but that’s another story. 

Pat Booth, who runs Plackitt & Booth independent bookstore in Lytham, told me he was always being asked for a book of local walks. Well, I know the area pretty well and I’m keen on local history. And so my second effort was a book of local walks with local history. Walks from the South Fylde Line was published in 2023. 

Researching and writing books had become my retirement passion – my Ikigai. 

In 2024 I thoroughly enjoyed researching and writing my own guide to walking the Ribble Way (Walk the Ribble). I fell even more in love with Lancashire, its people, pubs and cafes. 

I love chatting to people, love walking and love eating. It was from chatting to people that I realised the demand for good, well-researched, walks with simple instructions, proper maps and nice photos. 

With good food at the end of, or beginning  or middle of the walk.… or even all three.  

The last few months have been really hectic, devising, occasionally abandoning, walking and rewalking walks. And sampling all the food – it’s an onerous task! 

Signed copies of all of  my books are available from local bookshops in Lytham, St Annes and Kirkham. Also from Potters Barn in Ribchester, which obviously features in my next book – Lancashire Gastrowalks. Hopefully this will be in print by summer 2025.

At the moment my 3 books are also available online – The North West Way, Walks from the South Fylde Line and Walk the Ribble

Follow me on facebook for updates, new walks and my incoming new website.

Thank you for reading my first blog! 

Steve

• Facebook