BOLTONIANS have been asked to lend their allegiance to the Red Rose as thousands of people celebrate Lancashire Day.

Organisers reckon Bolton is as much a part of Lancashire as ever and are today pledging their support for the county in a bid to alter people's perceptions of the correct border.

The Friends of Real Lancashire group is worried that the relatively new counties of Greater Manchester and Merseyside have left some people confused.

Both, they say, remain firmly in Lancashire and exist only as defunct administrative areas.

Chris Dawson, FORL chairman, said: "The celebration of Lancashire Day reminds people that despite various changes to administrative areas over the years, no legislation has ever affected the boundaries of the traditional geographical County of Lancashire which still exists in its entirety."

Today marks the 706th year since King Edward I summoned Lancashire's first elected representatives to parliament in Westminster in 1295.

Mr Dawson said the traditional county stretches from the River Duddon in the North to the River Mersey in the south.

At 3pm today, the group was due to present a framed copy of the Millennium Map of Lancashire to Bolton's mayor, Cllr Kevan Helsby.

Mr Dawson said: "Let the people of Bolton, Manchester, Liverpool, Southport, Warrington and Wigan, stand together with the people of Furness and Cartmel in Lancashire.

"Lancashire existed for many centuries before administrative counties were invented in 1888 and will still be here when the current administrative areas have been replaced by new ones."