EFFORTS to woo day trippers to Bolton from across the Pennines fell flat - when a leading travel writer gave the town the "thumbs-down" as a tourist location. Bolton has recently been on a tourism marketing drive in Leeds, trying to encourage the city's citizens to take a trip to "The Market Town on the Moors." So the Yorkshire Post's Weekend magazine dispatched freelance travel writer Stephen McClarence to the area to sample the area's delights for himself.

But with a couple of exceptions, he was distinctly unimpressed.

Mr McClarence told the BEN that he was "wryly amused" by the idea of Bolton as a tourist destination and found it "bizarre" that the town was trying to lure folk from Leeds to visit by mentioning in its leaflets that the two town halls look similar.

Mr McClarence arrived in Bolton by train on a wet, weekday morning questioning why Yorkshiremen and women should want to come across the Pennines to the town.

"Why go to Bolton rather than Blackburn or Burnley or Bury? Why, in fact, go to Lancashire at all?" he writes.

"If it's the post-industrial North you want, Yorkshire has more than enough to offer."

Bolton Town Hall, one of the jewels in the town's crown is dismissed.

"Without wanting to get chauvinist, Bolton's Town Hall is noticeably smaller than Leeds's," remarks Mr McClarence.

After popping into Bolton Civic Aquarium, which he finds quite interesting, he does have kind words to say about the Market Hall, which he describes as "an impressive piece of Lancashire High Renaissance worthy of Florence (or Manchester)" but follows on by criticising the "Toy Town architecture of the arcade tacked onto it."

There is praise too for the "startlingly pretty Hall i'th' Wood" but the House of Raja Asian department store in the former Fletcher Street Methodist Church is the highlight of his trip.

The criticisms levelled at Bolton have stung Cllr Steve Hynes, chairman of the town's tourism working party.

"I don't know how much of it was intended to be tongue in cheek but I think it is a bit of Yorkshire jealousy," he said.

"They can't win at cricket and their football season is not doing too well at the moment."

Even our rain is an asset according to Cllr Hynes.

"They are jealous of our rain because they have been running out of water in recent years," he said.

Cllr Hynes says from personal experience Bolton's restaurants are far superior to those in Leeds and is sorry Mr McClarence missed out on seeing some of the other Bolton attractions, such as Smithills Hall and the Middlebrook complex.

And he issued an invitation to the writer to return to the area.

"There is a lot to see and do in Bolton even on a rainy day. I would take great pleasure in showing him a few more sights," said Cllr Hynes.

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