Toward the end of August 2008 my wife, son and I took a trip from Sheffield to visit Lancashire. We stayed in a sea-view hotel in Morecambe, and the vast tracts of empty sand fascinated me. It’s said that the tide comes in here faster than a galloping horse, and indeed a few foolhardy folk have ventured out too close to the changing of the tide, and have been lost.

On the way back, we drove over the Snake Pass, which is astonishingly not only a narrow winding road over some of the highest parts of the Peak District, but also forms one of the few major thoroughfares from Sheffield to Manchester – two of the largest towns in the north of England.