It was a dark autumn evening in 2022 and newly engaged, me and my fiance were heading to Gisburn in Lancashire to view one of many wedding venues we had lined up.

It was called Stirk House and it was nestled in the heart of Ribble Valley just down the road from Clitheroe. We had no idea we were about to fall in love with the place!

A few hours of looking around our future wedding venue and me keeping the biggest secret of my life we made the booking and we had our wedding date! On the grounds, before our drive home, I shared the news that we were expecting a baby! One hell of a day to remember.

Fast forward to spring and we headed back to Stirk House for a menu tasting. I was 36 weeks pregnant and we were about to explore Clitheroe for the first time. Of course it would be a sober and rather sluggish visit.

I won’t go in to too much detail about Stirk House because I know I’ve blogged about it previously. So please take a read of my previous post below if you do want to know more!

One magical stay at Stirk House, Lancashire

The venue is special and a brilliant spot for dinner or drinks. We had the most amazing wedding and the staff couldn’t have been better. I highly recommend this place and we will continue to visit for many years to come because it will always have a place in our heart!

But let’s talk about Clitheroe! It’s a little town filled with supermarkets (so many), cafes, takeaways, pubs and lots of shops. A bundle of wedding dress shops which doesn’t surprise me! It even has a Booths which I’ve only ever found in my hometown of Ilkley.

Clitheroe is one of those places that you don’t really hear about. Perhaps there’s not much to do there, or maybe people just haven’t been? So when we first went we had no expectations. We just assumed it would be a typical town with a few shops, maybe some pubs which we could go in and perhaps some places to walk. What we didn’t expect was a town that would have us continuously coming to revisit!

Being heavily pregnant, as you can imagine our first visit didn’t involve much walking. Nor did it involve much drinking – or any drinking for that matter. We had booked to stay overnight at Stirk House and travel by car into Clitheroe for the afternoon. It was a quiet Sunday so we parked in the town centre near Bowland Brewery and wandered into town, plenty more about the brewery later. The first thing we noticed was there was a steep incline that looked to lead up to something interesting. At 8 months pregnant I still felt physically able to conquer the hill… So we did! It lead to pretty greenery and Clitheroe Castle Museum at the top.

We decided to take a slow stroll up to the top. There is an easy walk that leads you up to Clitheroe Castle. It overlooks all of the town and the surrounding areas including Pendle Hill.

The trail mentions the Pendle Witches, which you will have no doubt heard of throughout history. This is part of Ribble Valley. We didn’t know much about this and I definitely wanted to learn more given my love for all things spooky!

After our first visit we have since revisited the Castle walk but taken the route around the other side, it takes slightly longer but has far-reaching views. The stairs mean we don’t often go this way now with the pram but we’ve enjoyed it in the past.

Rewind to our first time walking around the town and we found ourselves visiting Holmes Mill – Bowland Brewery. This place blew us away! It has one of the longest bars in Britain in their beer hall!

Besides the awesome atmosphere, the fact they brew their own beer, the massive beer garden complete with quirky decor and it being dog-friendly – this place has everything! And it really does have everything because you can even get married here! A wedding venue upstairs, a hotel next door, a beautiful farm shop and even a bowling alley on site! We now stop by for a drink every time we visit Clitheroe.

We can’t leave without one of their tasty burgers and fries either! I highly recommend a meal here as it’s a great restaurant too.

If you’re lucky enough to get a sunny day whilst here, Clitheroe has an awesome Ice Cream parlour. It’s here that I discovered POPCORN Ice cream! Possibly my new favourite flavour! Check out The Milking Parlour if you want to discover this for yourself!

The thing I love about Clitheroe is the buzzing atmosphere. There are bars and restaurants on every corner and all are busy – which is great to see. Not to mention, there are a lot of independent little shops which I love to see in a town.

I love when a town has character. I think the way the little shops look adds charm and you just know you will find lots of little treasures in them. There was a store dedicated to the Pendle Witches full of spooky trinkets – We even bought our wedding flutes from here! Sadly it has closed down recently but we managed to visit a few times. There are still many shops we’ve not visited and I look forward to stopping by. Including this charming sweet store that gives off pure Diagon Alley vibes from the exterior.

Clitheroe has so much to offer us as a family with its walks nearby, large playground for our daughter, lots of greenery, quirky shops and busy pubs! We always look forward to revisiting and our next trip is this weekend! There is no doubt we’ll be enjoying another drink in Bowland Brewery before the end of the day!

Have you visited Clitheroe or the surrounding areas? Please leave me a comment if you have any recommendations – I can’t imagine we’ve found everything there is on offer yet!

~ Last visit to Clitheroe in October 2024 ~

My wedding photos were taken by the incredible Dave Waller!