THE town of Westhoughton has got a thriving toyshop and a couple of locksmiths. Also a proper hardware store where you can buy a handful of nails if you want.

We have got an unmolested market stall that all of the disillusioned Bolton traders could come and use, a very good shoe shop, an independent printers, two barbers, a raft of food shops, excellent restaurants, a brilliant butchers.

We have proper pubs including the famous White Lion - unchanged insuidesince the 1930s. We have got two jewellers, a furniture shop, bathroom supplies, pet shop, carpet shop, fishmonger and greengrocers. There is a prosthetics and plaster moulding manufacturer; and not in Wingates. We've got solicitors, accountants and a medical centre all in the High Street.

And there is FREE parking. We have got green land five minutes' walk from the centre of town. We have got time for each other and we have got a community!

What we haven't got are the out-of-town sheds so beloved by the town accountants, a horrible 1960s-designed concrete shopping centre, or sullen shop assistants, the stick-in-the-mud ideas from tired council officials, as much as they try to ruin in Westhoughton that which they haven't got in Bolton.

So what makes Westhoughton great?

Everything that makes Bolton the opposite.

Ainslie Casson

Church Walks

Westhoughton

Lancs - and proud of it