START: Knott End-on-Sea ferry jetty. There is a large public car park behind the Knott End Cafe at the end of the esplanade. Knott End is at the very end of the B5270 Lancaster Road off the A588 road between Hambleton and Pilling.

MAP: OS Explorer 296 Lancaster, Morecambe & Fleetwood

DISTANCE: 3½ miles (allow 1½ hours)

L S LOWRY’S links with Knott End-on-Sea are celebrated in a seafront sculpture of his ‘matchstalk man and dog’ overlooking the jetty for the Fleetwood ferry.

Lowry sketched the ferry scene in his summer visits to Knott End in the 1940s and 1950s. This walk starts at the sculpture and takes in the end of the Wyre Way, a long distance footpath from source to sea along the River Wyre, which rises in the Bowland Fells.

The route encircles Knott End following flat mossland tracks and passes the village’s war memorial. The route also crosses the old railway line that ran from Garstang to Knott End, affectionately known as the ‘Pilling Pig’. This part of the Fylde coast offers stunning views across the bay to the Lakeland Fells.

1. Turn left out of the car park entrance to walk to the Lowry man and dog sculpture by the ferry jetty. Turn left at the Wyre Way signpost and follow the promenade between the coastguard station and the Wyre estuary.

Pass Knott End Golf Club and look across the estuary for a view of Blackpool Tower. At the white painted Sea Dyke cottage turn left following the signed Wyre Way path to Hackensall Hall.

2. Then turn right along a track directly behind the cottage and follow a path along the right edge of the golf course. Keep to the right of the fairways until a small garage is reached on the right by a waymarker post.

Turn left here along the obvious track that crosses the fairway to reach another path signpost at trees. Walk straight ahead along the farm track as it swings left and right to reach Hackensall Hall.

3. Turn left along the access drive leading away from the hall. Ignore the track on the right signed as the Wyre Way but continue straight ahead. There is then a track on the left but ignore this as well, just go straight ahead and the track swings right and left becoming a wide track (Whinny Lane) between fields and woodland.

When the track forks at the access to New Heys Farm fork left and you soon cross the disused line of the Garstang and Knott End Railway running left to right.

4. Cross the line and keep to the track which swings right and runs between open fields. It eventually turns left and goes through two kissing gates to reach a conifer woodland.

Do not go straight ahead to the farm but go through the kissing gate on the left into the woodland. Go straight ahead to cross a stile into a field at the other end of the wood.

Go straight ahead across the field aiming for a stone cross war memorial in a gap between houses.

5. Go through a gate to the right of the memorial and cross the road. Continue straight ahead down Pilling Lane directly opposite.

At the end of this lane walk straight ahead across the roundabout and join a signed footpath on the opposite side that runs alongside a drain next to houses. Cross the estate road at the end of this [path and a tarmac path leads on to the coastal flood bank. Simply turn left and follow the coastal path back to Knott End.