Wigan is a town in Greater Manchester that most people know from George Orwell's 1937 book "The Road to Wigan Pier," a searing account of working-class life in industrial England. The pier itself, such as it was, was a coal-loading jetty on the Leeds and Liverpool Canal, not the seaside boardwalk the name implies. The area around it has been redeveloped into the Wigan Pier Quarter, a pleasant waterside heritage precinct built around Trencherfield Mill and its extraordinary original steam engine.
Rugby league is the heartbeat of the town. Wigan Warriors are one of the most successful clubs in the sport's history, and catching a match at the DW Stadium is the best way to experience the fierce local pride that defines the place. Wigan also has an unexpected musical legacy: between 1973 and 1981, the Wigan Casino was the most important venue in the Northern Soul movement, drawing thousands of dancers every weekend from across Britain.
The town's medieval past is preserved in Mab's Cross, a thirteenth-century stone cross on Standishgate with a legendary backstory involving a Crusade-era penance walk. Deeper still, a Roman bathhouse from the settlement of Coccium has been reconstructed in the town centre shopping complex. Wigan is not a conventional tourist destination, but it has more genuine character than its reputation suggests.