'At breaking point': visitors bring booze, drugs and noise into village idyll

Whalley, in Lancashire's verdant Ribble Valley, is famed for its 14thcentury Cistercian abbey and old churches, as well as the spectacular views from Whalley Nab, the wooded hill that overlooks this apparent idyll.

- Hannah Al-Othman

But while the village still draws in family day-trippers and history buffs, it is also attracting a different type of tourist, after earning perhaps an unlikely reputation as Lancashire's premier drinking destination.

The boom in Whalley's night-time economy is causing tensions in the village, with residents complaining of vehicles being damaged, drug paraphernalia left across the street, vomit spattered on pavements on weekend mornings, people urinating in their gardens and loud music shaking their homes until the early hours.

Daytime events, including many hen and stag parties, mean the chaos has extended across the weekend, and locals complain of groups of women parading inflatable phalluses through the terraced streets. Residents no longer look forward to bank holiday weekends and the summer months, they say, as they bring with them more drunken crowds.

One man, who lives near some of the busiest venues, said during the week "it's very peaceful, and it's very quaint, and it's very Agatha Christie".

But: "It's just a shame," he added.

On one occasion, he said he was pushed into the road by a group of inebriated women who "thought it would be a joke". He said he feared the "Blackpool-isation" of Whalley. "By allowing this to happen you're selling the soul of the village," he said.