A TASTY trail designed to showcase the best of Morecambe Bay’s food and drink has been launched at a north Lancashire beauty spot.

The Bay Food and Drink Trail has been mapped out on a handy leaflet that shows all 44 retail and hospitality outlets involved.

These range from the Brief Encounter tearooms at Carnforth station and Lancaster’s Yummy Cupcake Company to Archer’s Cafe and Farm Shop at Bolton-le-Sands, where the trail was officially launched.

Tourism board chair Suzi Bunting, the brains behind the initiative, said: “I realised that within the Lancaster City Council marketing there was a gap and that we needed to do more with food and drink, so we worked together to produce this.

“We thought it would be ideal to launch it in British Food Fortnight and thereby link it to a national campaign to promote great British food and drink.

“We have tried to get a great mixture of different outlets in the publication, so for example we’ve made sure that we’ve included ice-cream and also fish and chips.”

She hopes it will benefit not only visitors, but those who live around Morecambe Bay who may not have discovered the food gems in the area.

“I hope that if visitors start to spread north after visiting the country for the Olympics, they will pick up this guide and start to explore the food and drink around here. But I also hope locals use it as an excuse to get out and get to know some of the local chefs and cooks,” she said.

Alan Archer, head chef at Archers Cafe, said he hoped the trail would help bring in the tourists.

“I think the leaflets are a great idea - 90 per cent of our customers are local so it would be nice to visitors to know we are here too. It’s also good to promote local business as a whole - that’s what the whole area needs.”

The leaflets will be available from all the food places that feature, as well as Lancaster and Morecambe Visitor Information Centres, and also contain information on local farmers markets.