That's the place in Lancashire - not Chantelle's ex.

We've got 'em away in the League Cup and I 'm tempted.

Is there anything there or there about that could keep a chap happy for a few days?

I am loaded down with holibob at the time so have time.

Or is it grim up north?

Preston is not bad but it is in Lancashire (used to run a factory up the road). Proably the place I might visit is Clitheroe which has a tiny castle and more to the point one of the best wine shops in the country.

Manchester is ok in the centre with good night life, the usual shops and an aweful lot of red brick buildings. A strong pink pound in the centre has turned some of the canals into chic areas. If your bint is coming then you can leave her in the Trafford Centre which I'm told is wonderful (drove me mad just loads of shops)

I know little of lands beyond Bolton (don't go there) so others will have to answer you

There is National Football Museum attached to Deepdale Stadium (free entry!) and has an interesting display of the history of the national game, plus memorabilia from famous matches and players. Plus interactive games upstairs (extra charge). Good shop. Check opening hours. There have been attempts to move the museum to New Wembley, but fiercely opposed by football purists since Preston NE is one of the founding members of the Football League (no London clubs!)
Not much else to detain you in Preston itself - a Museum of Lancashire Life (next to Preston Prison) is probably the pick of the rest.
You can explore the Fylde Coast, Morecambe Bay, Lancaster, Ribchester http://www.ribchestermuseum.org/, and a bit further north (but less than an hour away) the Lake District and Yorshire Dale to the north east.

Go to the match, then get straight back on the M6 and keep going north to the Lake District and spend the rest of your time off there instead.

<<< Clueless spurs fan >>>

Stating the obvious in'it?

1. God's own city is just 35 miles SW of Preston.

World's best pubs (and 30 miles of bracing beaches to walk it off the following morning), more listed buildings than anywhere in Britain except London, heavier concentration of Open-standard golf courses than anywhere in Britain, including Scotchland, Britain's heaviest concentration of free museums outside London. WorldHeritage Site on account of more Europeans passed through on the way to the New World than through anywhere else. And where practically everything that matters in the modern world - from passenger trains, through jerry-building, to public laundries, national child protection societies and Frankie Goes to Hollywood - first saw the light of day.

Why God's own city? Because it's also the spiritual home in Britain of your religion. From the Wigwam, through Britain's most spectacular surviving piece of pre-Reformation religious sculpture at Norton Priory to St Francis Xavier's (the most over the top Victorian Catholic church I've seen anywhere ever) to Little Crosby: a typical English village, except that the Lord of the Manor - like almost all the townsfolk - has always been a Pape and the village church has wall paintings of canonised local martyrs where any other village church has the whitewash they hid the paintings with in 1545.

There are also a few football teams. Ignore them and the claptrap that surrounds them and visit the World's Greatest City (TM) properly.

2. The countryside NE of Preston - through Clitheroe to Skipton - is FAB. And badly undervisited.

3. Preston's consistent placing in any listing of British Crap Towns is well-deserved.

CW - if your heading that way, can you take David Nugent back with you? Thanks.