Lanarkshire Guide

Lanarkshire is a great place to visit with a wide range of attractions, activities and country parks which will appeal to all the family. From the unique experience of New Lanark World Heritage Site, Chatelherault Country Park and M&D's - Scotland's Theme Park, there really is something for everyone.

Here are some facts about Lanarkshire:

• The town of Lanark features a memorial stone on the site of the house William 'Braveheart' Wallace shared with his wife Marion. Marion's death at the hands of the English kick-started Wallace's vengeful crusade which is portraid in the film 'Braveheart'.

• Coatbridge is home to 'Scotland's Noisiest Museum', Sumerlee Heritage Park, where visitors are shown what life was like when Lanarkshire was at the vanguard of the world's iron and steel industry.

• New Lanark, a preserved 18th-century cotton mill village, is one of only four Unesco World Heritage sites in Scotland.

• The Lanarkshire town of Blantyre is the birthplace of the Victorian missionary and explorer Dr David Livingstone, discoverer of Lake Ngami and the Victoria Falls of the Zambezi. Livingstone died in Zambia in 1856 and is buried in Westminster Abbey.

• Since Roman times Lanarkshire has been famous for sourcing precious metals. Visitors and locals still pan for gold.

• Lanark Blue is a world-renowned, full flavoured blue gourmet cheese made in Lanarkshire. Produced near Carnwath by Humphrey Errington since 1985, it uses the cheese maker's own flock of sheep to make one of the first ewe's milk cheeses produced in Britain since the medieval times.

• The longest echo ever detected in any building lasted 15 seconds, and was produced by the noise of shutting the door of the chapel of the Hamilton Mausoleum in Lanarkshire.

• At 10am each New Year's Day, Lanark's citizens gather at the Tolbooth to receive a glass of mulled wine from the Community Council. Lanark's elderly may also claim a pound coin. This ceremony originates from a bequest made by Lord Carmichael in the 1660s and remains an important fixture each year.

• In 1947, Hamilton Park Racecourse in Lanarkshire became the 1st to stage evening racing.

• Two of the greatest ever Scottish football mangers come from Lanarkshire, Jock Stein CBE (1922-85), born in Burnbank, and Sir Matt Busby CBE (1909-94) from Orbiston.

Here are just some places to visit in and around Lanarkshire: