MANY people are forever complaining that they don’t have enough to do at weekends.

For some adults it’s basically an excuse for inactivity and there are certain younger folk who use the phrase as mitigation when they are caught doing things that get them hauled before the courts.

The truth is there’s plenty to do in East Lancashire and it doesn’t all involve digging deep into your pockets.

You just need to keep your eyes and ears open.

At the weekend for a start there were heritage open days at a wide range of houses, gardens, museums and other centres and entry was completely free.

This meant, for example, that adult admission charges of £4 a head at Gawthorpe Hall and £3 for the museum at Pendle Heritage Centre were waived.

And at Gawthorpe visitors could also inspect about 20 classic cars which gathered outside the historic building on Sunday afternoon.

The two well-travelled Australian guests staying with my wife and I were amazed at the way history was brought alive at both venues, and especially how clearly the story of the Pendle witches is portrayed at the Barrowford centre.

The fact that it was all free left them gobsmacked…and puzzled about why the people of East Lancashire weren’t queuing in their hundreds to take advantage of such an amazingly good deal.

At Barrowford there were actually more foreign tourists than Britons in the Pendle Witches room when we were there.

Gawthorpe probably did attract more people than on an average Sunday and it was great to see some families with children keen to explore East Lancashire’s past – our heritage in fact.

But there was room for many, many more even though, selfishly, it would have been awkward if the single track road to the hall had been jammed with carloads of trippers.

But that isn’t the point.

There was ample room for many more people to have heaved themselves out of their armchairs to get out and about, especially on what was the driest weekend in weeks.

We’ve no right to continually moan about the area supposedly changing for the worse if we don’t bother to get out and see places that a comparatively small band of dedicated volunteers spend a lot of time and effort making interesting and enjoyable.

There’s a huge variety of things to do and see right across East Lancashire.

It has to be better than sitting in front of the TV as we march towards winter and you don’t have to spend a small fortune either.