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Our writer in residence Hamid Ismailov, has taken a journey to a small town in the north of England.

Pendle can be found in the Pennine hills in the county of Lancashire.

Like many small towns all over the world, the effects of recession have been felt here.

On a practical level businesses have closed and the town's young people have migrated to cities such as Manchester and Leeds.

Hamid draws interesting parallels with his home country Uzbekistan - which shares with Lancashire a tradition of cotton production.

But Lancashire's cotton industry has experienced a steep decline since the 1960s.

In this audio slideshow, Hamid speaks to the owner of one of the few remaining cotton mills in Lancashire - County Brook - and asks him how the factory has survived.

Find out more about Hamid's quest to find the mill, with his blog entry .