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Best towns in Britain?

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MidnightFlyer

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The polar opposite of MattE2010's amusing thread, "Worst towns in Britain?".

I suspect this thread will be shorter than his! Anyway, I am going to start with my "adopted" home city, Bath.

You stole my idea Ivo, I was gonna create this after I'd finished my mileage stuff this afternoon! ;) It's OK though, it's happened with the unique stations/services too, I really don't care at all :D

Anyway:
Bath
Most of Somerset
Sheringham
Cromer
Hebden Bridge
Carlisle
Inverness
Mallaig, small but perfectly formed

I'll put more on when they come to me.
 

MidnightFlyer

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You haven't been to Taunton then.

I thought Taunton was quite nice, I was more reffering to Wells, Street, Glastonbury et al, apart from Sheppy Mallet.

Shrewsbury is quite nice too, as is Cheltenham.
 

Daimler

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I've always been particularly fond of Harrogate, York, and a number of other places in North Yorkshire.
 

Zoe

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I thought Taunton was quite nice
The town centre isn't bad and it does have three private schools but during my time there, the house I was in had: A few fights outside in the road, my window smashed and a robbery.
 

317666

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London!

Although, I will say that Settle, Whitby and Harrogate are very nice places.
 

heart-of-wessex

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Bath isn't bad at all, so I'd agree (Better that Trowbridge/Melksham!)

Quite hard to pick one actually, I'd add Fort William and some towns on the IoW as the best, I would have said London too as everything is there, but the un-sociable and crime rate is atrocious
 

4SRKT

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It depends what you mean by 'best'. Most people seem to have equated 'best' with 'most attractive' so far. I grew up in York and while I love the place and have a native's intimate knowledge of it, I would stop short of saying it's the 'best' place because I am also aware of its shortcomings. Unfriendly to outsiders (even 'outsiders' from other parts of York) to the point that the 'Slaughtered Lamb' pub in An American Werewolf in London didn't seem to be any sort of joke or exaggeration to me; ludicrous amounts of fighting in the city centre on Friday and Saturday nights; a bit limited in things to do if you're not a tourist; surrounding countryside deathly dull; traffic flow in the city centre (and considerably beyond) unbelievably bad; very expensive housing despite no great glut of well paid jobs (a more recent problem this: when I was young York wasn't too expensive and good jobs were plentiful in the Railway, BREL and the sweet factories).

OTOH I now live in a pleasant suburb of Bradford. On the face of it a much uglier and more run down place. Yet it has Saltaire in it; I can see glorious countryside from my dormer windows; my 5 bedroom house cost less than a 3 bedroom semi in York (except in some grottier parts) at the time I bought it; I am on the edge of a conurbation of nearly a million people so there's plenty to do; public transport is frequent and affordable (12 minutes 4-5 times per hour to the centre of Leeds is quicker than most people in Leeds can be in the centre of Leeds), and people are very friendly.

Clearly very few people would say Bradford was 'better' than York, and in most ways they'd be right, but I'm happier and fit in better here than any of the places I've ever lived (Belfast, London and Windsor being the other places).
 
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chris89

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Quite a few from my 'home county'

City of Wells
Taunton (Born in the Ex-Military Hosptial)
Glastonbury (Only when Pilton. aka: Glastonbury isn't on)
Street
Bristol.

Other places.

Bridgnorth (tonnes of pub i regually go to)
Kidderminster
Edinburgh
York
Aviemore

Will think of some more.
 

WestCoast

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OTOH I now live in a pleasant suburb of Bradford. On the face of it a much uglier and more run down place. Yet it has Saltaire in it; I can see glorious countryside from my dormer windows; my 5 bedroom house cost less than a 3 bedroom semi in York (except in some grottier parts) at the time I bought it; I am on the edge of a conurbation of nearly a million people so there's plenty to do; public transport is frequent and affordable (12 minutes 4-5 times per hour to the centre of Leeds is quicker than most people in Leeds can be in the centre of Leeds), and people are very friendly.

It is often the case, you get better standard of living (often in more pleasant surroundings) on the edge of towns that are deemed as 'bad'.
 

90019

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Most of Edinburgh (Not just because it's where I live :D)
I rather like Bridge of Allan - Much more so than Stirling.
A couple of smaller places would be Brechin, Forfar and Inveraray.
 

Greenback

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Some of my favourite UK places to visit, in no particular order except a loose geographical one:

Leominster
Hereford
Cheltenham
York
Inverness
Edinburgh
Bath
Newport I.O.W.
Plymouth
Penzance

From a different perspective, i really enjoyed the years I spent living in Reading. It wa sonly the high property prices that drove me back to Wales!
 

yorksrob

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Well, sticking to places that are roughly town sized i.e. avoiding villages and large urban settlements which should really be cities:

Hastings and to a lesser extent Folkestone - these places have perhaps fallen on hard times but I still have a big soft spot for them.

Rye, Winchelsea and West Malling are lovely.

Lancaster and Canterbury - OK these are cities, but they are town sized.
(I lived in Lancaster as a sudent and it is always a pleasure to go back, Canterbury has good shopping etc)

I love Penzance, St Ives Cornwall, Looe, Newton Abbot, Holt and Sheringham due to good holidays.

Skipton, Huddersfield, Whitby, Howden, Barton upon Humber are all nice places up here.

Oh yeah, and I forgot to say Lewes and Eastbourne (brighton would be way up in the list but I count that as a full city anyway !)
 
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scotsman

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Ullapool
Stornoway
Castlebay
Lairg
Aviemore
Boat of Garten
Oban
Perth
Glasgow
Edinburgh
Aberdour
Berwick-upon-Tweed
Durham
York
London
Liverpool
Grange-over-Sands
 

W-on-Sea

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In no particular order (and they are such a mixed bag of places of varying sizes and types that ranking them would be meaningless)

Arundel
Chichester
St Andrews (I loved being a student there. I guess it could get a bit claustrophic in the long term though)
London
Edinburgh
York
Shrewsbury
Brighton and Hove
Saffron Walden
Oxford
Cardiff
 

Ivo

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OK; a few more from me, again in alphabetical order as on the other thread and using only those I have intentionally visited...

Camberley
Cambridge
Cardiff
Carmarthen
Cheltenham
Chester
Chichester
Colchester
Edinburgh
Poole
Southport
Windermere

Hmm... Anyone notice anything here? :p
 
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Peter Mugridge

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Newbury is very good and there are several reasons why it is the top of our list of places to move to if we can ever afford it.
 

Peter Mugridge

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Funnily enough I know someone who used to actually work with the then CEO at the company you are thinking of!:lol:

The reasons are it has an impressive town centre; the shops are enormous ( and there aren't many empty ones either and nor is the place stuffed full of drinking outlets ), the main town centre is pedestrianised for most of the day, the transport links, both road and rail are pretty good.

By rail there are direct links to the SW and a change of trains at Reading takes care of most other destinations while carrying on to London takes care of the rest ). By road the M4, A4 and A34 are quickly accessible.

Being surrounded by countryside the air quality is very good and although large the town is still very sharply defined ( except along the eastern edge, which has seemingly merged into Thatcham ) and the majority of the facilities are centrally located with the housing surrounding the centre.
 

me123

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Not many fantastic towns, but plenty of great cities.

Glasgow, Edinburgh, York, Newcastle (what little time I've spent there), St Andrews (even though it is a bit small). Plenty more places that I'd like to visit as well that look nice, such as Durham, Chesterfield, Bath, Cambridge...
 

Crossover

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A couple that I can think of:
Scarborough (still more to be done but recently it has seen a huge improvement, especially of the North Bay)
Stafford
 
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East Grinstead is pretty nice in it's own depseratly middle class way.
1 hour from London by train, close to Ashdown Forest and the Weald, it's own heritage railway, 20 minutes from a major airport, good links to the M25 etc.

Pity house prices are so high :(
 

12CSVT

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You stole my idea Ivo, I was gonna create this after I'd finished my mileage stuff this afternoon! ;) It's OK though, it's happened with the unique stations/services too, I really don't care at all :D

Anyway:
Bath
Most of Somerset
Sheringham
Cromer
Hebden Bridge
Carlisle
Inverness
Mallaig, small but perfectly formed

I'll put more on when they come to me.

I presume you've never seen Carlisle in the early hours of a Saturday or Sunday morning when the town centre usually gets a coating of p*$$ and vomit after the nightclubs spill out.
 

OuterDistant

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All self-contained "towns" seem strange to me, mainly because I live in a city that's actually a federation of six towns.

(example: If you arrive at Stoke-on-Trent station you're not in the city centre - you're in Stoke-upon-Trent, the administrative centre. The commercial centre is actually Hanley, where the signs for "city centre" will take you - for now.)
 

thefab444

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Winchester is quite good, albeit a town sized city.

Then there's any number of smaller towns around here that I quite like; Hungerford, Devizes, Shaftesbury, Whitchurch (Hants), Gillingham (Dorset), Sherborne, Fordingbridge, Ringwood etc. which all seem nice enough.
 
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