St Austell, Penzance, Camborne, and St Ives are all close to the town centre and nearby for shopping or a drink. Much further afield, I seem to recall, Wymess Bay, West Kirby, Norwich, Melton Mowbray are all within a couple of hundred yards of the local station.
The hub of Norwich city centre (ie. for shopping, useful stuff like council offices, and the one or two touristy bits) is quite a bit of an uphill walk from the station... not something I mind myself as it’s fine before or after a long train journey, when I probably would like to have a bit of a walk after sitting down for a bit. But it’s not great if you are elderly / in a wheelchair / have luggage and so on.
There are some smaller offices, the stadium and several supermarkets near the station (although it beats me why you would bother going to a Norwich supermarket by train unless you happen to live in Brundall Gardens and not have a car).
Interchange with the bus station is most exceptionally poor at Norwich - it’s actually better to wait for a once-a-day boat service... I am barely joking.
It’s actually quite a good inverse example of a parkway station for some of the surrounding villages, being as it is an easy drive onto many of the local A roads, if not a quick or quiet drive, especially on match days.
Can I venture London Fenchurch Street? Not much shopping to be had in the City, but FST is very handy for those who work there (lawyers, bankers etc.).
Cannon Street is also pretty good for this, especially with recent construction efforts in the area. Probably still rather underrated off-peak, in particular.
Guildford - as correctly identified, has a horrible walk down one of the most polluted, and accident prone, one way systems in the country. Guildford Station is a example of how not to do Station planning. Network Rail, Surrey Council and Guildford Borough Council have failed to work effectively together to plan the station as a proper transport hub - e.g. Heathrow Southern access coming. Network Rail are redeveloping the town side of the station (Solum Scheme) in a manner that does little to solve access issues including promoting better links between station and town centre. The new Footbridge proposed across the Wey lands pedestrians in a sea of car parks.
So you can have a station near the town centre but if access by foot is ghastly what is the point - time to access AND quality of access are key.
Off topic - Network Rail have now dropped Platform 0 at Guildford on the east side - effectively limiting new line services to current frequency for foreseeable future?
Guildford already has a relatively little-used footbridge from the station over the river, which is a much quieter walk until it also hits the apocalyptic rat run that is the aforementioned one-way system. The problem with it being so little-used is that it tends to attract fairly unpleasant characters at times. The offices around the bridge seem to be vandalised, at least with graffiti, as soon as they are smartened up.
The actual station concourse and taxi area / front car park seem to mainly have suffered from low-quality, cheap-looking materials, poor drainage controls and a rather tedious design. It would be possible to tidy it up quickly and relatively easily. Money also needs to be spent creating some warmth, some more light and better toilets within the station.
The Solum development at Epsom only focussed on the station facade, everything else (literally) being left to rot, so sadly I wouldn’t hold out much hope there.