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Nice Towns

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cactustwirly

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Was visiting relatives in Shropshire this weekend, and was very impressed with Shrewsbury.
Very nice town, with loads of quaint medieval buildings.
Bridgnorth and Ludlow are very nice as well!


Should really put the whole of Shropshire, as the scenery is very pretty as well :lol:
 
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Bletchleyite

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Shrewsbury (and I too like it, could be tempted to live there in the right circumstances to be honest) to me has the feel of a small city rather than a town - a bit like the likes of Worcester and Durham. I recall being quite surprised on finding it was in fact just a town.

Ormskirk is quite pleasant, as an aside.
 

cactustwirly

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Shrewsbury (and I too like it, could be tempted to live there in the right circumstances to be honest) to me has the feel of a small city rather than a town - a bit like the likes of Worcester and Durham. I recall being quite surprised on finding it was in fact just a town.

Ormskirk is quite pleasant, as an aside.

It does, but in terms of actual size it's quite small, many other towns are actually bigger.
 

gazthomas

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St. Albans
Farnham
Alresford
Alton
Tewkesbury
St Albans (a city by name but really a town)
Llandudno
Rye
Stamford
Harrogate
Hitchin, Ludlow and Bridgnorth (as the OP/previous posters have said)
Tenterden
Holt
Pickering
 

Samuel88

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Was visiting relatives in Shropshire this weekend, and was very impressed with Shrewsbury.
Very nice town, with loads of quaint medieval buildings.
Bridgnorth and Ludlow are very nice as well!


Should really put the whole of Shropshire, as the scenery is very pretty as well :lol:
The only thing wrong with Shrewsbury (and Shropshire as a whole) is if you fancy a trip there during a Sunday and you're carless, you're stuffed! I think it's disgraceful that a town as large as Shrewsbury has no bus service on a Sunday but that's a topic for another thread...
 

radamfi

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Somewhere that is nice to visit may not be a particularly good place to live. There are many drab, dull but functional places that turn out to be more "nice" in the long run than many of the places mentioned on this thread.
 

W-on-Sea

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Another vote for Shrewsbury.

I was pleasantly surprised by Petersfield when I spent a few hours there.
Ditto, Dorking.
Stroud has character in abundance, and is probably large enough to be an interesting place to live, too.
Agree about St Albans
Saffron Walden
Maldon
Bath

I can think of a few other larger towns (eg Reading, Nottingham) that probably make good places to live too, without being overwhelmingly delightful at first glance.
And others (Cheltenham, Droitwich) which in some ways might appear to qualify for this kind of list, but which have something inescapable that is slightly odd and jarring about them accompanying the positives.
 

cactustwirly

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Another vote for Shrewsbury.

I was pleasantly surprised by Petersfield when I spent a few hours there.
Ditto, Dorking.
Stroud has character in abundance, and is probably large enough to be an interesting place to live, too.
Agree about St Albans
Saffron Walden
Maldon
Bath

I can think of a few other larger towns (eg Reading, Nottingham) that probably make good places to live too, without being overwhelmingly delightful at first glance.
And others (Cheltenham, Droitwich) which in some ways might appear to qualify for this kind of list, but which have something inescapable that is slightly odd and jarring about them accompanying the positives.

Haha, I wouldn't say Reading or Nottingham are that good places to live, Reading has some really rough suburbs, so does Nottingham.
My parents used to live in Nottingham, and they couldn't wait to move out.
 

cactustwirly

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The only thing wrong with Shrewsbury (and Shropshire as a whole) is if you fancy a trip there during a Sunday and you're carless, you're stuffed! I think it's disgraceful that a town as large as Shrewsbury has no bus service on a Sunday but that's a topic for another thread...

Well it is a very rural county, so this isn't particularly surprising
 

Cowley

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I spent last weekend with family in Bristol (Montpelier).
They’d just moved there from Nottingham, and although it’s only 70 odd miles from me I’d never really spent any proper time there.
I thought it was great. Friendly, vibrant and colourful too. Loads of people talked to me (which you don’t always expect in a large city), and I’m really looking forward to going back for more.
 

bramling

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Farnham
Alresford
Alton
Tewkesbury
St Albans (a city by name but really a town)
Llandudno
Rye
Stamford
Harrogate
Hitchin, Ludlow and Bridgnorth (as the OP/previous posters have said)
Tenterden
Holt
Pickering

Amused at Hitchin cropping up. It’s a “desirable” town for sure, but nice? Increasingly congested, several rough estates on the periphery, new housing being stuffed in every nook and cranny possible, and most of all it’s increasingly full of some of the smuggest people one could ever meet. If some of the people were visiting a chocolate shop they would choose themselves off the shelf and relish every indulgent mouthful!

And whilst the town centre is reasonably smart, it’s nothing compared to things which can be found elsewhere in the country. Okay if you like doing a cafe-crawl I suppose.
 

yorksrob

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Sheringham, Cromer, Falmouth, Penzance, Appleby, Settle, Skipton, Knaresborough, Whitby, Sandwich, Deal, Folkestone, Hastings, Weymouth, Tunbridge Wells, Southport, Wigan, Hebden Bridge, Huddersfield.
 

Typhoon

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Sheringham, Cromer, Falmouth, Penzance, Appleby, Settle, Skipton, Knaresborough, Whitby, Sandwich, Deal, Folkestone, Hastings, Weymouth, Tunbridge Wells, Southport, Wigan, Hebden Bridge, Huddersfield.
Definitely agree with Deal. It has retained its character from the past, whether its the old town, the pier, the Timeball, the (occasional) fishing boat, the history. Easy to while away an hour or two. Unfortunately, like most places, the High Street has been hit of late.
 

yorksrob

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Definitely agree with Deal. It has retained its character from the past, whether its the old town, the pier, the Timeball, the (occasional) fishing boat, the history. Easy to while away an hour or two. Unfortunately, like most places, the High Street has been hit of late.

I visited it again recently for the first time in donkeys years. I was very pleasantly surprised.
 

Bletchleyite

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Somewhere that is nice to visit may not be a particularly good place to live. There are many drab, dull but functional places that turn out to be more "nice" in the long run than many of the places mentioned on this thread.

MK is a very practical place to live, particularly for young families (e.g. the freedom that can be given to kids to cycle a long way from home on traffic-free Redways is unrivalled in the UK) - but other than for the Xscape, Bletchley Park and the theatre/stadium gigs there's not much point in visiting it as a tourist per-se - so it goes both ways.
 

Bletchleyite

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I spent last weekend with family in Bristol (Montpelier).
They’d just moved there from Nottingham, and although it’s only 70 odd miles from me I’d never really spent any proper time there.
I thought it was great. Friendly, vibrant and colourful too. Loads of people talked to me (which you don’t always expect in a large city), and I’m really looking forward to going back for more.

Like any big city it's got some fairly nasty bits too, but I do like the feel of Bristol. Got a number of friends who live there too.
 

Journeyman

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Somewhere that is nice to visit may not be a particularly good place to live. There are many drab, dull but functional places that turn out to be more "nice" in the long run than many of the places mentioned on this thread.

I lived on the outskirts of Oxford for three years. Yes, it's a beautiful city, but I didn't find it a user-friendly place to live at all.
 

DerekC

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Ludlow
Abergavenny
Berkhampstead

Berkhamsted (there are umpteen ways of spelling it) used to be a nice country town, but is now very posh and dominated by its public school/commuter elite.

Another vote for Petersfield .. and Ledbury's nice, based on a week's stay earlier in the year. It still has an ironmonger, a butcher, a baker and lots of other small shops.
 

PeterC

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I lived on the outskirts of Oxford for three years. Yes, it's a beautiful city, but I didn't find it a user-friendly place to live at all.
That can often be the way. I find Oxford a great place to visit for shopping or leasure.
Berkhamsted is nice but nothing special.
Chesham is pleasant but struggling while Amersham always feels to be a bit up itself.

I'd add my vote to Whitby but Abergavenny I would class as "mostly harmless". The covered market is nice if you turn up on the right day. (maybe always parking at the bus station car park means that I see the worst of the town)
 

Bletchleyite

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That can often be the way. I find Oxford a great place to visit for shopping or leasure.
Berkhamsted is nice but nothing special.
Chesham is pleasant but struggling while Amersham always feels to be a bit up itself.

Berko is a nice place to live rather than to be bothered visiting, I'd say. Not that I've actually lived there, but from observation. Other than for the museum I'd put Tring in the same bracket - perfect semi-rural commuterville with an excellent (if a bit unpunctual at the moment) train service to London.

Really, this thread is a bit difficult because there are a lot of quite nice places in the UK.
 
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