[Closed] The Best Outdoorsy Town In The UK?

I really like Betws y Coed plenty of pubs for an evening chill and nice village/town green.
Surf (North Wales coast) one way, mountains the other, 🙂
Very close to Llanberis.

No idea how nice it is as a place to live but I always thought Minehead in Somerset has a lot going for it in terms of of adjacent scenery, coast and terrain for all your outdoorsy needs. Is it commutable to Bristol?

Arggh Betws home of over geared hill walkers and goretex lovers. The shops are always heaving on sunny days with people buying stuff instead of out using it. Still nice countryside and good riding on your doorstep.

Swansea would be my choice, I'd be back there in a heartbeat if I could find a job.

Great climbing on the shower & down the road in Pembrokeshire, Surfing within a 10 minute drive, beacons less than half an hour away for walking & biking and some exceptional WW kayaking too. Shame Swansea is a bit of a crime hotspot but hey ho.

not Leeds...... 😆

I would love to live in Keswick.

IMO Best location (south of Scotland) for those sports is North Wales. As far as I'm concerned there are only two realistic locations to consider with quality Rock climbing/ mountaineering /hill walking, Lakes and North Wales. However, of the two, surfing is better off North Welsh coast ie Hell's Mouth. If Llanberis or Betws are not groovy enough or close enough to civilisation, maybe consider Chester. the A55 will have you in Snowdonia or surf areas within an hour.

the outstanding location is rochdale..

the great outdoors on the edge of the pennines, barely more than a league or two from the home of stw, plenty of rocky things to climb and lamp posts, plenty of walking canals moors plenty of bikey stuff MTL pennine bridleway ( regular reports in observer on stolen bikes for the twilight hours

and the icing on the cake.. an alfresco beach type experience beside the newly developed river through the town centre, sandy beaches and a ready rip ( although presently a covered sewer) the council believe that the alfresco beach style enviroment will encourage tourism and bring 50 000 a year to the 'attraction' from where you ll be able to see a first hand the new council offices that cost 55m last year but are now only worth 20m and are only half full as they council laid off so many staff.. they can also visit the new libary ( housed in some of the empty space in the new council offices) its only 100m from the old libary but cost 14 quid a book to move there ( 80000 books!) oh and that was after they had to pay off the remainder of the 1000 year lease they took on the building it used to be in..

Seriously though the answers Liverpool. Snowdon, Lakes and Peak all 2 hour drive. Clwyd's 45 mins, great climbing 20 mins away if you like hard sandstone routes. Good sea kayaking round the coast, windsurfing off West Kirby. Close to good airports for Alps, Norway, Spain. Its ****in boss lad!

Oh yeah cheap housing, good music scene and the birds like to dress up!

Sheerness

Possibly Swansea? If you live on the Gower you can surf and climb both within a few miles 🙂 Riding from your door is harder from that side, but from other parts of Swansea you've got proper Welsh riding from your door. And just up the road is, well.. Wales, which is all good biking 🙂

Reeth except for the the surf, climbing and almost everything else you greedy git 🙂

Shrewsbury - outdoor/bike shops, close to Mid/North Wales, great riding on the doorstep, good pubs and restaurants, 1 1/2 horns to the coast, bike shop organised ride outs,.

Lol.. He wanted coast, someone suggests a place that's about as far from the sea as is possible in the UK 🙂 classic STW for you

the outstanding location is rochdale..

They get more daylight in the arctic circle in winter (and less rain)!

Ft William, surfing's not quite on the doorstep, but if you want hills
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If it's surfing first, probaby Oban, more water oriented, great sailing and kayaking with the awesome surf of Tiree a short(ish) ferry trip away.
Both towns served by trains

*Looks out of window*
3 crags, lots of hills and can nearly see the coast, can walk to the train station, with a direct train to London. Its quiet and yet has a very good MTB scene, can ride to my local trail centres.
Where ? well I'm not telling I want to keep it this way dont want any Townies here

Am I right?

I only moved to Skipton because I'd heard about the surf scene on the Leeds and Liverpool Canal. Some of the bigger boats throw up some killer wakes.

Barnstaple - anyone live there?

Yep - wouldn't say its particularly outdoorsy but for walking & riding Exmoor is only a ten minute drive, Dartmoor & Quantocks less than 40 miles away.
The South west coast path is a great place & very popular for walking.
Surfing - Croyde & Putsborough 10 minutes drive this time of year (wouldn't try it in summer)
Riding from the door - nothing special but we manage to put a few good loops together taking in the best bridleways etc.

Aviemore. By the height of a Munro.
World class walking, climbing, biking and paddling. Skiing, all but 'in' town.
coast and sailing not that far away (west as well as east) and the rest if the Highlands just a shrt drive away.
Having lived in Sheffield, it doesn't even come close.

Keswick for me, hands down.

^ I like Keswick, but by heck it is busy....and so are the hills....and you can't ski so easily....and the rivers are not so long or plentiful.

Sorry matt_outandabout but you are 100% wrong on this one.

Aviemore is a village, not a town.

Aviemore/keswick. If you want surf go Newquay.

Keswick is tranquil compared to Leeds, which is a hellhole for cycling.

Apart from Jam Bo saying Bodmin (are we related - lol)and he has a good point. I can not believe no one has mentioned Plymouth!

Very local surf spots include Wembury, Fort Bovisand and Whitsand Bay. Bantham is about 45mins drive away and the North Coast of Cornwall is about an hour.

Then as far as cycling goes, Plymouth has a great scene, for XC (all the races at Newnham) DH (Gawton) and there is a good road scene. Then you can include some great Dartmoor trails in a day ride from the city centre.

Swansea - I live at the bottom of the Swansea Valley, great cycle routes (sustrans for getting about) Beacons 20 mins up the road, climbing wall 5 mins away, Gower for cycling, climbing and surfing, trail centres nearby and Swans for footy, never had a problem with crime - wouldn't want to live anywhere else save for perhaps the Lakes.

dozy bunch!
Llanberis. best climbing in the UK, great cycling, both MTB and the proper stuff. You can check the local surf from just up the road. Canoeing all round, ditto sailing.
Plenty of places to stay at all prices. enough food and beer.
Thankfully not a city although Bangor has plenty of female students 😆

Depends where you need to be close to.

Isle of Wight ticks a load of boxes and reasonably quick to London...when the surfs not up.

I've lived in... Bangor, Caernarfon, Cardiff, Perth and now just outside of Peebles.

It all depends on what you want. North Wales was excellent for hill walking and climbing. However, its small. I'd walked every hill in the national park, and climbed pretty much everything I was able yo climb, without putting in a stupid amount of effort. So got bored. It also sucks in the wet. Nearest cinema was 45 minutes away for example.

South Wales was amazing for riding, walking was boring as hell. Plus my bikes kept getting stolen, so rubbish because of that.

Perth is beautiful. Really beautiful. Walking is superb, but different to north Wales. The highlands is also a lot more scary when things go wrong, like a total whiteout in the Cairngorms at the weekend, with no discernable way markers to map a route from. Ridings great, but muddy as hell at the moment, and trail centres are 1.5 hours away.

Peebles. Peebles.... Well, its very close to glentress and inners, pentlands on the doorstep, ochils close by, and the Trossachs not too far. Other stanes are 1.5 hours away too.

So far Peebles is looking great for what I want.

I don't think I could live in the lakes or peak, due to the amount of people and tourists.

Apart from Jam Bo saying Bodmin (are we related - lol)and he has a good point. I can not believe no one has mentioned Plymouth!

I was joking about Bodmin, I meant Camborne...

fort william or aviemore, probably fort william, for easier acess to surfing spots on the west coast i'd imagine(I know nothing about surfing.)

StefMcDef - Member
No idea how nice it is as a place to live but I always thought Minehead in Somerset has a lot going for it in terms of of adjacent scenery, coast and terrain for all your outdoorsy needs. Is it commutable to Bristol?

POSTED 4 HOURS AGO #

No. Out of rush hour it'll take you 1hr 40m ish to get from Minehead to Bristol, way longer in rush hour. The A 39 to Bridgewater is very slow with nowhere to overtake.

Another vote for Brizzle here 🙂

The Northern Riviera

there is a rumour that a break works at Fleetwood

[img] http://surfnation.typepad.com/.a/6a00e553c82f3b883301310f93f6e1970c-pi [/img]

Just move to Hawaii or Northern California and have done with it.

fort william or aviemore, probably fort william, for easier acess to surfing spots on the west coast i'd imagine(I know nothing about surfing.)

Fort Bill, no. Not in a million years could I live in that midge infested rain drenched pit of driech tourists tat.

Swansea - I live at the bottom of the Swansea Valley, great cycle routes (sustrans for getting about) Beacons 20 mins up the road, climbing wall 5 mins away, Gower for cycling, climbing and surfing, trail centres nearby and Swans for footy, never had a problem with crime - wouldn't want to live anywhere else save for perhaps the Lakes.

I love Swansea but, you've never had problem with crime? In 5 years my car was broken into 4 times & stolen once. Amongst my friends we had cars done over every couple of months, I had a female friend locked in a cab & threatened, I was driving the uni minibus and had 2 people threaten me and make me drive round doing drug drop offs and had my wallet stolen twice. Now we were students so not in the most salubrious locations but in 12 years in Shropshire nothing has happened even though I've been to some iffy places with work.

Is surfing a sport? Or are you American or a wanna be American, maybe they will build a reef somewhere to big wave areas just like they build trail centres

[url= http://www.the-wave.co.uk ]The Wave[/url] are building a surf lake, funnily enough it'll be in Bristol.

misinformer - where in the OP's post does it refer to "sport"? It's an outdoor activity. He's looking for an "Outdoorsy" town.

Stoner- so is taking your dog if you own one for a shit in the street with a plastic bag, by that measure every location in the UK is outdoorsy 🙄

you're being particularly grumpy this morning. No cuddles from missinformer today?

Stoner- I'm a 40 year old middle age spreading by the day bloke.
Missinformer did a bunk from our marriage many years ago with a 20 something tree surgeon , so no cuddles.

Not bitter either

OP wants

somewhere that's not too cut off from the rest of the UK.

What Rickon says - Peebles - end of thread
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I've lived here 30 years and genuinely wouldn't move anywhere else in the world.
Great mountain biking, great road riding, pretty decent hill walks, windsurfing half and hour away, surfing an hour away, Edinburgh is only 23 miles away with a bus every 1/2 hour, Glasgow just over an hour, Edinburgh airport is 40 minutes away with flights pretty much everywhere now or at least decent connections, we've got great schools, Scotland has 3 Michelin Bib Gourmand Restaurants...2 of them are in Peebles......I could go on 🙂