I grew up in Preston. It is categorically nay catastrophically worse than Hull.

How could I forget Coldstream!

Not a miserable place as such, but I don’t think I’ve ever met a more miserable population. Everyone in the town seemed to be intent on draining any joy from anything they could.

Bracknell takes some beating but as a local Dudley takes it. Run down town on top of a hill so it is always cold and windy. Absolute dump.

Grangemouth in Scotland. I visited once as I thought it sounded nice. Jesus tonight what a waking nightmare it is. A bizarre fusion of green fields, grey council houses and INDUSTRY.

I found out it’s the hometown of The Cocteau Twins which goes some way to explaining their weirdness!

Just made a list of all the places I’ve lived, worked or studied in. So far I’ve got Barrow in Furness, Worthing, Stockwell in Saaarf London, Telford, Reading, Bracknell AND Preston.

By all accounts Mogadishu is a bit of a shithole.

It sounds like it might be an improvement on that lot 😀

I really need to move somewhere nicer next time.

Dudley’s saving grace = funny accent.

What about Port Talbot… set to become even grimmer by all accounts.

Surprised nobody’s mentioned Hartlepool yet, Sort of like Feltham but without the weather.

Yeah Port Talbot is grim but it’s got the mountains.

Didcot. It’s a powerstation with a fookin’ dismal shopping mall attatched to it…

…and that’s about it.

I’d rather stay on the bus untill it reached Grozny* than have the misfortune of alighting in Didcot again.

*(Officially the most destroyed city on earth http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grozny)

Telford’s not that bad is it? (wife’s from Ironbridge, so I’ve done a fair bit of cycling round there). Bland housing estates but there’s so much open space and greenery to offset that.

Fort William’s an imbecile of a town. Guess you can’t call it miserable, as you walk down the road 5 minutes and there’s epic grandeur on tap. The town itself though is well ropey.

Cities.

I grew up in Preston. It is categorically nay catastrophically worse than Hull.

I grew up just down the road and I agree. However, I recently met a Spanish bloke from Madrid who had worked at the university (sic) there, and claimed to love the place – bizarre.

Harlow.

Grew up there, never want to go back. Its one saving grace is that as a new town it has a lot of well established bike paths. Trouble is they all lead to the town centre…

A pilot friend of mine puts Lagos at the top of his list.

Barrow-in-Furness is pretty depressing…

Didcot – it just sounds rubbish. Glad to hear it lives up to its name.

Me and Harry the Spider work in Middleton. It’s a town about four miles west of Oldham and is just ****.

It has quite an impressive bus station but that does nothing to offset the sheer ghastliness of the place. It’s a meeting place for unemployed people with tracky bottoms tucked in socks, cheap tattoes and no point.

Off the places I’ve visited the biggestshitholes have been

Lennoxtown
Accrington
Stoke area
Rawtenstall
Calgary
Barnoldswick

I live in Nelson, nothing to see here either 🙂

Agree with Depreston.

Roman Lakes in Stockport anyone? Should be lovely, really isn’t.

Can people stop doing Preston down please, it’s a lovely place.

In completely unrelated news, I’ve just discovered prozac tastes really nice if you eat loads of it 😀

Bolton

and I’m from there. I go back to visit friends and family a few times a year and my heart sinks everytime the train pulls in to the station

Middleton Arndale is like something from a horror movie and 1 in 3 of the “walkers” have a pot on their arm or leg or a neck brace.

Port Talbot and Aberavan are ok mountains and would you believe some good surf. Locals can be a bit heavy.

Here is Spenner the landlord of Middleton’s fave boozer – The Nob & Basket.

Harlow might be a bit grim but at least it’s not very big – unlike the endless suburban sprawl of the west mids.

I was a newspaper reporter in Harlow for a coupe of years and at least there was plenty going on. Think I covered a Combat 18 murder in my first week.

😯

Cumbernauld
So bad they have even dug up the A80 to stop people escaping

“In December 2005 the entire Town Centre won a public nomination for demolition.”

Allow me to show you around Swinton, Salford:

derek_starship – Member
I reckon this must be one of the most miserable places in the world.

*Picture of Uranium City*

Imagine having to live and work here.

I couldn’t believe it when I saw the picture you posted derek_starship. I spent my last five years in Canada living and working not in Uranium City, but in a small town in the same region.

What kills you is the isolation and complete lack of culture. But I have to say that the cycling, both on- and off-road, is excellent!

LOL @ twinklydave 😛

I have the mis-fortune of working in Rotherham, it makes my skin crawl.

However I don’t live here so it’s fine, i can deal with it

Milton Keynes

Oh and milton keynes isn’t that bad… I grew up there. it gets a lot of stick but actually it’s quite nice compared to other towns mentioned here 🙂

Portsmouth

Its a tough call. I can’t make my mind up whats worse.

Whether to go for the Bermuda Triangle of stinking, polluted, brain-dead, hopelessness that is Warrington/Widnes/Runcorn

Or any of the god-awful, soulless, featureless, identikit satellite towns darn sarf – Reading/Woking/Swindon/Basingstoke

Grimsby’s also pretty grim.

Rhondda valley, especially around Ystrad and Pentre. Always grey and miserable. Gives off an air of no money and no hope. Just completely depressing. And I like Wolverhampton and Dudley, friendly folk.

Allow me to show you around Swinton, Salford:

+1 for the sheer ugliness of that building. Although to be fair if you turn around you have a lovely church or the Salford council offices which are much nicer to look at (yes i do live in Swinton).

Mind you if you walked up a bit further up and took a photo of the actual precinct then we are back to your original point 🙂

Widnes is a horrible place. Warrington is redeemed only by the fact it’s possible to cycle through it on TPT and Sankey Valley Trail, oh and I’m in it.
As above, a lot of the Reading/Woking/Swindon towns are soul destroying but if I’m going to have to pick…. it’s an unusual choice. Lincoln. It’s not that it looks depressing in anyway, it’s actually quite pretty. It’s something far more sinister. You don’t really notice it unless you’re there for more than a few days but then it slowly dawns on you that everyone is either drugged, hypnotised or lobotomised. Nobody seems to do anything, they just wander round in this slack jawed daze, existing.

Very odd.

John o’Groats

Not my pic:

Even McDonalds has closed down (probably due to violence and lack of people who can afford the food). Its that bad.

I was once walking through and two school teen mums pushing prams both gave me ‘the eye’. It really depressed me.

Basingstoke deserves a special award. I had the misfortune of having to work there quite a bit a few years back.

The first day i arrived there, my new colleagues asked me what i was doing that evening. “I’m going to find a decent pub and watch the footy” I replied. They looked at each other, startled, then looked back at me as if I’d said I was going racing Unicorns on the Moon.

“There are no decent pubs in Basingstoke” came the communal reply.

They were ****ing right too! The whole place is like a vacuum

Rhondda valley, especially around Ystrad and Pentre

Merthyr is worse. Spend an hour waiting for a bus in the bus station. Amazing.