Worst town in Britain

Cold Bath Rd isn't that posh

A lot of the whole crap towns phenomena can be put down to the 1960s. Whenever I drove off to University in oxford from hertfordshire, I would go through the following towns, all ruined by ugly 60s architecture:
-hemel hempstead (actually has a nice old town though)
-chesham (also takeaway alley)
-aylesbury (probably the worst of them all)
Saying that the countryside between them is great and there are some nice villages. The country has never really recovered from de-instrialisation and the loss of its empire – we are living as ghost people in ghost towns, wandering aimlessly looking for a wider purpose.

There was a dive shop on cold bath road took me for 2k this year when he never paid for his goods. w@nker

CBA reading 6 pages, but Chelmsley Wood nr Brum Airport is a bloody grim hole.

Wow no one has said Hackney yet.

I guess it's going up in the world.

Tazzy,you appear to have a fair knowledge of S-o-T..the five towns are well past their best. Architecturally,Burslem is my favourite of the 5,although it is a bit "Farm Foods". Hanley is a disaster and can be very iffy,if you're not careful.
We don't suffer with gun and knife crime like cities just north ,south and east of us.
My favourite place to live within Stoke would have to be The Villas just off London Road. Minton built them for the Italian artists that he brought over to work for him. Truly beautiful houses at prices that would have southerners sobbing into their skinny lattes.
…and most importantly great riding on our door step. Hanchurch Woods is a ten minute ride from my house.

Leicester – dear gods what a hole.

In the south Hoddesdon (lived there for 4 years) and particularly the Rye House area. Also nearby Harlow has no redeeming features. Also Clacton in Essex could do with being swamped by the sea.

Midlands – Wolverhampton – had to walk through it in a suit once and was conscious I was being closely watched by the locals. Really didn't like Leicester on the occasions I have been there.

North – Bradford (used to go to school there), Blackpool (where chavs from every sh*thole go and see if they can out do each other in wearing fake gold jewellry, shell suits and trainers), and Sunderland (even the pound shops have shutters).

Wales – Port Talbot surely takes some beating.

Scotland – Shotts – possibly the most dismal place I have ever had the misfortune to visit.

South West – Bridgwater, Weston-super-Mud and Plymouth are all depressing places IMO.

adun1408 – Member
liverpool has got to be the biggest sh*****e

Another insightful comment from someone who has absolutely no idea….

Cumnock is pretty bad right enough, there are a lot of grim places in ayrshire but the worst has to be a place called Glespin, a few miles east of Muirkirk. Middle of nowhere. No pub, no shops, public payphone vandailsed. It's a grim council estate on top of a moor next to a massive opencast coal mine, so grim I really struggle to see why anyone would want to live there.

Farsley in Leeds was the worst place I've lived, the most unfriendly people I've ever came across, if you weren't local they didn't want to know. Armley was far nicer!

young dave riley -you must live right next to me then in N-U-L not stoke! 😀 I only have to ride to the end of the road and cut through the back of trentham gardens hey presto I'm in hanny (still prefer the chase though)

Most of Stoke is shit it has to be said, from personal experience, and Hanchurch is about to enter its unridable 5 months….. still great trails tho'

Scabby Abbey Houlton anyone?? Or worse still Oakwood Rd.

margate

chell, shelton, hanley lived in all of them in the early 90's and they were all truly poo. Even worse now that there is no industry to keep the scum employed no pits, no pot banks just 5 towns of jeremy kyle fodder

In the 80's I had a fun filled student life in Shelton, Fenton, Etruria – even then they were like ghettos. great little villages all around the potteries tho'

Tazzy ,you do live very near by,I live in Vegas. Hanchurch does get a bit damp and with the recent forestry work,it's going to be messy for a while.
We tend to ride Hem Heath,Barlaston Downs and Tittensor Chase in the wet conditions.

do you go riding with kev and the goldtech boys?

Irvine
Kilmarnock
Hounslow
Fort William
Coatbridge
Harthill

Worst of all – anywhere in Glasgow east of the merchant city

Following on from the Scottish nominations, I give you:

Greenock.
Port-Glasgow.
Paisley.

An English nomination:

Bracknell, Berkshire.

Cheltenham.

tazzymtb.you ever been to the wirral.were i live is a prety wealth part of it, surounded by millionairs.
and ellsmere port isn,t even on the wirral.get it right.

Ehhh !!! cinnamon_girl what's wrong with Greenock & Port Glasgow ??
was born and bred in "The Port"

ill probably get flamed for this but shitholes in the north are worse than the south
i grew up in dunstable/ luton lived in haringey and now a stones throw from acton

but a police mate took me on an unofficial tour of the crack houses he works in the warrington area, little children have never scared me so much!

but a police mate took me on an unofficial tour of the crack houses he works in the warrington area, little children have never scared me so much!

Do you not think your perception is just a little bit coloured by the fact that he took you "crack houses" and thats why you have such an unbalanced view?
If I visited "crack houses" in Chelsea I may have a ridiculously distorted perception also!!!
Maybe if you actually spent time in Warrington you will see that it has the typical social and economic issues common to most towns and cities in the UK, no more, no less.

tazzymtb.you ever been to the wirral.were i live is a prety wealth part of it, surounded by millionairs.and ellsmere port isn,t even on the wirral.get it right

Robhughes, are you fond of tracksuits? Your spelling and grammar is scallytastic!

Having spent my early working years aware that my choice of career meant that my future place of abode was in the hands of luck ( about a thousand jobs nationwide and retired man's shoes for where and when ) and the random musings of appointments committees, I always tended to look around when I was in unfamiliar areas and never found a place without some redeeming features and somewhere decent to live within 10 miles. In fairness, I never seriously looked in the South East because I knew I couldn't afford the mortgage, but I have worked in or near a frighteningly large number of the towns that figure in this thread.

Middlesbrough is probably the only one where those who can do so choose to live in the next county – although that tells you more about the size of Cleveland and the proximity of North Yorkshire. Having said that I now live within 10 miles of the most deprived area in North Yorkshire and can see the road up to Dalby from my study window so deprivation is relative.

My gran used to live in Widnes – the place is horrible, and look what you could tie yourself to for 25 years in an average job – Prozac anyone?

robhughs yes I've been to the wirral (worked in Wallasey and that was truly one of the most vile places in christendom!) If you read my post carefully, at no point did I say elly port is in, or near the wirral. I merely stated that the wirral was also full of plastic scousers.

**** wanabe scousers always get arsey, poor little diddums 🙂

**** wanabe scousers always get arsey, poor little diddums

I think somebody got a bit of a "hiding" from some "plastic scousers"?

Public service announcement: the term "plastic scousers" should really be reserved for the denizens of England's worst new town, Runcorn.

Message ends.

Not me, we always won. They never seemed to grasp the idea that if a large goup of ****/plastic scousers jumps a small number of punks/alternatives and they stay for a punch up rather than running off it's because they know how to fight and enjoy a good kick off, but they did put a mate of mine into intesive care with a baseball bat because he had long hair and was on his own. bless 'em

I now follow a more buddist path having spent some time in a rather grim place. (no, not grimsby) 😀

Tazzymtb

😆

see that person of a shorter stature…..that's you that is…..on a good day, with your mum in her favorite shorts.

you know your bike…..it's a girls bike……with a basket….and pink tassles

insert other "history today" lines as required

actually I do rather like the fetching skintight shorts. Do you know where I could get a pair? they'd finish off the ss riding nichemonger image wonderfully, and I could put matching coloured beads in my beard.

Really cool cycling shorts 8)

Should be compulsory for men on all STW Forum Rides 😀

Can't be arsed to read all through this, but my vote is for Workington where I spent a night before riding C2C. Like a weird time warp into the 70s.

cinnamon_girl I was seriuos about the shorts, but I used to ride in the 80's in metallic green lycra with peacock feather print on! 😯

tazzy – you coming on the next Swinley Forest Forum Ride 😉

Your shorts sound amazing!

If this thread has been narrowed down to where we've actually lived, then Oldham for me has it. Good grief! Only lived in a mate's house there for a few weeks, but there was a brothel next door and I woke up one night, looked out of the window and saw a guy climbing through the hole where the kitchen window used to be (which he'd conveniently dumped on the patio after removing it).

Lived in Newton Heath (Manchester) too, a close second. I had a car follow me up the pavement and tried to run me down, and the local shop had more security screens and wire meshing than a border post in Soviet Russia.

I had a few pairs of tie-dye lycra leggings in the early 90s. I miss them. The rest of humanity seemed to object for some reason (might have been i chose to go commando when i wore them).

ANyway, back on topic: it's a bit depressing that there are so many contenders but I agree with whoever it was who that said most places have redeeming qualities (or somewhere nicer) in their immediate vicinity.