Great Western Coffee Shop

From I live Here (https://www.ilivehere.co.uk/top-10-worst-places-to-live-in-england) - Top ten worst places to live in England.  Rather like Celtic winning the Scottish league, the winner is a foregone conclusion (and not in the GWR area) and reading the list is a bit of fun because there's little around here. However, one of ours has made it to the top 10 this year:

Views expressed are quoted from that web site, and may not reflect mine.

What would Basil say to that I wonder..

This topic ought to be in The Lighter Side.  :)

By the general rule of familiarity breeds contempt, the locals tend to talk their home town or village down.

Visitors can also talk places down due to things that happened to them when they were there. For example my adoptive mother had an absolute downer on Paignton and would never go there. That probably had a lot to do with when one day in the late 1950s we went on a day trip and it bucketed down all day, and a wasp got caught in her hair and stung her scalp. It would be very difficult to pin that on the mismanagement of the good Burghers of the Town...

I am reminded a little of the old joke about martyrs being rewarded in heaven with 24 virgins - except if they come from (insert place name of choice) because there aren't that many virgins there...

 ;)

The media favourite for years was Jaywick on the Essex coast.  Smart money is on it's gentrification with the next five years. Buy now, buy low.

Always a safe bet!

https://www.ilivehere.co.uk/swindon-5.html

Oh and Graham - you're a bit behind the times, be careful next time you're in Glasgow!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/scottish-premiership/table

I suppose I had better try and defend Torquay.  Property prices in Wellswood on a par with Salcombe and joint second to Sandbanks. Wellswood were any new property that is expensive, such as the planned 5* hotel, nearby flats on a closed girls school sail through planning.

New hotel near the front has been unable to open due to covid for months. Third new hotel at Corbyn Head ready to start for months. Million pound house for sale right behind. Buy now before you lose some of the sea view.

Two over subscribed grammar schools and an unusual CofE/Catholic combined secondary school. Soon to have a third station. Torquay United back in the league (need a bit of fantasy here) with a new multi venue stadium near the new station (another fantasy). It has one of the best hospitals in the country. My next door neighbour from a bowel cancer diagnosis to keyhole surgery and chucked out in four days was six weeks.

Shopping the council are planning to lose half of the retail space. Debenham's on the front recently closed owned by the council so will be developed probably with retail on the ground floor and flats/hotel above.

I did take exception to "If you don’t have a kid by the age of 20, are you really from Torquay?". The age should have been 16 and the town Paignton.

Torquay benevolently takes all the drug addicts from around the country to house in the cheap B&Bs, not the boutique B&B voted the best in the world.

Soon to have "new" trains replacing the 150s. 166s new down here. Lifts, sorry elevators, at Torquay and the new Edginswell. I wonder if Torre will get them; but it might upset the flashers as the schoolgirls use the stairs in their shortest skirts.

I think I'll have to move to Torquay from Paignton if it wasn't for Jim Davison calling it wrinkle city when he parked his yacht in the marina with all the other expensive boats. It was cheaper than a hotel when he appeared at the Princess Theatre every year. I forgot Torquay has two other theatres and a new 13 screen multiplex that has not opened due to covid.

Any questions?

I lived in Torquay in the 1950s when it still could claim to be the Queen of the English Riviera. We lived in Hennapyn Road, quite close to the station, and we quite often used a path crossing the railway to the sea-front.

Between 1999 and 2005 I visited a friend in Wellswood most months (travelling by train), and can recognise most of the criticisms made above.  I didn't think that the beaches were that great, many large houses had been converted into multi-occupancy with multiple bins kept outside. And in the summer it was difficult to get out of so as to reach Dartmoor.

My friend died from cancer in October but had excellent treatment from the NHS despite its necessary pre-occupation with Covid.

Her small cottage in Wellswood will be put on the market soon ... It's very close to Kents Cavern, which curiously we never visited, though we did go to most other tourist attractions in the area (including re-visiting the stone railway lines at Haytor).

Inverness?

I quite like Torquay,

I was expecting st austell when I saw the topic title. St austell has a massive issue with most of the down and outs being housed in the town due to certain local facilities. Result walk through town and there’s people doing drugs in daylight in every empty shop doorway!

If you're thinking of the same Barrack Room Ballad as I am, that only applied to those who went to the ball...

 ;)

Perhaps it should have been ... having it elsewhere tends tomato it more significant than it should be.


True - you fill find similar pages for Bath, Salisbury, Trowbridge, Chippenham and Royal Wootton Bassett ...


Indeed.  I have mixed memories of Torbay

Torquay: A wonderful Community Rail Annual Award event there - not because of the party or awards (don't think we won any gongs that year!) but because of the networking, because of the chance to see so much of the local rail enviorment organisers by the Devon and Cornwall partnership (far prefer a 153 to a kettle to Kingswear!) and because of a brilliant, brilliant talk on a sustainable town development and what has been done in The Netherlands. Perhaps the most effective speaker (no, "performance") I have even seen.

Paignton: A meet-up with friends from around the world - we took over a hotel and Lisa and I provided internet access from a Sun workstation and mobile phone ("Brick") there - a couple of decades ago.  A good week, but so sad that the memory is of an aggressive pensioners couple walking side by side up a narrow pavement on a busy road. Lisa, I and Tyler (step son, aged about 9 or 10 at the time) walking toward them. We went single file but they didn't - Lisa and I stepped into the road, Tyler moved to walk past on the pavement edge but they pushed him off into the road with a "haven't you been told to respect your elders" comment and nearly into the path of a lorry ...

Lesson to self. NEVER act like that horrid old couple; always check what I do and say.   Twenty years later, it's still our memory of Paignton.  Unless it's been re-developed, I could probably take you to that road, but I've forgotten where the hotel was.

Defiantly should be the lighter side.

Must get to the bottom of this; if the elderly couple had london or Birmingham accents they were local. Anything else and they were visitors.

In the last 20 years there has been no development in the Paignton central area at all until last year with the construction started of two hotels fronting the esplanade.

(https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50988168003_27b6cf75be_z.jpg) (https://flic.kr/p/2kFDFWT)Park Hotel 23 February 2021 (https://flic.kr/p/2kFDFWT) by Robert (https://www.flickr.com/photos/revupminster/), on Flickr

The first due to open this July but with covid that will be tight. The other was August but is behind schedule. Being built by the same Singapore investor building the 5* hotel in Torquay and one at Corbyn Head. All costing £120m +. This year the Paignton Picture House is being restored to the time Agatha Christie was a cinema goer

Paignton was killed 20 years ago when Nortel finally closed it's giant electronics factory and 5000 jobs were lost. Torbay was one of the few areas where the population did not grow between the 2001 and 2011 census.

In the last 10 years, as in Torquay all development is on the outskirts. Paignton ring road being widened to four lanes in the area of the derelict Nortel factory which has been demolished and replaced by big stores such as The Range and The Food Warehouse and eventually 250 homes. Hundreds of other homes have been built off the ring road and the South Devon College has expanded to be one of the biggest employers in Paignton with campuses in Torquay, Newton Abbot (which I noticed was also in the top 50), and Kingswear with a marine academy.
There are a lot of scouse accents in these new homes using stand only Lidl, Aldi, Sainbury superstore. Asda, and a Morrisons superstore just off the ring road. Another thousand homes are due to be built off the ring road in Paignton alone. I expect the 2021 census will reveal an increase in population of Torbay by 4000-6000 keeping it just ahead of Exeter which is the faster growing city in the four counties of the South West.

 

And those 4 counties are?

Devon, Cornwall, Somerset and Cheers Drive!

In defence of Jaywick, I know a couple who live there, and they state that whilst it is a deprived area, it is not unpleasant to live in. Government figures take account of factors like average income, percentage of the population reliant on benefits, proportion of unfit homes, and related factors. Gathering such data is a simple matter but presents only a partial picture.

They like the area, near the sea and the countryside, and a very low cost of living. They much prefer Jaywick to parts of London.

The BBC spotlight area defines the Southwest as Cornwall, Devon, Somerset, and Dorset sans Bournemouth/Poole. 

Nothing suggested to me that they were visitors from a very brief interaction a very long time ago.

It was probably pretty obvious that we were not from Devonshire nor even an adjoining county.

---

A whole other topic crops up here of what the residents of "X" think of visitors coming in to their town / city - a much wider topic / new thread perhaps.  

Whilst ITV westcountry defines the southwest as Bristol, Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, Gloucestershire, Somerset, Wiltshire!

BBC Spotlight comes from Plymouth whilst ITV Westcountry comes from Bristol, so hardly surprising.

Which is how the government define it IIRC.

Remembering that the old county of Dorset has been split into two unitary authorities: Dorset, and Bournemouth, Christchurch & Poole.

Not the most helpful/imaginative naming for a new area. Must admit that I call Dorset UA, Dorset Rural to remind myself it is no longer the county. TCP reminds me of the order of Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole!

Of course, of those three towns only Poole lies within the historic county of Dorset, the others were in Hampshire. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Country

Has the ITV region changed? Didn't it used to be TSW for the South West and HTV West for Bristol?

Or the Nativity play that had to be cancelled in the same town, because they couldn't find three wise men and a virgin.

Yes see Clan Line's link for the detail

WAY off topic - saw it again in Lincoln at ACoRP - now CRN - Seminar report ((here)) (https://communityrail.org.uk/community-rail-seminar-report-lincoln-2017/)

Re-awakened to this site by a post elsewhere on the forum ... I did a search to find if people were saying anything about my home town ... found these on there:
https://www.ilivehere.co.uk/chippenham-wiltshire-a-burgeoning-dystopia-of-morons.html
https://www.ilivehere.co.uk/bath-somerset-just-because-its-posh-doesnt-mean-its-pleasant.html
https://www.ilivehere.co.uk/salisbury-wiltshire-there-is-two-types-of-people.html
https://www.ilivehere.co.uk/dawlish-warren-devon-a-k-a-watership-downer.html
https://www.ilivehere.co.uk/trowbridge-the-detroit-of-wiltshire.html

Perhaps our poor train service (do readers realise we still have less that one train every 2 hours each way!) prevents too many reviewers coming our way  ;D

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITV_West_Country

A mildly confusing tale of franchises, mergers and dormant companies. All for the benefit of ITV plc and not viewers.

Complicated history, as far as I can see it went like this

Television Wales and West (TWW) 1958 - 1968
Harlech TV West 1968 - 2002, 1997 taken over by United Business Media. 2000 to Carlton.
ITV West 2002 - 2009,

Westward TV 1961 - 1981/2
Television South West 1981/2 - 1991/2
Westcountry TV 1991/2 - 2009

2009 merger of both regions into ITV West Country

Going way off topic but missed out Carlton's awful tenure

Westward TV 1961 - 1981/2
Television South West 1981/2 - 1991/2
Westcountry TV 1991/2 - 1999
Carlton [under branding of Carlton Westcountry / Carlton / ITV1 Carlton / ITV1 for the Westcountry] 1999 - 2004, then ITV merger
ITV Westcountry  2004 - 2009, then region merger with ITV West and whole-scale move of all broadcasting to Bristol
ITV West Country 2009 -

I'm surprised Gus Honeybun hasn't had a mention yet in this list.

And I vaguely remember Teledu Cymru, which delving into the history books continued in name during the "emergency transitional franchise" which followed the early termination of TWW.  Now why does early termination of government appointed franchises sound familiar?

Could be taken as encouragement for more closures?

Ah yes, Gus Honeybun, brings back memories of 1970/80s summers in South Devon.
Something of a cult hero with the same sort of student age following as would watch Tiswas around then too.

Someone whom I know HAS moved to Jaywick, and rather likes it.
They purchased a large but rather jerrybuilt home on a decent plot for only £50,000.

Low living costs, fresh air, near the sea.

A lot of crime, but no worse than London.

Have you considered a career in Marketing?

"A lot of cancellations, but no worse than Melksham."

I had either forgotten about Charlton, or never knew. I lived in Bristol at the time, but was a frequent visitor, so I must have had something better to do.


I encountered Gus Honeybun during my Poldark period, when I worked down South Crofty. The spectacle of a fluffy rabbit switching the studio lights off and back on to celebrate someone's birthday filled me with both amusement and the uncomfortable feeling that I would never understand the Cornish, in equal measure. I hadn't long left Granada's area, where you were more likely to get a song played live by a leading Manchester rock band to mark your 5th birthday. ("So happy birthday, Johnny, 5 today, with love from Mummy, daddy, and Cuddles the rottweiler. Here's Van der Graaf Generator, live, with "Lemmings (including 'Cog')" from their album Pawn Hearts...")

I was there!

(http://terrascope.co.uk/images/vdg_bath211077_tkt.jpg)