What are the most backwatery of British backwaters?

[His Name Is Death]

Preston had the touch of Innsmouth about it when I visited, but there are still some lovely areas near the river.

Felt sad seeing Burnley, Accrington, and Blackburn on the journey there. It's a crime how much Lancashire/Greater Manchester has been neglected when it ought to be a powerhouse.

Edited January 28, 2023 by His Name Is Death

[mjmooney]

6 minutes ago, His Name Is Death said:

Surely it's got to be places in Lincolnshire like Boston, Spalding, and the aptly-named Grimsby? Not a knock in Lincoln itself, which looks like a fine city.

Lincoln has a split personality. During the day, it's charming and touristy. After dark, the pissed-up chavs come out to play. 

[VillaChris]

11 minutes ago, His Name Is Death said:

Surely it's got to be places in Lincolnshire like Boston, Spalding, and the aptly-named Grimsby? Not a knock in Lincoln itself, which looks like a fine city.

In terms of places I've been to watch football, Scunthorpe was very bleak I thought. Terrible town centre.

Remember randomly going to watch Sunderland-Arsenal after a stag do in Newcastle years back and ended up having a (very) quick half in the ISIS pub in Sunderland city centre so that sums the area up neatly. 

It's the same in most regions really. You have a dominant city like Newcastle/Brum/Leeds etc and that sucks everything away from the nearby towns in terms of decent companies, attractions etc.

From local places I've always found Bromsgrove a bit of an odd place tbh just walking around it (after completing a 5k half marathon from the station).

[Talldarkandransome]

I love Cornwall

Stoke is a shit hole

Blackpool makes Stoke look like Cornwall

Dudley wants to be Stoke

[sidcow]

1 hour ago, His Name Is Death said:

Surely it's got to be places in Lincolnshire like Boston, Spalding, and the aptly-named Grimsby? Not a knock in Lincoln itself, which looks like a fine city.

I used to work with twin brothers who were originally from Lincolnshire.  They used to describe it as the most desolate of places. 

Still they invented a biscuit and a shade of green favoured by outlaws. 

[blandy]

1 hour ago, mjmooney said:

 

Very accurate historically, that. Loads of Cornish miners went off to Australia and elsewhere.

[delboy54]

I have driven through towns like Wisbech and the surrounding area especially this time of year, its grey, soulless, windy, cold and bleak.

The other main problem is that the main roads around there are always sinking into the fens, making driving perilous, the cars suspension gets a good work out though but you cannot drive fast to get the hell out of the place as you would knacker your car.

A sign post saying 4 miles to the next godforsaken hideous town with no redeeming features, seems to take 4 hours...

Horrible part of the countryside unless you like black fields, grey skies and totally billiard table flat farmland......oh and you like looking a fields of sugar beet.

[Seat68]

I used to travel back from Skegness to Telford to see my then girlfriend, now wife and would have an hour wait at Nottingham for the connecting train. Back then I hated Nottingham, it was the dullest place on gods green earth for that hour twice a week, every week. It was as uninteresting and as desolate as it could be. 
Years later I would find ourselves there at least once a month for a gig, I now love the place. 

[Talldarkandransome]

1 hour ago, sidcow said:

I used to work with twin brothers who were originally from Lincolnshire.  They used to describe it as the most desolate of places. 

Still they invented a biscuit and a shade of green favoured by outlaws. 

My first girlfriend hailed from Lincs, I remember visiting her folks for the first time and being introduced (not as her boyfriend). Their garden was bigger than my local park and i got stung on the finger by a bee. I don't think the Wing Commander and his wife appreciated my attitude toward the bee.

I never returned to dirty their air, posh clearings in the woods

[Vive_La_Villa]

I saw a place called Jawick in Essex ion a Ross Kemp documentary. Apparently was meant to be a holiday resort in the 1930s but is now considered the most deprived area in the country. It was pretty shocking but then that’s what Ross Kemp documentary’s are all about so hard to know if it’s really as bad as it was portrayed.

[Marka Ragnos]

4 hours ago, bannedfromHandV said:

Man, Stoke gets a bad rap on here.

Yeah it’s a shithole but it ain’t that much more of a shithole than a host of comparable towns and cities across the country, I think I’ve lived in most of them.

Regards the opening post - a pink Lacoste shirt and a Vespa? Cornwall isn’t Jude Law in ‘the Talented Mr Ripley’!

 

[Marka Ragnos]

2 hours ago, delboy54 said:

I have driven through towns like Wisbech and the surrounding area especially this time of year, its grey, soulless, windy, cold and bleak.

The other main problem is that the main roads around there are always sinking into the fens, making driving perilous, the cars suspension gets a good work out though but you cannot drive fast to get the hell out of the place as you would knacker your car.

A sign post saying 4 miles to the next godforsaken hideous town with no redeeming features, seems to take 4 hours...

Horrible part of the countryside unless you like black fields, grey skies and totally billiard table flat farmland......oh and you like looking a fields of sugar beet.

Sounds like the novel Waterland by Graham Swift

Edited January 28, 2023 by Marka Ragnos

[Xann]

7 hours ago, Marka Ragnos said:

Sounds like the novel Waterland by Graham Swift

Quote

 

Normal for Norfolk (or NFN) is a slang term used in some parts of England for something that is peculiar, or odd....

... Within Norfolk itself, the phrase may also be known as "Normal for Wisbech", which is in neighbouring Cambridgeshire. In addition, most areas of the country have a regional variation of NFN, e.g. in North-West England, NFS (Normal for Stoke) may be heard.

 

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

[AlwaysAVFC]

19 hours ago, Follyfoot said:

When we played down there the season we went down I witnessed the Pink Panther having a vicious punch up with two Elvi 

Very surreal sight and I was sober and not under the influence of narcotics

 

 

 

A different year but I have a vague memory of a Teletubby putting someone on his arse in Southampton.

[Vive_La_Villa]

Not quite a backwater but it’s alarming how dangerous Walsall town now feels when it gets dark. Even around 5pm. Just the other day there was a fatal stabbing. 

[The_Rev]

19 hours ago, His Name Is Death said:

Surely it's got to be places in Lincolnshire like Boston, Spalding, and the aptly-named Grimsby? Not a knock on Lincoln itself, which looks like a fine city.

I’ve got a friend from Boston. She moved to the Midlands when she was a teenager but still has to go back on the reg because of family and stuff.  Let’s just say there’s a reason why the thing Boston is most famous for is a bunch of pilgrims leaving and not stopping until they’d put an ocean between it and themselves. 

[choffer]

Much as I love the place, the Outer Hebrides is the worst place I know for ignorant, outdated mindsets. The only place I’ve heard the P word used unflinchingly in recent years. 

[Marka Ragnos]

15 hours ago, Xann said:

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

Fascinating to learn about this. I saw this grim article from a few years back that focuses on Wisbech:

Quote

 

Within minutes of my arrival in Wisbech, "insecurity" ceases to be any kind of abstract concept. Neither does it feel like something that can be captured solely in terms of wages and employment conditions. It is a deep condition that blurs over into relationships, families, and mental health – as well as the delicate stuff of identity and belonging. Sometimes, it manifests itself in anger and hatred that bubbles away on social media and occasionally flares into ugly life in the real world; you can also sense it in a meek, heads-down sensibility among many of those who have recently come here.

In its own way, Wisbech is a fascinating place: a once-wealthy river port whose most ambitious architecture suggests a relocated slice of Holland, where traditional English shops now sit among an expanding share owned by people from abroad, as well as the standard signs – value outlets, mainly – of lives lived in precarious circumstances. Since the EU expanded in 2004, the town's population has hugely increased and of its 30,000 people, about a third are now reckoned to be from eastern Europe – Poland and Lithuania, mainly, with a rising share from Latvia (there is also a less visible Portuguese community, more spread out across East Anglia).

 

 

Edited January 29, 2023 by Marka Ragnos

[Marka Ragnos]

5 hours ago, choffer said:

Much as I love the place, the Outer Hebrides is the worst place I know for ignorant, outdated mindsets. The only place I’ve heard the P word used unflinchingly in recent years. 

As with so many places in the world, here's a slowly dying and capacious land whose population desperately needs immigration -- but where xenophobia is killing the future. This an be turned around, but it takes better governance and education perhaps? My guess is younger people leave, so you have a core of bigoted oldtimers leftover? 

Edited January 29, 2023 by Marka Ragnos

[tinker]

All local ones.....Evesham shocked me , Ludlow , Ledbury, Tewkesbury.......went to a festival (Lodefest) near Tewkesbury everyone looked the same, the drink drivers around there were unbelievable, like going back 50 years pissed up in the car and home, I kid you not , outrageous behaviour.