This year’s list has a location to suit everyone, whether they’re first-time buyers looking for city life, families seeking schools, healthy activities and green space, or active downsizers looking to enjoy the best of the great outdoors. We went to visit Clerkenwell, Abergavenny and Folkestone — three out of the 72 best places in the guide — to see what makes them tick.
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I’m Tim Palmer and I’m here to talk about the Sunday ‘s best places to live 2024 sponsored by Halifax there are so many different things that can make a great place to live it can be anything from good schools great parks Good commutes culture theaters cafes well the great
Strength of our list is that we actually visit all the places we talk to the people who live there and we find out as much as we can about what life is really like when we started it was all about a great commute High achieving School and
A posh Supermarket since then we’ve had the Hipster years when it was all about smashed avocados and Cocktails in jam jars but over the last few years things have changed a lot and well-being has become much more important so clean water for wild swimming is great and of
Course now everyone’s got a dog so you’ve got to have somewhere great that you can walk that we’re in clarenell today because it has been voted the best place to live in London it’s full of quirky bars restaurants and cafes it’s got fantastic architecture and there is so much
History here every time you go up for a walk you’ll just see something to catch your Interest we came to folon in 2015 and it was by chance my parents were retiring here and we came down on the train me and my husband when we came to the old High Street we really liked the potential of what they were doing started looking up more about the
Creative quarter by the time we got back we put our house in the market and sold and actually came here before my parents the creative quarter is an initiative to bring Arts to Folkston they regenerated the old High Street in partnership with Roger danan and rent shops and spaces to
People like me at a reduced rate to kind of encourage and Thrive the area I’ve always loved art and everything I’ve done has been driven towards creating things so a lot of my work is inspired by being in folon and for me that means more being by the Sea clearing your
Mind the old High Street has lots of lovely little shops and cafes and businesses that actually want you to visit and engage with you when you go in the shops which is really nice for us to live in folkson with a young family I just feel it has the right balance in a
World where everything is really digital and fast it’s slower you’ve got the sea and when we go out to the sea with the kids it’s a restfulness it’s almost for us meditative you know we’ve got dog now and we we explore the area and I don’t
Feel the need to be doing a million things at once so we opened uh bookish in abeni since May last year so as a independent Bookshop we can create our our stock a lot better and we do include quite a lot of local interest books which you probably wouldn’t get in
In larger book shops so the book shop and its book groups are very important because it brings people together to discuss things that they may not normally discuss and it opens people up to new ideas as well abeni is a great place a really friendly place and it’s
It’s still got very Traditional Values at is heart there’s a lot to do here for for a small town on the edge of the black mountains we’ve got rock climbing standup paddle boarding uh if you’re into your canoeing river usk is fantastic for that mountain bike trails
We’ even got a big paragliding Community as well if you come here for the first time I I urge people to sort of support local independent businesses there are a number of U fantastic places to eat the Market Hall is fantastic holds markets um throughout the week from flea markets
Where you can pick up strange and wonderful things to the food which we have local produce there if you happen to be here um at the right time we do have a lot of great acts which will come here comedian um shows you’re going to discover something is going to Delight you and
Interest you it doesn’t take too much effort to find something here you just have to you know soak up the atmosphere