most disappointing UK city/place

bianchimoon

following on from simonheads where to spend 3 days post.
Have you ever really looked forward to visiting somewhere only to be totally let down?
I have... Fort William.. what a hole, shame as it has such amazing natural beauty all round it

arran77

bianchimoon wrote:

I have... Fort William.. what a hole, shame as it has such amazing natural beauty all round it

Now this will surprise our north of the border cousins but I'm going to stick up for Fort Bill......fantastic downhill course.....I did ask in the other thread though if we could maybe have it moved south of the border

Other than that though I do have to admit that the times I've been to Scotland I thought I should have just stopped a few hundred miles south in the Lake District, personally I much prefer the place.

simonhead

Basildoom as the wife calls it

Pross

I liked Fort William, mind you it was 20 years ago when I was there. I watched Judge Dredd at the cinema which was fantastic - the adverts were played on a screen about the size of a modern day standard TV and then for the film two more sections folded out!

For disappointment I would go for Blackpool or Newquay with Newquay probably taking it as I expected more from it than Blackpool. I would have thrown in Brighton too but I have to give it the benefit of the doubt as the weekend I spent there was in late November and very stormy.

lostboysaint

Pross wrote:

I liked Fort William, mind you it was 20 years ago when I was there. I watched Judge Dredd at the cinema which was fantastic - the adverts were played on a screen about the size of a modern day standard TV and then for the film two more sections folded out!

For disappointment I would go for Blackpool or Newquay with Newquay probably taking it as I expected more from it than Blackpool. I would have thrown in Brighton too but I have to give it the benefit of the doubt as the weekend I spent there was in late November and very stormy.

Newquay is a great shout. Shitsville West.

KnightOfTheLongTights

lostboysaint wrote:

Pross wrote:

Newquay is a great shout. Shitsville West.

I did however just return from a VERY enjoyable day and night spent at the Headland Hotel, Newquay.
It's a superb hotel and you don't really want to leave but it was sunny so we took a stroll round the next headland to Crantock.
Went nowhere near the town until I popped down there the next morning to pick up some pasties for the drive back.
Shitsville indeed.

markhewitt1978

Agree on Fort William. Amazing setting, bad town. It's not just that the architecture is bad, but the pubs and restaurants etc are lacking too. That said we've holidayed there three times and would go again

For me Blackpool, when going there we had exceptionally low expectations of the place, but even they were not met.

veronese68

Blackpool gets my vote. I may particularly dislike it as my grandparents lived down the road in St Anns and would drag us into Blackpool as some sort of punishment. Clearing out the flat in December about 10 years ago we went to Blackpool in search of food and a pint, even more depressing.

KnightOfTheLongTights

In general though I can't remember being really 'disappointed' over somewhere in the UK: if you think somewhere is going to be a bit of a hole anyway then you're unlikely to be disappointed; and most places that I reckon I will like, I end up liking.
I mean Blackpool - who actually goes to Blackpool with high expectations for petes sake?
Abergavenny seems to get talked up in the press and by Welsh tourism, with its 'foody' thing going on, but I found it pretty boring and a bit depressing.

craker

Oh I quite like Abergavenny, it's local and I don't have massive expectations. It's a nice small market town surrounded by awesome cycling. What's not to like? And it's not far from Cwmbran. Now I never had any expectations of Cwmbran as being nice, but still...

Went to Gainsborough, Lincs in Summer expecting it to be a bit posh and antiquey, a bit like an East Midlands version of Hungerford. River Trent running though it, I was hoping for a leafy pub next to sleepy river sort of place. However the river is a massive ex-industrial port and the town mostly closed. And an alarm going off all the time. And all the people looking really crusty.

Come to think of it, Hungerford's sh*t too.

sloppyschleckonds

DePreston

florerider

Bristol, for the visitor way over-hyped. Not saying it is a bad city - but as somewhere to visit very disappointing.

shockedsoshocked

Recently Scarborough. Used to love the place when my mates parents had a caravan there a few years ago, but went back recently.

I felt like I was in some sort of Lovecraftian nightmare, with a feeling of unease the entire time and a notion something just wasn't quite right.

nathancom

Derby is a bit of a dump, it is not even great at being a dump.

SCR Pedro

Some places are nice when the sun is out, but the grass is always greener. Isn't it?
Particularly shitty is the central belt of Scotland, and the NW of England. These regions depress the absolute hell out of me, like you can't imagine (sorry fans of these regions). I'm also no fan of the south, the SW, the midlands, the NE and SW of Scotland, NI, and other assorted dumps.
I'm also about ready to move on from my bavarian paradise too.
The world's a dump. The whole lot of it. It stinks.

napoleond

SCR Pedro wrote:

Some places are nice when the sun is out, but the grass is always greener. Isn't it?
Particularly sh!tty is the central belt of Scotland, and the NW of England. These regions depress the absolute hell out of me, like you can't imagine (sorry fans of these regions). I'm also no fan of the south, the SW, the midlands, the NE and SW of Scotland, NI, and other assorted dumps.
I'm also about ready to move on from my bavarian paradise too.
The world's a dump. The whole lot of it. It stinks.

Wha?! But the NW of England has Alsager!

SCR Pedro

Is it as beautiful as Wigan?

Peddle Up!

Stourport. Georgian town - tick; riverside town - tick; canal basin - tick. So I visited it and stayed overnight. A bit of a dump to be frank.

crumbschief

ShockedSoShocked wrote:

Recently Scarborough. Used to love the place when my mates parents had a caravan there a few years ago, but went back recently.

I felt like I was in some sort of Lovecraftian nightmare, with a feeling of unease the entire time and a notion something just wasn't quite right.

Funny stuff i have been to a few like that as well,start checking how many fingers they have and the odd stares from pallid faces.

arthur_scrimshaw

For me it was Bath, hyped up by everyone I talked too who had been there. The Roman baths were the best bit but the rest of the place was just swarming with tour guides each towing 20 or so people. Noisy and choked with traffic. Couldn't wait to get out of the place.

jawooga

Totnes - rich people who don't wash, poor people who don't wash, and the infirm. Throw in a bag of weed and a dose of smugness and you have a town that has fooled the world that it's one of the more desirable parts of Devon.

rolf_f

madasahattersley wrote:

Bradford. Dad and his whole family are from there so after 16 years of building it up and telling me how good it was I finally actually went and my expectations were not met. Not even close.

Are you sure that they live there? It could be an elaborate hoax. Nobody in their right mind who lives there would big it up. It's one of the few places I know where I just can't think of anywhere in the main part of the city that I wouldn't object to living in (Saltaire doesn't count). When they redeveloped Manningham Mills (tense probably wrong - they'll be working on it for decades) the advertising brochures prime reason to suggest you might want to move there was how easy it was to get to Leeds from it - and Bradford had the cheek to be offended by that! It's a crap hole and, unless the council changes completely, always will be. If it had been cared for it could have been a very attractive city but it wasn't and still isn't so it will probably just get worse.

Who would have a positive enough preconception of Blackpool to actually be disappointed with the reality? Worse than Blackpool I suspect is Morecambe. I mean, they demolished their seafront amusement park (a decade ago) and are planning on replacing the derelict hole with an outlet centre (probably in a decade or two). Possibly the worst act of hopeless desperation I could imagine.

DeVlaeminck

Edinburgh - much prefer Glasgow

pinno

Swindon
Wishaw
Cumbernauld
Milton Keynes - the most soulless place in the universe
Skegness
East Kilbride
Girvan
Brierley Hill
Dudley
Leicester
Hinckley
Kearsley...

capt_slog

Blaneau Festiniog. Ye gods :shock:

The train happens to go there, the little one that is where they play at it. The worst mistake anyone can make is getting off said train at Festiniog town.

napoleond

SCR Pedro wrote:

Is it as beautiful as Wigan?

Hmmm. It has it's own charms.

napoleond

Capt Slog wrote:

Blaneau Festiniog. Ye gods :shock:

The train happens to go there, the little one that is where they play at it. The worst mistake anyone can make is getting off said train at Festiniog town.

Jeez! That place makes me feel what the dementors must make you feel on Harry Potter. Horrible.

RDW

I liked Blaenau FFestiniog. It's like someone decided to build Brecon in Mordor.

bianchimoon

madasahattersley wrote:

Wow, what a glowing review Technically my they lived in Shipley but Bradford was the centre of the strict religious cult the family were part of. In actual fact they're scattered all around (all around West Yorks that is, where else )

Is bradford the centre of more than one strict religious cult? I used to visit a client in Bradford a strange place indeed with a split identity, you feel you could be in another country.

Western lakes promises so much until you visit towns such as St Bees, Grange over sands, Ulveston, barrow :?

simonhead

One place to add

Wroxham - norfolk broads, stunning location, nice town, killed by a gimmick of a shop

pdstsp

Runcorn. It's like a place from a horror story.