Where you live.

Hi

A different type of thread, I am interested in where people live and what goes on in your area.

I live in a small village, very agricultural, with two small towns a few miles away.

Agriculture is the big thing, as is food processing.

In the village we have some huge farms, producing vast amounts of chickens and eggs, one farm alone produces 2, 500,000 chickens a year for the supermarkets.

Big dairy farms, some with 600 cows, but strangely enough, none of it goes for liquid milk to drink.

In the two towns, we have vast food processing plants.

Muller Yoghurts, 2.3 million yogurts a day and 1,500 tons of butter a week.

Ever wonder where your sausage rolls etc come from?

The Palethorpes Bakery produces 115 million products every year, including 55 million sausage rolls and 35 million hot eating pies

In addition to the numerous small and medium cheese producers, we have one huge cheese making plant, new technology, highly automated, making cheese sold under different brand names.

It is all integrated, the whey from the dairy processors goes to the big pig farms and then into the sausage rolls.

Huge maturing stores for the cheese and a cold store which can hold 148,000 pallets.

It has it's own electricity plant, an anaerobic digester, producing methane from farm and food waste.

Around 70 artics a day of food products are exported to the EU.

The smaller niche producers supply the high end food market here.

The local farm shop is Maynard's, one of Rick Stein's food heroes.

It is not all agricultural.

Ever been to the theatre in the West End?

Most of the stage settings are made here in the village and the company which does them has also got a contract in Las Vegas at one of the big places there.

One of the biggest plant hire companies in the UK is based here and like most of the industry here, with the exception of Palethorpes and Mullers, it is family owned.

It is a Private Limited Company, with a share capital of £2, one each to the owners.

The village itself is not very pretty, it is a working village, but the surrounding countryside is stunning.

Harrison Ford came here for his honeymoon, spent it on a canal boat.

The Chronicles of Narnia was filmed here, the caves in the limestone cliffs 5 miles away, the cliffs are home to peregrine falcons.

Obviously a very different type of area to where most of you live.

I would very much like to hear about where you live.

Re: Where you live.

I live in a seaside town which has one of the cleanest beaches in the UK . The children can play in the sea quite safely as it goes a long way out before it becomes deep . Beautiful golden sands , lovely views and countryside . Since living here over 33 yrs I've seen the town grow and it's larger and busier now . Housing is very expensive to buy , a small modern one bed house would cost around £180,000 . A lot of properties are bought by second home owners and let out for summer lets and closed up during the winter . We have some fabulous restaurants to eat out and a brilliant music scene where quite a few pubs have live bands weekends and during the week . Like most places now the town centre is a problem place with drunks at weekends so I don't go there now , the police do a good job though . Where I live is a good bus service every 12 minutes but some areas have been cut back causing problems for folk , I guess our service is good because where I live is highly populated . We have the best of the weather , I live 1 mile from the beach as the crow flies . Life is slower , I like it that way . When Easter arrives we will have hundreds of holiday makers and in the season thousands arrive filling the beach , it's lovely to see .

Re: Where you live.

Small village that has over the years become part of the local town, there is now no border at all between us and four other villages and the town of Woking. It's a greenish place still because many have preserved the hedges and trees that were here before all the building.

Working I'd a dormitory town, many many park up and jump on the train to Guildford and London everyday. We have a biggish shopping centre on town and offices and shops are main employers there. Out into what were the villages the companies that serve them are scattered around.

In the seventies they built a huge housing estate, mixture of all sorts of housing, it's best new estate I've ever seen, they thought of everything when they built it even a huge man made lake with lovely walking and picnicking areas around it.

We had the earliest Muslim mosque in Woking so we have a big vibrant Muslim population, more lately we have had a big Eastern European contingency, and both of these groups have had an effect on the town, in many ways for the better and some ways not so good. But it's our fault not theirs for not protecting our ways.

We used to have a lot of small industries, factories that built small things like air filtration units, hair dryers, beauty aids, all gone now given way to sandwich factories, cleaning firms and motor bike primping places. Some very posh motor bikes on our roads here.

I live quite close to big crematorium and what used to be a big asylum, brook wood asylum was pretty famous in its day but that's all been turned into a very smart apartments centre. I'm not sure I'd want to live there no matter how posh they've made it, there was so much suffering for so many years.
All we have left of it is the secure unit where we have some of the worst criminal insane patients in the country and at the other end of the site the young persons unit with some very troubled young men and women.

We have a large Buddhist temple and living accommodation, a medium sized Greek religious community all wear long black robes and tall black head gear, very imposing if you meet them in the dark !

Huge cemetery down the road brook wood where we have many young soldiers buried, the Americans full a big area all kept so neat even after all these years, it's sobering walking among the graves and looking at the ages many soldiers died in the wars.

Re: Where you live.

I live here - a seaside city 53 miles South of London. My 'pad' is about 2 miles inland from the beach in a relatively quiet residential area of the city.

https://www.skylinewebcams.com/en/we...hton-pier.html

Re: Where you live.

I enjoy live out in the country on 13.5 acres.
15km from the nearest town with a few thousand population and about 70km from the big city of Perth.
Around me are other hobby farms and big farms running sheep or growing
wheet, barley and canola.
The area is well liked by tourists, especially during the wildflower season.
There are always numerous 4WD's with camping trailers travelling the country roads.

Re: Where you live.

I live in Edinburgh on the outskirts of the centre around a mile from the Castle. I can see Calton Hill from my kitchen window:



Overall it's a very nice city, some say beautiful, the Venice of the North and the 7th biggest in the UK.

Re: Where you live.

I live in a large village in The Mendips. Very pretty, river runs through it.

Nothing happens here, if it did we wouldn't know as nobody is allowed to put posters up.

Many expensive houses and lots of garden grabbing going on, quite a few empty plots and properties that developers leave empty for years too. Not much social housing.

One shop, three "pubs", hairdressers, cafe.

Duchy of Cornwall own land here. Local duchy farm has converted outbuildings into business units which means if you go out walking at rush hours you get squashed against the hefges as there are no pavements.

Old villagers are friendly and keep you chatting for hours, incomers tend to ignore you and think it's "the country way" to walk their dogs off lead.

It's ok here as long as you drive, buses are disappearing fast. Short drive to nearest town and Wells, Shepton Mallet (town featured in tv programme a few years ago)
Not far to Glastonbury and Street, where Clarks Village is.

Re: Where you live.

I have lived for the last 42years in what was a small rural village, but has over the last 20 years grown much larger, the village is situated a few miles from both a medium sized city and a smaller town. The city claims fame to being the birthplace of Albert Einstein and boasts the cathedral with the highest spire in the world. The town boasts a LEGOLAND.

We have catholic church, a protestant church and a mosque, a couple of schools and a few shops. We also have a home for asylum seekers, that houses around 100 young men.

I live not far from the Alps and can be on the ski slopes within an hour of leaving home and on fine days I can see the mountains from my house. There are lots of walking trails in my area and one of my favourite walks is by the side of the Danube river, which runs along the edge of my village.

Re: Where you live.

Similar to Susan M, I live in a seaside town, it’s very quiet (and best) in winter but summer sees the holidaymakers and day trippers descend in huge numbers but we cannot complain because they bring money into the town. We are surrounded by beautiful countryside but the downside is that we have to travel by road an hour to reach a motorway or major city.

For a resort, property prices are quite reasonable here but houses are much cheaper than bungalows, reason being that the area is flat so it’s a very popular place to retire to.

We have a very busy but pretty working Harbour, shellfish is the main industry but we see very little of the fish here, mostly goes abroad! Wonderful walks, cliffs, bird sanctuary close by, yes I can see why I left the city to live here over 40 years ago!

Re: Where you live.

I live in the kind of place people drive through but don't really stop (and who can blame them). There's a chemist. A co-op. A haiirdressers.

It's old mining country so there are hills (reclaimed slag heaps) which now tire my little legs as I struggle up 'em carrying my shopping bags... and pause to catch my breath and draw in the heady scent from the local sewage works.

My home is at the top of one of these industrial history hills. A few housing estates were built in the 70's to tart the place up. There's even a few old capped mine shafts hidden underneath the houses .. and on a cold and windy night in winter when the wind is keening and clawing its way through the chimney stacks and ripping off satellites dishes you can hear an eerie wailing and keening from the buried miners who were trapped down under after a local pit disaster.
None of us round here need to dress up for Halloween ... the living stay indoors whilst the miners walk abroad carrying Davy lamps as they wander down the winding lanes from the graveyard to the local pub.

Other than for that it's a right bugger when the M6 is out because all the lorries come of and gridlock my picturesque, atmospheric little part of the world.