The Welsh location named in a list of the UK’s most boring towns
A national newspaper has named a Welsh location among the UK’s most boring towns.
The Telegraph has published a list of seven ‘unsung wonders’ for being boring, on the grounds that ‘mass tourism is built around selling experiences’, whereas supposedly ‘boring’ towns are not.
Listing seven ‘boring’ towns in the UK, the Telegraph’s destination expert Chris Moss wrote: “The following seven unsung wonders are special. These are towns we collectively consider boring.
“What does that tell us about such places, and ourselves? Would an effort to appreciate their understated assets be rewarded with illumination? Answers on a tedious screed please.”
Lampeter is named number seven on a list which includes Stevenage, Surbiton, Alloa, Grantham, Swindon, and Runcorn.
For its Lampeter listing, The Telegraph wrote: “I would have gone to Lampeter” used to be the answer to the question “What would you have done if you’d got all Es in your A-levels?” It’s not that rural Ceredigion is unpleasant. It’s just that for someone aged 18-21 and ready to embark on the great multifarious adventure that is student life, Lampeter is all the things that the Sorbonne is not.
The problem, really, is that everywhere else here seems interesting: the Pembrokeshire Coast National Trail; St David’s with its wonky cathedral; foodie town Narberth; lovely Laugharne, where Dylan Thomas lies. Lampeter’s understatedness is so extreme it is almost overstating itself. Look on a map and you will see the town sits in a sea of green – and about as far from the actual sea as you can get in this peninsular corner.
The one great strength Lampeter has is its authenticity. Almost bereft of tourist attractions, it doesn’t conform to any of the commercial strictures that draw English people to Wales. This is the real deal. In an Instagrammed, boxed-up, corny world, and in a country too often reduced to a tourist cliché, that’s priceless.”
Top tourist attraction: Welsh Quilt Centre
The ‘boring’ list
1. Stevenage
2. Surbiton
3. Alloa
4. Runcorn
5. Grantham
6. Swindon
7. Lampeter
Support our Nation today
For the price of a cup of coffee a month you can help us create an independent, not-for-profit, national news service for the people of Wales, by the people of Wales.
The beautiful Llanbedr Pont Steffan versus the lying wastelife that is The Torygraph. Which should you believe? No town on this list is deserving of being on it as it should never have been constructed. The fact that they merely exist makes them too big for such a s**tsheet to take on. I am offended on behalf of all of them. As long as I provide a mobile unit facility for people to receive cancer treatment against those who poison our world with words of hateful filth validates me and disgraces them. Is this how they make their living? Truly… Read more »
2 untruths. Greggs left years ago and towns is full of English
The Greggs closed several years ago.
Lampeter has not had a Greggs for many years now!! So clearly the author has not visited to come to this conclusion.
I lived in Lampeter as a student for five years during the the late 1960s. I found it a lovely place in which to live – friendly and courteous people, and beautifully scenic surroundings.
OK, I accept that was around sixty years ago, and places inevitably change over time. But I’ve been back there a time or two in succeeding years, and my impression was that the town is still pretty much as delightful as I remember it from all those years ago.
Try Stclears, My Dog could fart at one end of the river walk and the news would hit CKs before the smell
Does that list include Port Talbot
I grew up in the village of pennant nr aberaeron and spent quite bit of time exploring Lampeter having lived NR Wolverhampton Lampeter is alot more peaceful
Sarah rea ,ledbury Herefordshire
Lampeter does have stunning EV charging infrastructure though
Went to SDUC Lampeter in the late 70s (no, I didn’t get all Es in my A Levels). I was captivated by listening to the locals speaking in Welsh in the street- a novel experience for me. I loved the place, as did many of my fellow students. Granted, there weren’t many bright lights compared with the likes of Cardiff, but we had the Royal Oak, late nights at the Ivy Bush with Ron and Beryl, egg and bacon sandwiches at Emlyn Evans’ (gone now, I think) and a coffee and a bap at Conti’s. Maybe it’s because I’m a… Read more »
Lampeter doesn’t have a Greggs any more, or a University! I studied Archaeology there and really enjoyed it, but it was on a downward spiral even 15 years ago. The town is lovely and if the locals don’t want to talk to you, they talk in Welsh. The Co-Op was the highlight and only reason I left the campus tbh, absolutely nothing to do except go to the pub or go for a walk.
I spent five years there as a student in the late 1960s. I came to love the place – hardly a vibrant metropolis, but lovely country and lovely people. Refreshing change for an English townie like me.
Lampeter does still have a university – what made you think that it doesn’t?
Maybe the fact that the university appears to be imminently likely to be relocated to Carmarthen?
Can’t be this is the home town of Julian Cayo Evans
Sort of, but not quite: his family lived at Glandenys on the Tregaron road, rather nearer to Betws Bledrws than to Lampeter town. I recall, as a student in Lampeter back in those days, spending one sunny summer Saturday afternoon looking down from the hillside and watching him training his mini-militia in the grounds of his familial home. It was fun stuff.
I know I have visited Glandenys yet it’s fair to say that Cayo did all his socializing in Lampeter Town itself and became a very well known celebrity there.
Cayo is buried in the grounds of the Church at Silian near Glandenys.
Did he? I lived in Lampeter as a student between 1964 and 1969 – very much his era – but I never heard anyone even speak of him, much less encounter him ‘socializing’ round about the town.
Maybe I wasn’t quite as plugged into the local scene back in those days as at that time I thought I was!
Hands up anyone who gives a tinkers cuss what the Telegraph says on a slow news day listicle.
Ah the bastion of accuracy that is the Torygraph. Written by muppets, read by worse.
Their opinion is about as valid as reform in Wales.