Just visited Newport, couldn’t wait to leave, what’s your get me outta here place?

[TheChristmasElf]

Just have just visited Newport for an appointment, we weren’t there long, toilet stop and cuppa in Asda, half hour appointment in city centre and then got lost on the way out but felt very uneasy the whole time were there. It had quite a menacing feel to it and even on the bare aesthetics of the city seemed quite run down with a lots of old closed pubs, shops etc…

I would actually go as far to say it made me feel quite unwell but I guess that would just be coincidence!!

We actually live rural Devon so not even like I’m not used to the odd lay line of two but I was quite relieved to get back on the road…

Has anyone else felt that about a place before?

It's not that. I like the ghostly haunted feeling. It's a real sense of gloom and doom, like life is just pointless.

I lived there for 12 years.

It got demolished in about 2002, it was probably only so grim when you walked through it because it was being emptied out. Aylesbury estate in Elephant is also long gone.

Fairly nice townhouses around there now - not grim or scary at all.

Newport, Pembrokeshire, is fine I might add haha!
Im from this Newport.

Lived 30 mins from Newport Gwent though,10years ago, & have always found it depressing and as silly as it sounds, I always felt 'Dirty' after- A good shower needed🤣

London & Manchester been to each twice and hated it - Too many people, I felt unsafe and the whole place felt unfriendly. ( sorry)

Hey actually now I watch it, this wasn’t the one I was going to post - that song is the response to this one. Which was apparently not hardcore enough for true Newporters.

I'm going to stick up for Scunthorpe here. It's my home town and I love it here. Lovely theatre and entertainment venue, nice park in the centre of town. Modern leisure centre and I know so many great people here. So many lazy stereotypes in this thread. Places are what you make of them and I would always ask the question "What are you doing to improve the village/town/city." So easy to run somewhere down.

Royston Vasey, felt very unwelcome. In one shop they wouldn't sell me anything as they saving the precious things for the local people and the taxi driver was way too forthcoming about their sex change operation. Just weird.

Do think that maybe we pick up on negative energy in places sometimes.

I don’t live in London (commute for work) but do agree with some of the London areas mentioned above as being crap.

I just can’t see how the whole of London can be described as a ‘shithole’. I come from a shithole town so know what one is.

It’s not about thinking London is all that, I was underwhelmed by New York the one and only time I visited, but I was aware I had barely scratched the surface of the city so I wouldn’t describe it as a shithole in its entirety.

Does contain the immortal line “Josie D’Arby’s from Newport. Yes, it’s strange, we didn’t know either. Thank you Wikipedia”

m.youtube.com/watch?v=Eijc2tGe-zM

I could name 3 possibly 4 pubs that serve food after 8pm in Bridlington. We might not have much in the array of shops but we have 2 beautiful beaches. Like most places it has its rough areas and it's nice areas. Although if you're judging it after only a half an hour stay perhaps it isn't the place for you.

Very surprised by some of these I have to say. What is wrong with Deal or Sonning? Both lovely places. Exeter has some ‘seedier’ bits I admit but so do all big cities (and I lived there for 3 years so think I know it well enough). And London? Seriously? All of it? It’s a HUGE place. Similarly of all the posts mentioning Paris only one names a specific district (Montmartre) and vaguely justifies their response.

Some parts of the Forest Of Dean makes you feel like dying is a viable option O'Butt.

Ditto Amsterdam: again it’s a huge place and I seriously can’t believe anyone hates all of it (I have visited many a time over the past 5 years of my living in NL and while it’s not my favourite place it’s hardly fair to say the whole place is full of whores, thieves and drug dealers).

I do get feelings of places and even houses, not always negative

Some of the places that have been mentioned in the north I have been too and on paper I can see why people would judge them but I just like them because there is not a negative feeling and maybe it's the people but it feels real

I have also been to what some people would call posh and on paper it is excepted that people like them because they look 'nice' but there is a feeling I get there that puts me off and not sure if it the people or what but it feels false

I have been to houses to look to live in and something feels off even if all the practical things are fine

(Though I saw the Gare du Nord area of Paris mentioned too…vaguely justified but it has been cleaned up a lot in the past few years and is continuing to gentrify all the time.)

@RLScott @TheGuv1982 would be intrigued to know where in Paris you were…to me it seems as absurd as slagging off London as it is such a diverse place. To write off the whole place as sketchy and crime-riddled is just laughably inaccurate.

And Utah? Seriously? All of it?

ironically I have been to Newport (which started this whole thread off) and didn’t mind it. We stayed in a lovely hotel there, right in the town centre.

Luton. The only place where the locals regard Mad Max as a documentary rather than a fantasy film.

Ah, I've only visited. What a shame that it's a gloomy place to live, we've even discussed living there - it's not really practical for us, but we seriously daydreamed!

Stevenage. I've spent too many hours stranded at that godforsaken railway station in the freezing cold.

This is a depressing thread- where actually is nice? However I'll add my own depressing places:
Brighton (loved it as a teenager, now find it quite oppressive and dirty).
Hitchin (I'm sure it was okay when I was a child, but it's awful now).
Bognor and Littlehampton (clumping them together, as they're a few miles apart and both grim).
Stoke just makes me sad.
Leeds has really bad memories for me, so I'll never go back, but that's more a personal issue.
Liverpool (Really wanted to like it, but just felt ill at ease).
Warrington.

I live in Newport, even going so far as to raise children here! 😄 - and thats not even in one of the nice bits of the city

Rent is cheap though 🤷🏼‍♀️

What, the whole of North Yorkshire? The biggest county in the UK which stretches from pretty much North Leeds, to the border of Cumbria, and across to Whitby and includes the Yorkshire Dales, North York Moors, Nidderdale and York? OK.

We dropped into Tesco in Telford once to shop when on holidays. I’m used to people down on their luck in London supermarkets but this was a whole new level of human misery!

I’ve lived in 3 places people have mentioned on this list, one is my home town where I’m currently living. Completely agree the town centre is grey, ugly and run down. If you pass through there alone I can absolutely see why it would be on this list. However, living ten minutes outside the centre, my kids are in an outstanding school, there are excellent education and job opportunities for them going forward, great transport links, and having spoken to many other parents the provision for my disabled DD is far better than in many many areas around the country. The grey, depressing town centre is a worthy trade!

Oh, don't be ridiculous. How and in what ways is the narrative of Mad Max reenacted in Luton??!

Luton just topped a list of charitable giving. It's not a beautiful place but it does, apparently, have heart.