Hinckley was great, i lived there for several years when i was in my teens...home of one of the greatest record shops of all times, the aptly named Hinckley Sound Centre, great sports centre and tennis club, and (due to the local shoe and tights factories) a ratio of girls to men of about ten to one.
I do like this post, in fact it's one of my all-time favourite posts 'cos, although I didn't own the sports centre or tennis club, I did own Hinckley Sound Centre. And it
was one of the greatest record shops of all times - noisy, friendly (except to the goons who purloined record sleeves for their bedroom walls), informative, cheap and expert. It's a pity that the citizens of Rugby (now there's a shithole) didn't feel the same about the shop I opened there; if they had done, HSC would still be going (my fault...a failed attempt to be Branson). And more.....it had a great Rugby Club, a superb wine bar in Karns run by the beautiful Chrissy (who I saw recently and hasn't changed a bit); some wonderful pubs, in particular The Greyhound and its excellently conditioned Marstons Pedigree on draught; Waltons, the best butchers in the world; Harrison, the greatest indie band to have been thrown out of Muff Winwood's office at CBS; and Gordon's Records, run by Gordon since records were invented and apparently still going strong. PLUS, it's in between Coventry and Leicester and it makes Triumph motorbikes! I rest my case for the defence.
Anyway, what a great topic! Here's some fodder:
Acklington in Northumberland, where I was stationed when in the RAF, in the middle of nowhere with a half-hour walk across open countryside to the nearest station and nothing at all to do except lie in my pit listening to Dylan.
Morton in Lincolnshire, birthplace of Hereward the Wake thousands of years ago and.....that's it, apart from a church and a view all the way to the Broads across the fens. (Great skies, though.)
Tallaght in Dublin before the Luas trams were installed. Sink estates for the whole of Ireland.
Yardley in Birmingham, concrete and clay.