Nice quiet town (Hereford in General)

Member Name: Grym

Product:	Hereford in General
Date:	19/06/09 (11 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Very green, quiet

Disadvantages: poor social amenities

Hereford, what can I say? I take a slightly different view to most, as I am at uni there so spend half my time there, half of it in Essex.

Hereford is a beautiful town, the buildings of the town centre all old and higgledy-piggeldy, often you look up to see stunning black and white wooden beams, then look down to find it's the façade for a WHSmiths of something else equally odd. Thanks to the recession, many of the shops in Hereford have shut, so the town centre isn't exactly buzzing. The biggest department store is Marks and Spencer's, and aside from the odd quirky (but expensive!) jewellery shop there's little to get excited about here. Its certainly not a town for big shoppers, there's a disproportionately large amount of pound shops for the town square and the monthly antiques fair really is the only thing worth while about it.

The green space in Hereford is lovely, one of the nice things about Hereford compared to other towns (I refuse to call it a city, it's just too small) is the ease with which you can get somewhere seemingly cut off from the more urbanised areas. You can go for a stroll along the river Wye or up to Churchill gardens, a wonderful green area that's perfect for an impromptu picnic overlooking the town. However, if you're interested more in an active nightlife then you are likely to be disappointed.

Though having a bizarre concentration of pubs, the nightlife in Hereford is notoriously poor. One or two nightclubs are dotted around, though for the most part these are fairly grotty and unattractive. On a similar note the cinema is...well, barely worthy of the title. There's an Odeon in Hereford town centre with just a single screen, a tiny, sticky, dirty lobby and a selection of films that are at least 5 months out of step with the rest of the country. Though there's the courtyard theatre also, which shows a variety of mainstream and independent films, it still adheres to the same time warp principal as the Odeon, leaving you with a depressing wait for any new releases.

But moving on, let's talk supermarkets. There's a Tesco, abominably small and poorly stocked, but not far away are much larger ASDA and Sainsburys which are a lifesaver if you want to buy anything other than discounted Polish specialities that seem to be in strange abundance in the titchy Tesco. There's also a LIDL and Aldi, all within walking distance of one another which is great for bargain hunters and students alike.

Hereford is a lovely place to live, quiet and secluded but sometimes it can feel a little like you're living in an episode of Heartbeat. I expect that owning a car would make it more tolerable, but young people beware, it can be just a little claustraphobic.

Summary: Great place to live, but not for too long!