Car wheel thieves more ingenious by the day! In truth I’ve never actually been off the station at Peterborough IRL. Passed through or changed trains more than a few times. Probably like most other UK towns these days. The quality shops gone, half the premises boarded up leaving Primark, the vape shops, dodgy mobile phone dealers, cash converters, bookies and a couple of Wetherspoons,
How true, I've been watching a series of YT vids by the Wandering Turnip on the 'Death of the high street' & boy are they depressing places the length & breadth of the country. Since being retired I don't get about as much & I certainly didn't think things were as bad as they are.
When I retired had plans for lots of day trips out. Obviously Covid put paid to that initially but now we just prefer to get in the car and drive out into the countryside for a decent walk.
Swindon where I live is particularly bad. The town centre Marks and Spencer’s just closed down which was the last quality clothing store. The main covered shopping precinct which used to have numerous retailers including a Virgin store is now empty apart from one or two units occupied by a gym. The bottom end of the town is run down and dilapidated, even the Wetherspoons pub at that end is rumoured to be closing. Hard to say where it all went wrong. Out of town shopping areas to some extent and Swindon also has an Outlet mall off the town centre, which takes some of the trade. The internet and online ordering hasn’t helped in some respects but for items like clothing, ordering in the mail is nothing new - used to be many catalogue companies in that business. Rents and business rates don’t help nor does VAT at 20%.
Really? I've visited Swindon quite a few times recently and I always enjoy visiting. It's quite an easy day out for me, if I time the connection at Cardiff Central correctly I can get there in little over two hours. I will say my main fondness for it comes from it having a fantastic retro video game store a short walk from the station though, and of course being the home of the GWR museum. So most of the time I visit I'm just visiting to check out that store and admire Caerphilly Castle for a bit. Still, I think the town centre is decent. Be thankful you don't live in Merthyr like me! Now that's a town centre that's depressing. Scary to think we almost became a city. We'd be even more of a laughing stock.
