Almondsbury

Almondsbury is a village that got a motorway junction dropped on its head and has spent the decades since pretending not to notice. The church has stood since the twelfth century, watching the traffic that now defines the place stack up where the M4 meets the M5, and the village still describes itself as a village because the alternative is admitting what it actually is. In 1817 the locals were taken in by a woman claiming to be an exotic princess who turned out to be a cobbler's daughter from Devon, which tells you most of what you need to know about how badly this place has always wanted to be somewhere more interesting. It is a good place to live, in the way that a quiet lane behind a service station is a good place to park.