Botley, Hampshire

Botley's biggest claim to fame is a glowing testimonial from William Cobbett, an eighteenth century firebrand who spent his entire career furious at almost everything and still called this the most delightful village in the world. Worth a pinch of salt, given the same man waged a genuine lifelong war against the potato. What he fell for was a strawberry-and-millstream sort of place folded into a bend of the River Hamble, and what it has quietly become is somewhere people live to be near Southampton without ever having to admit they live near Southampton.