Christchurch, Dorset

Christchurch has spent twelve hundred years being almost important. Alfred fortified it, the Normans castled it, Cromwell knocked the castle down out of spite, and the harbour that made the whole place worth having silted up so thoroughly that nobody could get a decent boat in. What is left is a town that gave up on ambition somewhere around the fusee chain trade and settled instead into being genuinely lovely, which turns out to have been the better bet. The New Forest on one side, the water on the other, and a high street that goes quiet at an hour most towns would call the afternoon.