Some of the best countryside in southern England, starting right behind the houses. Every home in the area sits inside a protected landscape. Water is closer than the nearest park. The pubs far outnumber the restaurants. Hungerford's high street is pleasant, but the real draw is what surrounds it.
Public green space is never far. The average home in the Hungerford area sits about 490 metres from the nearest site, with about 8 green spaces within a kilometre. Few people here can claim they'd walk more if only there were somewhere to go.
Water is closer still. The average home is about 450 metres from the nearest blue space, and about 25 bodies of water lie within a kilometre. Between the River Kennet, the River Dun and the Kennet and Avon Canal, you end up living by the water whether you meant to or not.
For cycling, the National Cycle Network is a little further off, averaging about 2,900 metres from home. About 30% of the area lives close to it. Most riders will join it by road first, which on these lanes means sharing with farm traffic.
The Department for Environment's air-quality modelling puts fine-particle pollution across the West Berkshire council area at about 6 micrograms per cubic metre in 2024. That's a council-wide figure, not a reading from any one street, and on the downs you won't be short of fresh air.
The whole area, all of it, sits inside the North Wessex Downs Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. That covers every village along with the fields between them. The landscape has the highest level of protection English planning gives to countryside, and it shows every time you look out of a window.
Up on the downs, Walbury Hill, the highest point in South East England, looks over Inkpen, with Inkpen Hill and the long barrow at Combe Gibbet close by. North of Lambourn, the Seven Barrows cemetery and Wayland's Smithy put Bronze Age and Neolithic burial grounds within a short drive of the school run. Lambourn itself trains racehorses, so the morning traffic on its lanes sometimes has four legs. Along the canal, Crofton Pumping Station and Wilton Windmill are both listed. This is a landscape where the scenery is also a heritage site, and walkers are a more familiar sight than tourists.
People here have their own outdoor space as well as the public kind. Across the area there's about 364,000 square metres of private garden for every 1,000 residents. That's the kind of figure that explains why many residents own a lawnmower that needs a seat.
The business rating list records 815 rateable premises in the Hungerford area, including 175 shops, 136 offices, 19 pubs and only 4 restaurants. Those are premises on the valuation list, not a count of businesses open today, but the shape is clear enough. With 19 pubs to 4 restaurants, dinner out here usually means dinner at the pub. There are also 5 holiday lets.
Of the 112 food premises with a hygiene rating, about 83% hold the top score of five and about 2% sit at the low end. Wherever you eat, the kitchen is very likely to be clean.
The surroundings are Hungerford's greatest asset. Downland, rivers, canal and protected countryside begin at the end of most gardens, and few towns in southern England can match that.