The area around Hythe is where the forest runs out of trees and meets the water. Open green space is almost always within a few minutes' walk, the shoreline of Southampton Water does the rest, and the whole strip sits between forest on one side and estuary on the other. It is also, at its southern end, home to one of the largest oil refineries in the country, at Fawley, which the postcard version tends to leave out. Green, wet, and working, all at the same time.
On green space the area scores heavily. The typical home has around a dozen areas of open green space within a kilometre, and the nearest is roughly 225 metres from the front door, which is a stroll of a few minutes rather than a drive. Water is closer still: this is a shoreline place, and open water sits within easy reach of almost everywhere. What the area does not lean on is a formal designation doing the protecting, with no national landscape and no protected wildlife site of national standing inside its boundary. The greenery here is the everyday, use-it-daily kind rather than the roped-off kind, which is the more useful sort to live next to.
The character comes from the water and the villages strung along it. Hythe's own marina, built in the mid-eighties, gives the town its yacht-and-boat edge, and the shoreline makes it a known vantage for watching ocean liners come and go from the port across the estuary. Around it sit the waterside settlements: Dibden and Dibden Purlieu just inland, Marchwood and Netley along the shore, and the run heading south through Holbury, Blackfield, Fawley and out to Calshot at the point where Southampton Water opens into the sea. Several of these grew, as Hythe did, to house the refinery's workforce, which lends the wider area a practical, lived-in feel rather than a chocolate-box one. It is a place that works for a living and happens to have a very good view while it does it.
The verdict sits near the top of the scale, and it is earned. For green space, water and open surroundings, the area around Hythe is about as good as the south coast gets outside the pricier postcodes. The refinery is the asterisk. The forest, the shoreline and the walk from your own front door are why the score is as high as it is.