New Alresford

New Alresford is what happens when a town burns to the ground more than once and each time rebuilds itself prettier and more Georgian, until the fires start to look like a deliberate improvement strategy. Its great gift to the world is watercress, a garnish, which tells you roughly how much excitement the place is willing to tolerate before someone writes a stern letter to the parish council. There is a heritage steam railway that runs to Alton and back and delivers you precisely nowhere you needed to be, which is the entire point and the locals adore it. The place is genuinely, almost aggressively lovely, and it knows.