Penzance

Penzance is the end of the line, and it knows it. Everything west of here is a car park and a cliff, which gives the place a particular energy: the last proper town in England, full of people who came as far as the railway would take them and then stopped, permanently. There are Georgian merchants' houses sat next to an Egyptian-revival facade built by someone who had clearly never been to Egypt, and a harbour that still smells of fish rather than of marketing. It is a working town wearing a resort's clothes, and the ones who arrive expecting the resort tend to leave by the same train.