The country around Princes Risborough is the main reason to move here. Green space is a couple of minutes' walk from most front doors. Water is close by too. The Chilterns rise straight behind the town. A town of this size rarely gets this much landscape thrown in with the house.
Most homes have a public green space about 180 metres away, and there are around 16 green spaces within a kilometre of the average front door. Even the homes furthest from one are close to grass by most town standards.
Water is about 330 metres away on average, with around 26 patches of water within a kilometre: streams, ponds and the rest. Few people here live more than a short stroll from something wet.
The National Cycle Network passes about 360 metres from the average home, and about 75% of postcodes are close to it. No ancient woodland falls inside the town's own boundary, so the old woods are a walk or a ride away up the hill, not at the end of the garden.
The rated-premises records count 85 shops, 13 pubs and 6 restaurants. Shops outnumber everything else on the high street, and a town that has more than twice as many pubs as restaurants knows which way it leans on a Friday night.
Fine-particle air pollution across Buckinghamshire averaged about 7 micrograms per cubic metre in 2024. That is a county figure, so a home on a main road through town will sit at a different level from one on the escarpment.
About 4% of the area overlaps the Chilterns Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, which starts at the edge of town and covers the hills above it. There is no site of special scientific interest inside the boundary, and no ancient woodland. The protected landscape is next door, which means the town can grow while the hills cannot.
The country beyond the houses is crowded with old earthworks. Grim's Ditch runs across the hills in several long sections, there is a small hillfort on Pulpit Hill, a motte and bailey castle known as Cymbeline's Castle near Ellesborough, and barrows on Chinnor Hill and around Saunderton Lee. Six conservation areas, including Whiteleaf and Monks Risborough, hold the older village cores together. Somebody spent a great deal of effort digging ditches across these hills a very long time ago, and the walkers on them today have about as much idea why.
Private gardens are generous: the town has about 287,000 square metres of garden for every 1,000 residents across its seven neighbourhood areas. With that much garden at home, the public green space is a bonus.
The valuation list counts 221 rateable premises in the area, and offices are the second-largest group after shops at 43. These are premises on the rating list, which is not the same as businesses open and trading, but they describe a town that still works during the day as well as sleeps at night.
Of the 51 food premises with a hygiene rating, about 61% hold the top score of five, and about 2% are rated low. The cafés and pubs here are, on the whole, clean.
The surrounding area is the best thing about living in Princes Risborough. The town gives its residents a high street, and the hills behind it give them everything else.