Radstock

Radstock spent two centuries hauling coal out of the ground and has been quietly deciding what to do with itself ever since. The pits shut, the railways went, and what got left behind was a town wearing an industrial coat three sizes too big, halfway down the Mendips and nine miles from a city that charges twice as much for the same stone. It is not pretty in the way the tourist board understands pretty, and it has stopped apologising for that. What it is instead is a place where the ground beneath you has been worked, drilled and abandoned by people who did something useful for a living, which is more than most commuter towns can say for themselves.