St Austell

St Austell is the town that dug up half of Cornwall, shipped it to Staffordshire to be turned into teacups, and got a concrete shopping precinct as a thank you. The white hills on the horizon are spoil heaps from the clay pits, and the town has spent forty years being told they are a landscape feature. It sits ten minutes from beaches people fly in for, which locals know and outsiders rarely believe, because the drive in from the A390 does the place no favours whatsoever. Cornwall's other towns sell themselves; this one has always been too busy working to bother.