Next stop, Wrexham! Why you should holiday in Britain's least-loved places

I used to get bullied a fair bit at school for being overweight and in a boyband. Ever since, I’ve harboured a suspicion of pecking orders and popularity contests, and have tended to drift towards underdogs and outliers, trusting I would find value and brilliance and meaning in unsung regions and among uncelebrated people.

I can’t say my partner has always appreciated my weakness for weekends in Basingstoke and High Wycombe, or my decision, back in 2016, to move to Poland to work in a chip shop on the minimum wage, but on the whole she has tolerated my passion for the wrong direction with something resembling equanimity. Given the above – the soft spot for things overlooked – you might not be surprised to learn that in 2024 I visited the least popular cities in the UK and Ireland for weekends away on holiday.

Following an itinerary that was determined by data rather than hearsay, I travelled to a dozen unsung locations and loved every one of them. The fact that I loved them didn’t surprise me. Coming from Portsmouth, I knew from experience that unfashionable places could be quietly brilliant; that everywhere has history to engage with, some great places to eat, and a range of enjoyable diversions. 

It was the latter of these qualities – the enjoyable diversions – that most impressed me during my tour of Britain’s unfancied metropoles. More than once was I struck by just how much fun I was having in the UK’s least-trendy spots for a city break.

In Sunderland I played pétanque on a long sandy beach; enjoyed a session of coasteering (which is essentially a mixture of climbing and jumping and swimming along a shoreline); and went skiing on a slope that used to be a slag heap. In Bradford I walked an alpaca called Arnie, before having a whale of a time at the National Media and Science Museum, not least in the gallery devoted to retro arcade games.

Dunfermline offered an ostentation of peacocks (who have the freedom of the city); an afternoon of hovercrafting and caber tossing at Craigluscar Farm; and a session of waterskiing at Town Loch, which is walkable from the high street.  

In Preston it was Wallace & Gromit sculptures that delivered delight (creator Nick Park is a Preston boy), as well as a scenic bike ride along the Guild Wheel, a walking and cycle path that takes in the glorious Avenham Park and an excellent nature reserve called Brockholes. In Milton Keynes I went skydiving and snowboarding (albeit indoors) and got a fascinating dose of interactive history at Bletchley Park, home of World War II codebreaking.  

The Welsh city of Newport delivered a taster session of track cycling at the Geraint Thomas velodrome, 80 minutes of rugby union and all manner of diversions – including foot golf, laser combat and a well-deserved sauna – at the Celtic Manor Resort.  

In Derby, The Museum of Making provided a joyous introduction to the wonders of design and engineering; a canal boat ride provided a joyous introduction to the River Derwent; while a farm on the edge of town called Bluebells provided a cow safari and a milking demo (not to mention first-class ice-cream). What’s more, Alton Towers is just up the road from Derby, so if you like upending your innards, you could do worse than making the home of Lara Croft and Florence Nightingale your base for a domestic getaway.  

You get the picture – my adventures in the ‘wrong’ direction delivered no shortage of fun. Also worth noting is that I returned from each of my unlikely city breaks with spare dosh in my pocket, so as well as being straightforwardly enjoyable, my tour of unloved Britain proved a money-saving exercise. Not to be sniffed at these days. 

I’m sure you’re dying to know whether my odyssey around the British Isles resulted in a book… Well, I’m afraid to say it did. Sh*tty Breaks is a travel hack, a love letter to unsung cities, and a small and imperfect answer to overtourism. The book makes the case that anywhere (like anyone) can be interesting and nourishing if given half a chance; that value and worth and interest are by no means the preserve of hotspots and celebrities; and that it’s about time we considered breaking up with our algorithms and deciding for ourselves what’s worth having a butcher’s at.  

I may well be biased, but it seems to me that those uber-popular destinations for a city holiday break (think Venice, Lisbon, Edinburgh, Dublin) are starting to creak and complain under the weight of their popularity and renown. I would also argue that such cities have become a touch complacent, with the result that the quality of their accommodation and food offerings has dropped. The worst pizza I ever had was in Venice, for heaven’s sake, and the worst fish and chips in Leicester Square.  

Conversely, in those places where tourists seldom tread, the businesses need you to come back, and therefore the quality of what they’re offering is reliably higher. They can’t just dish out something substandard safe in the knowledge that a fresh busload of visitors will be pounding the pavements on the morrow. While a lack of tourism can often mean more empty units in town, it can also mean that those local businesses which are going strong tend to be… well, strong.  

Read more:

• Sea, a paddle and an ice cream on the prom: Celebrating the golden age of the great British seaside
• Overtourism: How to be a responsible tourist
• Council clamps down on Airbnbs and short-term lets in bid to tackle housing crisis

Simply put, travel and tourism can’t continue along its present trajectory – which is to say more and more people heading to the same places. Were it to do so, the results would be troubling at best, and ruinous at worst. We need to start recognising – or some of us do anyway – that profitable and fulfilling travel can be enjoyed in places that currently aren’t getting a look in. 

Despite being about as popular and celebrated as a poet can be, I’ve always been fond of Philip Larkin. A man of Coventry and Hull, Larkin was arguably an early proponent of successfully travelling in the wrong direction. This idea is borne out in his poem The Whitsun Weddings, wherein Larkin laments how the ‘sun destroys the interest of what’s happening in the shade’. While great at making certain things brilliant, the sun is also great at casting other things into the shadow. 

If shady places like Sunderland and Limerick and Portsmouth and Derby are going to flourish and prosper and find an extra gear, I don’t think it can be an inside job – they need the interest and affection of outsiders like me. They need the frivolous pound of the holiday tourist. They need the Instagram contingent to rock up from elsewhere and snap the fancy ice cream.

Turning Britain’s less-fashionable cities around involves you turning up – to go to the races in Wolverhampton, to see all the David Hockney paintings in Bradford, to reckon with the epic history that Preston has in abundance…  

At the risk of sounding dramatic, I’d go now if I were you. While there’s more space and the locals are happy to see you and the whole thing is affordable. Heck, what have you got to lose? I mean, you’ve already been to Edinburgh. You’ve had a look at Paris. You’ve been to Amsterdam four times now. So why not give Wrexham or Leicester or Southampton a shot for a holiday? Answers on a postcard please. 

By banging the drum for the edge and the margin, the underdog and the also-ran, I’m not saying there’s nothing decent at the top or in the centre. I’m not saying that the mainstream is utterly without merit. Not at all. I’m just saying there’s also merit in the wings and in the shade. Cheeky weekend in Doncaster, anyone?  

Sh*tty Breaks: A Celebration of Unsung Cities by Ben Aitken is out now (Icon, £18.99). You can buy it from the Big Issue shop on bookshop.org, which helps to support Big Issue and independent bookshops. 

Short videos celebrating the cities featured in the book can be found on the author’s Instagram page

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