diamond geezer

 Wednesday, January 13, 2021

After almost a year of not going very far, and with an eye on one day being able to travel again, I wondered where's the largest town I haven't been to?

To be explicit, that's the largest English town or city by population that I've never set foot in. Travelling through (or standing on a station platform) doesn't count.

My first task was to find a definitive ranking of English towns and cities by population. I thought this was going to be difficult but no, the Office for National Statistics has a portal called Nomis which offers free access to up-to-date data. I selected a) major towns and cities, b) all ages c) all genders, and within seconds I was downloading the spreadsheet I needed. The list that follows is based on built-up areas, not necessarily administrative boundaries or wider city regions.

England's largest towns and cities by population

1	London	8,920,000
2	Birmingham	1,160,000
3	Liverpool	587,000
4	Bristol	577,000
5	Manchester	563,000
6	Sheffield	552,000
7	Leeds	511,000
8	Leicester	416,000
9	Coventry	382,000
10	Bradford	356,000

No problem so far, I've been to all ten. I've also blogged about all of them, which is why each city links to an old post. One I live in and five I've been to numerous times, as befits the country's great cultural centres. But Sheffield's had just three visits, Leicester and Bristol two apiece and Bradford only one. You may already have spotted a city you haven't been to, in which case you can stop there, you have a winner. I need to carry on.

11	Nottingham	316,000
12	Kingston upon Hull	288,000
13	Newcastle upon Tyne	288,000
14	Stoke-on-Trent	278,000
15	Southampton	270,000
16	Plymouth	266,000
17	Derby	265,000
18	Reading	258,000
19	Wolverhampton	246,000
20	Brighton and Hove	245,000

I've been to all these too, mostly several times. Stoke on Trent was a one-off day trip but once is enough to tick a city off. Nottingham's linked post consists of a single photograph, so I really ought to go back and try harder, but again it totally counts. The first dodgy city on my list is Southampton which I have only slightly visited. I changed trains there once and deliberately wandered out of a side exit onto the pavement for a few seconds so I could say I'd been, because in my rules visiting the station doesn't count. Southampton really should be top of my list for a post-lockdown safari... but I have technically been, so let's move on.

21	Northampton	230,000
22	Portsmouth	230,000
23	Luton	222,000
24	Bournemouth	197,000
25	Norwich	197,000
26	Swindon	192,000
27	Southend-on-Sea	185,000
28	Milton Keynes	185,000
29	Bolton	180,000
30	Peterborough	179,000

These are all multi-visits, for me at least, apart from Swindon and Bolton which are single trips. They've also all been blogged, other than Peterborough which I somehow haven't been back to since the 1980s. You may very well have seen a town or city you haven't been to by now, in which case make a note of what it is. But it turns out I have indeed been to the top 30 English towns and cities, hurrah. It all goes it goes wrong for me at 32...

31	Middlesbrough	177,000
32	Sunderland	175,000
33	Warrington	173,000
34	Huddersfield	172,000
35	York	164,000
36	Oxford	162,000
37	Poole	159,000
38	Slough	158,000
39	Telford	152,000
40	Cambridge	149,000

Sunderland is the largest English city I haven't been to. In this case I haven't even travelled through it and seen it out of the window, which is a proper fail. That's why today's exercise is important, because I don't have a mental picture of Sunderland based on primary evidence, only what I've seen on TV or read about elsewhere. Warrington I have at least seen from a train speeding through, but Huddersfield is another personal non-event. That's three in a row I've missed, so very much where my run ends.

41	Ipswich	149,000
42	Gloucester	148,000
43	Blackpool	146,000
44	Watford	141,000
45	Colchester	138,000
46	Preston	136,000
47	Exeter	126,000
48	Gateshead	122,000
49	Oldham	121,000
50	Blackburn	121,000

Shame, I was doing well again there until Oldham tripped me up. I meant to go to Oldham on my last trip to Manchester but it was raining so much that I gave it a miss. Another one for the to-do list.

In case you're still playing, here's the next 50.

51	Maidstone	61	Stockport	71	Woking	81	Halifax	91	Harlow
52	Chelmsford	62	Rotherham	72	Hemel H'std	82	Birkenhead	92	Guildford
53	Basildon	63	Gillingham	73	Worcester	83	Nuneaton	93	Bracknell
54	Cheltenham	64	Solihull	74	Salford	84	Hartlepool	94	Dudley
55	Doncaster	65	Wakefield	75	Barnsley	85	Chesterfield	95	Stockton
56	Worthing	66	Sutton C'fld	76	Stevenage	86	Wigan	96	Scunthorpe
57	Eastbourne	67	Lincoln	77	Southport	87	Weston-s-M	97	Burnley
58	Basingstoke	68	H Wycombe	78	Hastings	88	Grimsby	98	Redditch
59	Rochdale	69	St Helens	79	Bedford	89	Chester	99	Mansfield
60	Crawley	70	Bath	80	Darlington	90	St Albans	100	Chatham

I'm quite pleased that I've been to 90% of the top 50 English towns and cities and 84% of the top 100. That's a pretty good record all told, in terms of developing a personal understanding of how the country fits together.

But let's keep this simple by asking...

What's the largest English town you haven't been to?
Mine's Sunderland, what's yours?
Special comments box → comments

Even if you checked out relatively early on, I hope you found the list of towns by population interesting in itself. If nothing else you might get some ideas for where to explore next, once you get the chance.

posted 07:00 :

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