I spent 20 years in keswick, in the Lake District, and it's a great place to live if your into the outdoors.
Things I like for living there,
Huge range of pubs
Lots of cafes, restaurants, galleries etc,bi weekly markets.
It's a pretty and compact town.
Good mix of locals, and incomers.
Temp folk coming to live and work there so they can climb/walk/mountain bike etc for a season or three keep it young, outward looking and vibrant!
Small enough you get to know many faces ( pop is 5000)
Tourists keep the economy humming, provide plenty of work, ( albeit low paid) means a larger than normal amount of pubs and restaurants survive and thrive, and add an interesting dynamic to the social scene.
The only thing wrong with it is it's not on the coast with a harbour/marina/moorings. Plus my wife thinks the lakes are too wet and cold
So we are looking for somewhere to live in the future, currently Tynemouth, Newcastle is favourite, because it's within fairly easy reach of keswick and the lakes, it has a lot of those keswick plus points above, and is on the coast, has surfing, and my wife is a geordie and fancies going home.
The sailing is not great from around there though, so where else in the country, ( England Scotland Wales) would we find a small pretty market village with the good parts of keswick I outlined above, but is on the sea, I can keep our boat there and has good local sailing and is a good base for multi day/week long and several week long cruising from?
And ideally has a decent climate!
I'm hoping the combined knowledge and experience on here will give me some great ideas and counter my my ignorance of the rest of the country

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