My blog post yesterday about my favourite UK county has got some of you thinking. Shropshire, Notts, Suffolk and Northumberland have already been suggested.

No one has yet taken my challenge for their least favourite county. I'm going with Bedfordshire at the moment...

http://www.fwi.co.uk/Community/blogs/forumdiary/archive/2008/03/04/which-is-your-favourite-county.aspx

I'm sure most people will vote for where they are living at present.

I vote for Herefordshire. When we were looking to move out of the London suburbs Herefordshire soon became our preferred choice. It is, probably, the most rural county and, interestingly, has the highest church attendance in the UK.

To really understand Herefordshire, with it's unique position 'between Wales and England' you can do no better than to read Phil Rickman's Merrily Watkings books. 

My least favourite county is Middlesex, partly because it includes the most boring bits that surround London but mainly because, as a postal district, it no longer exists.

Surrey , I think for least favoured county. I worked there for a number of years and reckonned on spending a month each year just commuting.Coming home each night there was a definite transition on driving over the Surrey/ Hants border where the pace of life seemed a fraction slower. Having said that I unwittingly experienced the Shropshire school run the other morning and had to wait almost a minute behind four cars dropping off kids for school. 

Yorkshire - God's own county.

You are wrong Malcolm, Gods own county is right here in Kansas, Greenwood county, he intends to retire here. 

Well I've lived in quite a few places, both in the UK and further afield and there are many places I'd love to live and at the same time stay just where I am.  One of the great things about the UK is the wide variety of landscapes, people and things to see and do crammed into such a small space.

Right now I live in Ceredigion, roughly the old country of Cardiganshire, in the far west of Wales.  In many ways this is the most rural and traditional of Wales' counties where the pace of life has barely changed in the last half a century.  My Welsh teacher tells me the local dialect is the oldest and purest form of the language still being spoken, which pretty much sums up the timeless atmosphere of the region.  We have lush pastures producing the finest beef and lamb in the world (go on prove me wrong ) and a still active dairy industry, although it has diminished a lot of late.  We also have a fantastic coastline that rivals anything in the rest of the UK, but is much less visited so quieter and cleaner.  Cardigan Bay is a great place for sealife including whales and our own local population of dolphins.  Inland the uplands and forests of the Cambrian mountains rise up, containing the so-called 'desert of Wales' and an array of rare surviving flora and fauna as well as the tenacious hill farmers and their ornery sheep.  For great cities we are lacking, but the towns of the county are all worth a visit, from the seaside affairs of New Quay, Aberaeron and Aberystwyth to the charming inland market towns such as Newcastle Emlyn, Tregaron and Llandysul and the market/university town of Lampeter.  Beneath the hills in the south of the county slumbers the last Welsh dragon and in the far southwest corner lurks Dave the Druid.

There's lovely.

For worst county?  Any that has no or very little countryside and that sees it's open spaces more as areas to exploit than to nurture and enjoy.  That'll be London then (I say that as a native.)

townie:

Cardigan Bay is a great place for sealife including whales and our own local population of dolphins.

 You missed out Dave 3... (who in a funny kind of way I miss! )

No I didn't: who do you think Dave the Druid is?  BTW, he does still turn up in the letters page of the Cambrian News quite regularly, as do the increasingly rabid responses of his opponents.

Sorry missed that!

It's got to be somewhere close to the Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Worcestershire border. Gosh! I've just realised its here where I live.

Within a forty mile radius. We have the small but lovely Tudor towns of Ross on Wye, Ledbury, Monmouth, Unton on Severn. Newent and a bit further away the Cathedrals of Gloucester, Hereford & Worcester, in addition there are the Abbeys/Priories of Malvern, Pershore, Tintern & Tewkesbury.

Castles, Manors, Courts abound and there are professional theatres at Cheltenham, Malvern, Worcester & Tewkesbury. For classical music it has a life equalled only by London. There is also of course the Cheltenham racing and musical festivals and the Upon Jazz festival.

We have the Forest of Dean, Leadon Valley, Symons Yat, fantastic restaurants, and the gorgeous undulating fertile countryside of the Welsh Border is fed by he three beautiful rivers and tributaries of the Avon. Severn and Wye.

I must say however that if I were to move anywere else in England it would be Exmoor. In Wales the Brecon area or in Scotland, the north central area. If the USA, unless we could buy the farm next to KF, it would have to be Montana or Wyoming.

Errrmm, Dorset! closely followed by Devon and Wiltshire!

I've worked all across the country for contractors and hire company's and if i was to return it would be to the lincolnshire , Hereford/worcestershire or aberdeenshire areas ....?

finest lamb?! paah! woodlands famr is the best! haha!

 devon, it as to be. the sheer variety of everything. from wild moorland (exmoor and dartmoor- you dont get more rurual or wild,) beautiful coastlines, to horrible exeter city. however, too much of an ageing population....

Peter

Living just outside Malvern I have to say I agree with you......

But travelling upand down the country talking to farmers about soil management and so on I have to say I have always had the warmest welcome from those in the west country (Somerset and Devon) so should I ever move ..........

Before we moved from Hampshire (nice but too expensive) we looked fleetingly at Devon and Dorset - again the cost of housing for what we wanted was out of our range. As adopted effete southerners owing to work, anything above the Humber was now just too cold in winter and summer and hills were a definte must. Connurbations were out as was most of the east coast. Even after several years Welsh place names are beyond my pronunciation, although we wanted a certain amount of "wilderness" factor, hence Shropshire!

paddington bear:

above the Humber was now just too cold in winter and summer and hills were a definte must.

Northumberland!! I LOVE IT!! Great place, winters are freezing, summers are ok but i blooming love it here! Been all over country but this is my favourite place, along with Yorkshire. East Riding or Yorkshire, Bishop Burton - its loveley there, but Northumberland has to be my favourite!

Isabel rekons i am biased but i love it here!! And also Isabel, i like the blog promo there Isabel. I like it!

Radnorshire, an old Welsh county now part of Powys. I have everything I could want from the countryside here, great views, good road links to civilisation, fantastic community spirit and complete seclusion when I need it. It is also a popular destination for my less fortunate friends for a 'getting away from it all' weekend break!

Least favourite: Of all the places I have lived in, probably Surrey as it was clogged with traffic and people rushing everywhere. Sorry Isabel, I know you live there.......

have to say i like kent- local produce everywhere, good links to centre of london. although the traffic is a bloody nighmare!

Yorkshire.

A tourist from overseas went into Salisbury cathedral. Whilst waling round, he noticed a golden telephone and asked the priest what it was for. "That, my son, is the hotline to god." The tourist asked if he could use it, and the priest replied he could, for £10m. On his tour, he went to Westminster Abbey. He saw the same phone, and again the priest was happy for him to use it for £10m a time.

On the last leg of his journey round the UK, the tourist was in York Minster. He again saw the golden phone. The priest noticed him looking and asked if he wanted to call for 25 pence. Shocked, the tourist asked why it was so cheap when he had been quoted £10m eveywhere else. "Well fella, thys in Yorkshire now lad. 'Tis only a local call."

 Hehe.

Best county by far.

TeslaCoils:

'Tis only a local call."

Well done Teslacoils.  You've cheered me up!

   Very good! Tesla. I agree Yorkshire is a county of outstanding beauty and interest; but so also are many others. That is why I have found it so difficult to post here.  With all the references to God in this thread I am afraid I have to tell you all that it is Angus that is gifted from the hand of God. The five beautiful Glens of Angus are said to be representative of the five fingers of God's right hand; from thumb to pinkie we have Glen Isla, Glen Prosen, Glen Clova, Glen Lethnot and Glenesk. However, Rural England never fails to impress me and you have loads of beauty down there.  If I have to make a choice it would include Angus, Argyll, Perthshire, Borders, Yorkshire, Hereford, Gloucester, Norkolk and lots more, many still to visit. I suppose for this thread we have to take into account; scenic value, the people, the weather and all sorts of local issues. I am going for Yorkshire.

cornwall ... it lovely... rains alot though

I don't know how you would decide, but I really like what Tesla said.  I have not been to all of them, and often I really didn't know where I was when I was there(I was in Aberdeenshire when I thought I was in Angus, Ally corrected me on that one, I was in Cumbria when I thought I was in Yorkshire, I was in South Yorkshire when I thought I was in Nottinghamshire, I was in the village of Gosburton and thought I was in the Quadring churchyard where my 5th great grandparents are buried, made a longwinded video about the Quadring churchyard only to be told by a passerby I was in the Gosburton churchyard, helped to explain why the sign said Gosburton and not Quadring(I put way too much faith in the GPS on that one). 

Yorkshire is hard to beat in terms of pure beauty, but Aberdeenshire and Angus are lovely as well.  The drive from Windsor to Bridgwater Somerset was amazing, but the drive from Stirling to Bradford was as well, as was the drive from Montrose up around Loch Tay back down to Stirling.  The areas around Louth and Bardney reminded me of home, as did some of Stirlingshire.  All in all, and I am not trying to kiss up to anyone, you in the British Isles are blessed with some of the most amazing countryside in the world I think, and picking the best is a task I am not suited for.