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Last week the Guardian published a list of the happiest places to live in the UK right now. Taking into account factors like access to green spaces and culture, a sense of community and the availability of public services, the newspaper’s ranking intended to reveal Britain’s most joyous roads, villages, towns and cities in 2025.
In the overall list – which you can find out more about here – a total of five places in London made the cut. The Ridgeway (Enfield), Surbiton North, Clapham Junction, Bounds Green and Bromley were the only areas of the capital to feature.
But that wasn’t all. Several places near – but not in – London featured in the Guardian’s wider list. These are places within easy reach of the city, where you get to enjoy the best of London life without some of the less-good bits.
So what are these two cheery places within easy distance of the capital? Let’s dive into it.
Lewes
Lewes is just an hour by train from London Victoria, and the Guardian praised the East Sussex town for its food options (like its Friday Food Market), cultural attractions (such as Glyndebourne opera house and the legendary annual Bonfire Night traditions) and access to nature.
Often named among the nation’s prettiest towns, Lewes is inside South Downs National Park and just a short drive from the seaside. Gastronomy, culture and nature aside, the Guardian also picked out Lewes’ range of vintage, boutique and outdoors shops as making the place more joyful.
RECOMMENDED: The best things to do in Lewes.
Aylesbury
The other near-London spot in the Guardian’s list was Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire, which is about an hour’s train from Marylebone. The newspapers said that from the train ‘you can see chalk hills, wooded valleys, big fields with traces of medieval farming and flowering hawthorn hedges’.
The Guardian continued to argue that Aylesbury boasts ‘a strong sense of community, a mixed population, and great countryside’, and says that the town’s house prices are ‘slightly more affordable’ than elsewhere in the southeast.
Beyond an hour’s commute
Further afield than Lewes and Aylesbury, the Guardian’s list features several other locations that are sort of near the capital – they’re not as commutable, but they’re easy enough to visit. Chichester in West Sussex was included (around an hour and a half from London), as was Evesham in Worcestershire (within a couple of hours of the capital by train), which came second overall. Devizes in Wiltshire, Newport on the Isle of Wight and Cirencester in the Cotswolds made the list, too.
You can find the Guardian’s full list of the happiest places in Britain (with more detail on each choice) here.
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