NEWTON Abbot has made the Telegraph’s ‘Britain’s prettiest (and ugliest) towns’ list, but not for the right reasons...
The Telegraph’s Mark Stratton, an independent travel writer, broadcaster and photographer, says that the town has become ‘overtaken by rapid unaesthetic development’ and that the ‘traffic is terrible’.
One of the Telegraph’s ‘Travel Experts’, Mr Stratton recommends ‘pedalling out of Newton Abbot as fast as you can’, though he does note that some pleasing architecture still persists, chiefly St Leonard’s clock tower.
‘The racecourse and surrounding meadows have become disconnected from a tired-looking centre by pernicious traffic jams and a huge expansion in housing estates in recent years’ Mr Stratton writes.
Newton Abbot placed third, being slightly less ugly a town than Lowestoft in Suffolk and Stanley in County Durham.