It's allreet!
Anyone else been?
It's allreet!
Anyone else been?
Why Leeds is Britain's most underrated city
So Channel 4 is moving its headquarters to Leeds – cue 200 Horseferry Road employees weeping into their flat whites.
But they needn’t worry. It might not be as big as London or as gobby as its northern rival Manchester, but Leeds regularly scores high in polls as one of the country’s best places to live based on cost of living, happiness and employment.
Although Leeds’ bid to be the European Capital of Culture 2023 has been dashed thanks to Brexit, the UK’s third-largest city is at the centre of the Government’s ‘Northern Powerhouse’ regeneration project.
I moved back to Leeds in 2010 after more than two decades of living and working in the capital. It’s a well-worn cliché that people are friendlier up North but one that I think is probably true, even if it’s only because there are just too many people in London. It’s hard to be cheerful when you’re crammed 1,000 to a carriage on your daily commute.
Nowhere in the UK has the energy and pizzazz of London but, for me at least, Leeds comes a close second. Manchester’s a bit scruffy, Edinburgh’s too cold and Birmingham is, well, Birmingham. Far from being ‘grim’, Leeds has some wonderful Victorian architecture, a thriving arts and digital scene, fantastic countryside on the doorstep and some of the UK’s best shopping.
You won’t go hungry or thirsty in Leeds. The city has more than 30 restaurants listed in the Michelin Guide (The Man Behind the Curtain has a Michelin star) and around 300 restaurants and bars in the centre alone, with an independent food and drink scene that has mushroomed over the past five years.
Head to Belgrave Music Hall on Cross Hall Street (belgravemusichall.com) for street food, craft beers and cocktails. It also functions as a yoga studio and comedy club as well as a bar and music venue. Smokeststack (sandinistagroup.co.uk) on Lower Briggate offers late night “New Orleans-inspired” cocktails and a killer music policy of soul, funk and jazz.
For more cerebral pursuits, there are 16 museums and galleries to choose from. The Henry Moore Institute (henry-moore.org) on The Headrow has a year-round programme of traditional and contemporary sculpture exhibitions, while the little known Leeds Discovery Centre displays more than one million curios (leeds.gov.uk).
Leeds Dock, a mixed waterside development of offices, retail and leisure, is also home to the Royal Armouries (royalarmouries.org), the UK’s national collection of arms and armour. Getting there is half the fun – you can take a scenic 10-minute canal trip in a free water taxi from the south entrance at Leeds Station.
Leeds is a big, multicultural city, with a diverse population – around 2.5 million in the greater metropolitan area. Leeds Carnival, the UK’s longest-running West Indian carnival (sorry, Notting Hill, but they claim it is) celebrated its 50th anniversary this year and the Phoenix Dance Theatre (phoenixdancetheatre.co.uk), founded in 1981, has grown from small beginnings in inner-city Leeds into one of the the country’s leading contemporary dance companies.
Added to which, Leeds is one of the UK’s biggest university towns, with an international student population of around 65,000 and four higher education institutions, including two big universities, one part of the Russell Group.
Dubbed the “Knightsbridge of the North", the city's Victoria Quarter shot to fame 22 years ago when a Harvey Nichols opened there – and the moniker is well deserved. The city is packed with shops, and because central Leeds is walkable you don’t need to negotiate smelly tubes or lumbering buses to get to them.
As well as the usual high-street names (including a recently opened John Lewis), there are dozens of independent boutiques in Leeds’ beautiful Victorian arcades (the Victoria Quarter being the most well known) and Corn Exchange, one of the city’s most eye-catching 19th-century buildings.
Advertisement
A 30-minute drive (traffic permitting) from Leeds city centre brings you out into glorious countryside and the start of the Yorkshire Dales National Park. Ilkley, on the park’s perimeter, is a picturesque Victorian spa town, famous for its moor, the eponymous ditty it inspired (On Ilkla Moor Baht 'at) and a heavyweight annual literature festival.
And if none of that appeals, it’s only two hours 13 minutes on the train to King’s Cross.
Why Leeds is Britain's most underrated city
The landscape is OK , it's the cocky Tykes tho, as for UK 3rd largest city can that now be true , I'd have thought London Manchester and Birmingham would be larger?
Manchester is actually relatively small since they started changing all the boundaries many years ago. The population is only 550,000 (about half of Birmingham's), but Greater Manchester is touching 3 million.
Since the relocation of the BBC and the amount of money ploughed into the city centre and its infrastructure, it is clearly the UK's 2nd city these days though.
Plus they all speak funny in Birmingham.
Grate stuff , almost etiHAD me worried as I scrolled down, feared it might read Manchester City.
I have always like Manchester as a rough down to earth bogtrotter I slide in seemlessly from the Peverill of the Peak to the sleze of Cheetham Hill. Madchester is like Baltimore with fewer guns, for now.
Ye cheeky charm of teh Mancs is more like other confident cities Glasgow, Belfast, Dublin, Boston or Sydney rather than swanky London, New York or piss poor Leeds
It's very very different now. Skyscrapers, sky-high rents, swanky bars and restaurants and London prices for pints.
That said, Leeds - and North Yorkshire in general - isn't a cheap place to live either. Tis the price to pay for ever more gentrification of the city centres and the surrounding areas.
Btw, I took this photo yesterday in a pub in town on my way to the game.
You could substitute any city north of the Watford Gap as far as many Londoners are concerned though.
You may well be right
It seems ages since I was there, long ago when Utd were winning trophies, Picadillly Gardens were full of jack drinkers not crackistas, and was like an alfreco was a soup kitchen and L.S Lowry JR was painting the tragic figures shuffling out a long hard beating at Main Rd.
I have seen the monstrous towers when flying out, are they offices, council flats or speculative yuppie buy to rent bijou investments.
Beetham Tower has apartments but it also has a Hilton Hotel.
It now doesn't look that incongruous as others are springing up throughout the city for both offices and apartments (Gary Neville has his fingers in a few pies), but affordable housing for locals is becoming a real problem. Parts of Ancoats have been renamed New Islington - craft beer, sushi bars and fusion restos abound - and the asking price for houses/flats in Collyhurst is now over 300k! This is a bloody council estate!
The whole "Northern Quarter" is unrecognisable to what it was 25 years ago - in a good way - but it's not great if you've lived there all your life. There was a series on the BBC a couple of years ago about it (locals v developers) and the comments below this article sum up the disquiet felt by many residents.
Compulsory purchase powers approved for Collyhurst estate demolition - Manchester Evening News
Last edited by hallelujah; 06-04-2023 at 08:54 PM.
Oddly I worked and lived for 2 months in Ancoats as a volunteer between overseas jobs in the 1990s , The N quarter was just launching, as you say affordable for locals is a global issue.
Without wishing to seem too prejudiced I have always liked most Mancunians but loathed the accent exactly opposite to the West Riding where I worked for a while.
Of course there's good and not so good folks everywhere I've lived in China Czechia and the mix is as wonderful as City and Utd, for utter sleaze depravity, vice and variety, generosity and laissez faire I've yet to find anywhere more tolerant than Slyam with its childish hedonism coupled to high risk behaviours.
Last edited by david44; 07-04-2023 at 01:53 AM.
i have two kids in/near Leeds and for a norvern minkie town its nice, not getting built up/over like Manc is.
visit it, I was the weasal !! Preferred a stroll to Peverill f the Peak than the pound a pint dives of Ancoats of that era.
Look forward to your pics from Leeds can only have improved.An ex gf's dad worked there so dyd visit but a v long time ago when I was a hansum young blade, The ale and fish and chips were first class the Tykes not so much.
The Dales up around Skipton,Keighly Howarth, Snake Pass , Tod or Hebden all lovely, juts reseen them all on Happy Valley and Last Tango in Halifax. What I forget sitting here s the cold and endless rain from about September to March.
My Favourite parst of Upland England are just by You the Cloud, Mow Cop, The Staffordshire Roaches and Wildboarclough up to Buxton and down to Dovedale which I explored every weekend for decades on motorcycles , foot and car. When I get time I'll try a picture thread.
I've met a few people from Leeds... love their accents.. and people up north are pretty friendly ime.
There was a guy that posted on Ajarn, had Leeds in his username and he used to post a bunch of pics.. looked like a nice place.
lived there, mid 70's to mid 80's. loved it, great people. Awesome city. Loads to do.
I was born in Leeds and lived there until I went away to uni, and in those days it was an utter shithole.
Now when in the UK we live just North of Leeds and visit frequently. The town centre is a nightmare for drivers, but it is compact and well suited for walking with excellent shopping and eating. The public transport is good too. Some fine Victorian architecture, and no shortage of ugly unimaginative high rise residential blocks.
Unfortunately the centre is often populated with both male and female yobs, mostly from the southern and eastern suburbs I imagine, where vast council estates breed those generic urban scrotes that infest many UK cities, especially at night. It is a university town, with thousands of foreign students, especially Chinese., who fill the towns asian restaurants and sushi bars.
Nearby Harrogate, Ilkley and Wetherby offer the discerning visitor a much more satisfying experience.
And lets not forget Elland Road, home to the countrys finest football team.
MOT.
Indeed, Tax has hit on the problem inherent in the northern regions, they’re full of northern twats.
I have some experience of the North, and have to say that as a suitable settlement venue there is much to recommend it although there is the omnipresent problem of finding a beach where one can realistically swim from in any summer - the sea is just too damn cold and temperatures never seem to match those in the South East or SW/ Dorset strands.
I lived in Ilkley for a while in another life and enjoyed my time immensely. It’s just the right size offering a reasonable choice of pubs and restaurants, and some useful shopping but it’s greatest asset is the commuting whereby one can hop on a train every hour of the day and be in Leeds within 30 minutes. Best of both worlds with great walks and scenery to boot.
That aside, the countryside is glorious and pootling around the Dales makes motoring a joy.
I had some great sex whilst there and no whippets were involved.
Happy days.
when the lazy grasping fuckers are not on strike, yes.
S.A.
and of course apart from the fuzzy wuzzies knifing each other every day, the green lanes swarthies robbing each other, the albanian range rover bandits hijacking cars and the omnipresent drug gang shootings, the streets of london are a utopian paradise.Indeed, Tax has hit on the problem inherent in the northern regions, they’re full of northern twats.
Last edited by taxexile; 07-04-2023 at 04:37 PM.
There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)