What does peace mean to you? Maybe it’s time with your loved ones. Maybe it’s a night in with a bath bomb and Netflix. Maybe, just maybe, it’s dinner by the M1 and car-centred urban planning.
Milton Keynes has been named the UK’s most relaxing city by ComparetheMarket. No, really, they’re serious. Despite its less-than-perfect reputation, the city scored well on multiple metrics and earned the highest average score for ‘relaxability’ in the country.
Let’s break it down. Although the City of Dreams had the second highest levels of noise pollution in the top five, it scored well on quality of outdoor and green spaces, citizen happiness levels, and cleanliness of air. Overall, it scored 7.88/10.
Preston was another somewhat surprising entry, coming in just a few points below MK at 7.61. Oxford, Sheffield, and Wigan then followed, with 7.48, 7.14, and 6.91 respectively.
Perhaps we’ve all given Milton Keynes too harsh of a beating. A whopping 25 percent of the city is green space, and average house prices are just over £346,000 – which is less than half of what you’d pay for the same in London and enough to calm anyone down. It’s well connected to the capital, and locals tout its balance between the urban and the rural. And it’s got 76 spas. It does also have a fair bit of concrete brutalist architecture but, you know. Swings and lots and lots of roundabouts.
So if you’re in the market for a quiet, relaxing, spa-filled city to raise a family in, maybe try it out. Plus, you hear a lot of people complaining about Milton Keynes, but you rarely hear from the Miltonians themselves. Probably because they’re just so relaxed that they don’t care. Stay chill, MK.
What’s going on in the UK?
If you want to hear less about recessions and politics and more about the four-day work week, a hotel opening up in this majestic castle or two UK beaches being named amongst the best in the world, stick around. Time Out has plenty more where that came from.
Did you know that two of the world best beaches are right here in the UK?
Plus: The four-day working week has been made permanent by most UK companies in the world’s biggest trial.
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