{"id":1894,"date":"2025-12-10T15:25:37","date_gmt":"2025-12-10T15:25:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/badvibes.live\/?p=1894"},"modified":"2025-12-10T15:25:37","modified_gmt":"2025-12-10T15:25:37","slug":"ive-been-to-35-uk-cities-but-theres-only-one-ill-keep-going-back-to","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/badvibes.live\/?p=1894","title":{"rendered":"I\u2019ve been to 35 UK cities, but there\u2019s only one I\u2019ll keep going back to"},"content":{"rendered":"

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In the latest installment of\u00a0Travel Hot Takes<\/a>,\u00a0award-winning travel writer Ben Aitken\u00a0writes a love letter to an \u2018imperfectly perfect\u2019 city in\u00a0Wales<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not being funny, right, but\u00a0Newport<\/a>\u00a0is a very decent city.<\/p>\n

Not everyone shares this opinion<\/a>, of course. Indeed, when I said live on radio that I would rather have a weekend in Newport than\u00a0New York<\/a>, the presenter almost terminated the broadcast to check I was alright.<\/p>\n

Newport lies just a whisker over the Welsh-English border, ten miles from Cardiff and twenty from\u00a0Bristol<\/a>. It was a boom town in the 1800s, when it made money exporting coal and iron that had been mined in the valleys of South Wales.<\/p>\n

I first visited about two years ago, when conducting research for a book about unsung cities. Fresh off the train, I took some local advice and headed to a caf\u00e9 called Rogue Fox.<\/p>\n

When I\u00a0asked the young lady behind the counter what there was to do in Newport, she said the passport office was popular. Not a good start.<\/p>\n

I wandered into the centre, where many of the buildings are quirky and Victorian, neither straightforwardly classic nor obviously Gothic.<\/p>\n

Outside Westgate Hotel, I paused to consider a key moment in British history. On this spot in 1839, a bunch of downtrodden workers gave voice to longstanding peeves. They were called the chartists, and their goal was pretty simple: to give more people a say on the nature of their fate.<\/p>\n

John Frost was the main man in Newport. On that fateful day in 1839, Frost had wanted a peaceful march on Westgate Hotel, where a number of prisoners were being held for calling for reform.<\/p>\n

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However, a bunch of professional troublemakers had other ideas. They whipped things up royally, and so doing gave the army an excuse to fire on the crowd. Twenty were killed. Frost and his fellow leaders were sentenced to be hung, drawn and quartered. Tidy.<\/p>\n

Further along the\u00a0high street<\/a>\u00a0is the recently restored indoor market. They\u2019ve done a decent job of it, and I\u00a0wasn\u2019t alone in thinking so\u00a0\u2013 the place was bustling.<\/p>\n

Of the outlets, I developed a soft spot for Rogue Welsh Cakes, whose cakes were the best I\u2019ve munched on.<\/p>\n

Heading south on Commercial Street, I\u00a0stopped to consider a sculpture that paid homage to the poet W.H. Davies, a local lad most famous for a couplet imploring the reader, amid the hurly-burly of life, to stop and stare now and again. (\u2018What is this life if full of care\u2026\u2019)<\/p>\n

Born in Newport in 1871, WH Davies grew up in a pub, was charged with shoplifting at the age of thirteen, then lost a leg attempting to jump a ride on a freight train.<\/p>\n

Metro Travel Hot Takes<\/h2>\n
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