My heart sank. Surely they're not talking about my hometown, home to a university, a cathedral and stunning views of one of the UK's most impressive mountain ranges? Alas, they were. Bangor had been voted the 'worst seaside town in the UK' according to 4,744 members of the consumer magazine Which?'s online panel.
The winner, Bamburgh in Northumberland, had impressively scored 86%, while Bangor had just 42% of the vote. I was quietly outraged, firstly because Bangor is not a 'town', it's a city. And secondly, because 4,744 people really can be so wrong.
I was born and raised in Bangor, like generations of my family before me and, having moved away, I still miss it. Read more: I swapped a pub lunch for an M&S Cafe and it was so much more Read more: Boots closing down 300 stores by end of summer - full list of axed shops It still feels like home and I have nothing but fond memories of endless hours playing in the fields with my siblings, shopping at the local centre, Christmas concerts at the cathedral and even of spectacularly failing my first driving test. I still try to go home as much as I can, despite the four-and-a-half hour journey.
And I always feel a sigh of relief when I reach that roundabout that tells me I'm home. Looking at readers' responses to the survey's results, I was glad to see that people felt the same way, calling the result "mad" and "unfair". Granted, Bangor doesn't have sandy beaches or fancy hotels but it has so much more than that.
In 2022, Bangor's Ga.