Deselected

We’ve been deselected. Y Fenni/Abergavenny is the 2024 Sunday Times best place to live in Wales. Ah, but it felt good that 2023 was our year. 

It was also inevitable that the cup would pass on. It always has and it always will. You cannot expect to be in there twice.

Did we make the most of our year of glory? Sadly, not. To misquote the 1975 single by Pete Wingfield, ‘18 with a Bullet’, 

    We were the top Welsh town, we knew it

    The year was our big chance and yet we blew it

After the euphoria of last March, things died down very quickly. We seemed to forget that we were top dog. Was there any promotion? Was there any marketing? Had businesses put this out there? Perhaps in advance of levelling up there was little to market: repeat visitors would probably not thank us for landing them in a building site. Maybe the effort should instead start post-levelling up. 

Neither was the only other North Wales 2023 top seven mentioned in 2024: Y Bermo/Barmouth. 

What has Y Fenni got that we ain’t got? According to the Sunday Times, a Facebook group three times the town’s population; a Waitrose; and a bustling street market. How can Rhuthun/Ruthin compete with that? (Sarcasm. It seems strange that a town should be weighed on its Facebook take-up but that is 21st century Wales. A Waitrose this side of Chester would be nice, BTW, though you can get deliveries here.)

According to the newspaper, Y Fenni is ‘picturesque, personable and practical’. Sounds rather like a strapline for Rhuthun.