Happiest place in England !!!

Indexed: 2026-05-16

[00:00:00]Hi everyone, and welcome to the channel.

[00:00:02]My name's Steve. I live in my self-converted ex-Scottish ambulance, hence Steve on the road. Well, to start off with this week, I've had a complaint. I can't believe it. I've had a complaint from a subscriber. Well, to tell you the truth, it's actually me mum. She's not happy.

[00:00:21]Uh the reason being, the video last week, part of it was about a tank that was in the beach.

[00:00:28]And she said I didn't give any information out about it. So, to put things right, this is for me mum.

[00:00:36]So, the tank was a Comet A34.

[00:00:40]It was used by the British Army uh near the end of World War II until 1958.

[00:00:47]Now, we're not sure why the tank is actually abandoned there on the beach.

[00:00:52]There's two theories.

[00:00:53]The first one is that it broke down and it never got rescued. Or the second option, it was put there by the RAF and it's been used as target practice.

[00:01:06]With this information, the Comet A34 tank was powered by a V12 Rolls-Royce engine and weighed approximately 33 tons.

[00:01:18]There, I think that's satisfied me mum now.

[00:01:21]Uh and in the video when I'm going to a few places this week, I have put a bit more information on there as well. If you want to have a look at the tank, then go and watch last week's video.

[00:01:31]Now, one or two people have asked me, "Steve, how do I find the different places that I go to?" I mean, I do use the usual apps like Park4Night looking for parkups, but on the places of interest where I go, basically all I do is I just look at Google Maps and look at the area where I'm going to go to and look see if there's any points of interest on there and have a quick look and if if it takes me fancy, then off I'll go. So, this week we start where we left off. I'm just about to leave Mablethorpe, and I'm going to go to a museum.

[00:02:05]Let's go.

[00:02:08]>> [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] >> So, I've come here to the Bubble Car Museum. Let's go inside, check it out.

[00:04:53]>> [music] [music] >> Well, that was the bubble car museum, but it's more than a museum about bubble cars. There's also motorbikes in there, cycles in there as well. And they've also got like rooms set up from the 1950s, 1920s, and all sorts of stuff as well. So, it's a bit like the museum of brands I went to. Not on such a bigger scale, but with the motor vehicles as well. I don't know if it's if it would have been a bit weird seeing those bubble cars on the roads in the 50s or maybe it was just a normal everyday occurrence.

[00:05:56]Anyway, well worth it as well. Just a a fiver and also in the cafe a bargain cup of tea which came with a proper teapot and a biscuit as well. Only a quid.

[00:06:10]So, well worth it.

[00:06:36]>> [music] [music] [music] [music] >> So, this is where I stopped last night.

[00:08:02]It's just It's like a lay-by, but it's got picnic area as well. And there's no signs saying you can't stop overnight.

[00:08:09]So, I stopped here. Didn't find it on any apps or anything like that. It's while I was on the Google Maps and looking for the windmill that I took some pictures of, that I saw this place and I thought this is good as any to stop. So, this is what I did.

[00:08:46]Okay, I'm going to head off now to a couple of places to take some photographs of uh before I'm heading off uh back to Castleford.

[00:08:53]Uh like you do. Uh doctor's appointment tomorrow. So, I need to be back.

[00:09:10]>> [music] [music] [music] >> I'm not far away from the town of Sleaford. But, I've come here because there's two photo opportunities in one.

[00:09:34]I've got a nice church behind me as well, and also a keep.

[00:12:14]>> [music] [music] >> So yes, the reason that I've come to Sleaford is because uh one reason I've never been there before. Uh and the other one was because it wasn't too far away from where I was traveling. Uh and it was in news.

[00:13:01]It was in the news because the Office of National Statistics have now don't ask me how they come about this uh but they've done calculations or whatever they do uh and it turned out that Sleaford is the number one happiest place to live in England. So I thought, why not I give it a visit. And I thought I'd do something a little bit different you know, and get out of me comfort zone a little bit and something like that. So, I decided to set the camera up and do a few interviews with local people just to see what they thought about their town. Now, bear in mind this is something new for me and I was using me little camera.

[00:13:44]I was using me bigger camera which I normally do photography on. And I put it in video mode and for some reason, I must apologize to the first person I interviewed which is George because I must have knocked something on the camera and it decided not to focus on us but to the church in the background.

[00:14:05]But, I've included it because I I told him I would and like I say, I do apologize that he's not in focus. But, let's get on with asking a few people of Sleaford what they think of their hometown.

[00:14:23]Okay, I'm here with George. Uh George, tell me a bit about Sleaford. Uh Sleaford is a lovely town. It used to be a market town many many years ago now.

[00:14:31]It's recently gone through a bit of a restoration project with obviously the lovely marketplace here that got completed last year.

[00:14:39]Uh plenty of historic structures as in obviously St. Denys' Church behind us.

[00:14:42]You've also got Handley Monument that's down the road and also a Georgian theater as well. So, the reason I'm here in Sleaford I've come in because it's been in the news this week. Sleaford has been declared by the Office of National Statistics to be the happiest place in England. What do you think?

[00:15:01]It doesn't surprise me, I will be honest. Um it is a nice town. There is quite a bit of happy stuff here you can do but there is also its downside sadly. And now you're in the happiest place in England.

[00:15:12]>> Yeah.

[00:15:13]Anyway, cheers. Thanks.

[00:15:14]>> Yeah, you're welcome. Have a great day.

[00:15:16]And Ashley, how long have you lived here in Sleaford? So, I yeah, I grew up in Sleaford, spent my childhood here. Moved away for a few years into over to Nottingham, but then chose to come back to start a family. And do you like it in Sleaford, yeah? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah, it's got a good mix of things.

[00:15:34]Yeah, some shops could be sort of diversified I suppose, but yeah, everything's got something I suppose. Yeah, it has been voted this week by the government's Office of National Statistics to be the happiest place in England. What do you think about that?

[00:15:51]Yeah, it's a bit of a surprise, but I suppose you don't ever think you're you're somewhere too special. It all seems quite normal if you live there, but I mean on reflection, yeah, it's it's not a bad place. And like I said, I came back here to start a family, so can't be too bad. And do they have a lot of things going on in Sleaford?

[00:16:09]Yeah, they've certainly they've certainly ramped up in the last sort of few years.

[00:16:13]Yeah, you can definitely see there's a bit more going on around the town. So yeah, certainly it's been improved on on previous years.

[00:16:20]Right, okay. Cheers. Thanks for your comments. Thank you very much. So I'm here with Seth. I've just collared Seth to speak and say ask his views on Sleaford.

[00:16:30]Tell me about Sleaford. Oh.

[00:16:32]Great place. Um born and raised there, lived there all my life. Um very nice people here.

[00:16:39]I think it's got a great community.

[00:16:41]It's quite connected I would say.

[00:16:43]Everybody Everybody knows everybody or has some connection. Um and I think everyone's like quite happy here.

[00:16:50]It's a nice place to live. Which is good that you mentioned happy because this week the Office of National Statistics has actually voted Sleaford the happiest place in England. Has it? Yeah, what do you think about that? I think it's probably true. Um everybody here is it's a great place to live. There's no reason to be sad here.

[00:17:09]So yeah. Yeah? Yeah, it's good. So I'm here with Neil, asking Neil about Sleaford. What do you think about Sleaford? Oh, they do a nice place to live, yeah.

[00:17:17]>> Yeah. Yeah. I've lived in a few places throughout the world, you know. I I quite like it here, yeah. But I can tell from your accent Yeah, I'm Scottish, yeah. From Scotland. So, how long have you been in Sleaford? Um when my daughter was uh 6, which is now 26, 20 years. All right, so quite a long time then.

[00:17:34]>> Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, this week has been voted the happiest place uh in England. What do you think? Well, I I don't know whether it's the happiest, it's one of the nicest places I've lived in around about, yeah.

[00:17:46]I've lived in quite a few places, right, yeah.

[00:17:49]Yeah. so uh yeah, it's quite nice. Yeah?

[00:17:51]Okay. Cheers, thanks.

[00:17:52]>> No worries, mate. I even asked the sheep for comment, but apart from a a quick they just kept eating grass.

[00:18:11]>> [music] >> And that's where we'll leave it for this week. Many thanks for watching, and if you have enjoyed the video, please like and subscribe to the channel. Do join me next week for some more Steve on the road, and I'll see you next time. Thanks for watching.

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