Fylde is No. 1 – it’s offical !!

I’m in Lytham, a town on the Fylde coast in Lancashire. The high street is buzzing; quirky shops, twinkling cafés and people spilling out on to the street, dogs everywhere. I check my watch. It’s 3pm. It’s Wednesday. What is happening?

I was born and raised in Stockport and have spent 16 years living in the South, 11 of which have been in London. I’m unfamiliar with what I’m witnessing around me: life satisfaction.

It’s quite unnerving. Not least because, this being the North, not one person I stop is unhappy to talk to me. And not one is surprised Fylde came top of the UK poll for life satisfaction.

There’s Sheila, Fylde born and bred, who says there’s a lot of “Ooh la la” nowadays about living in Lytham, but she’s just a “down-to-earth northern lass”. Richard, the dad out and about with his three-year-old twins is originally from Cardiff, and works at nearby BAE systems. “I had a choice of a job in the South for more money, or up here for less money and a lower cost of living.”

Up the coast in St Annes, Lytham’s more kiss-me-quick neighbour with more charity shops and lower house prices, Lindsey Cooper the boutique owner of Rowan Charles tells me she’d do better if she was in more chichi Lytham, but she can’t afford the rents. Not that she seems as perturbed as she might be. “Fylde’s feel-good factor is that there’s so much light,” she tells me.

And it is, ever so slightly, intoxicating. That big coastal sky just lifts you up and out of yourself.

On the glistening beach, not far from the pier, there’s a bracing wind as Lois, a professor at the University of Central Lancashire, strides towards me with her enormous labradoodle, Oscar. What’s not to be satisfied with, I ask?

There’s a long pause. I press harder. Well, she concedes, there could be more jobs and entertainment for young people (her own children now live quite satisfied but broke lives in London), and there’s a problem with those big houses falling to multiple occupancy, oh and there’s maybe a little bit of a drug problem on one or two roads in St Annes, so she’s heard.

I take a big gulp of the sea air. Where doesn’t have its problems, though?

People living on the Fylde aren’t shut off from the world. “Accessible” is a word I hear a lot. Not just to those local big draws like the beach, but to the rest of the world too. The Lakes are an hour away. London is only a two-hour train from Preston, 30 minutes drive’ away. There’s Manchester, Leeds – where do you want to go?

But I suspect the answer, when you’re standing under that big sky next to the big blue sea, might be: “Nowhere”.

If this has persuaded to take a closer look and thinking of moving here … click here.