The Knowhere Guide

Best and Worst in Bideford, Devon*

Bideford, Devon Triumphs and Tragedies

Favourite Building

• Heards Garage near the White Hart the interior roof structure is awork of art.
• Pannier Market- not so shit now it has been done-up a bit
• The pub
• Bideford "Fart & it falls down" Bridge with its uneven arches.
• Discovery (See Record Shops).

Demolish It Now Building

• Bridge Bulding - totally out of place in Bideford
• Bideford School!!
• The Ivory Club (formerly Cleo's Nightclub)
• Bideford!
• The Town Hall - it's what is wrong with Bideford
• The Pannier market late Victorian rubish up a steep hill outside the shopping core
• Never mind Grenville! What about Edgehill!!!!!!
• Grenville College Shit School. I should know, I go there.

The Best Things

• Edgehill forest is a nice place to chill out and contemplate just how many schools (three) are in the vicinity.
• New Year's Eve at Bideford Quay
• You can drive through it in 5 minutes so you need never know you went there.
• A lot of weird people live here. New Year's Eve is one of the best night's out in the country! The Hocking's Ice Cream Van on the Quay- mighty fine stuff.
• Local Pubs, Friendly people. sun if youre lucky
• The best thing in Bideford is the Budo Dojo in Torridge Hill run by Sensei Francis, 8th Dan Hanshi. Go here to study Judo, Aikido, Kendo & much more. Worth a visit. Champion Software Ltd. Hockings Ice Cream, THE BEST.
• One of the best olde worlde bookshops in the country Nicholas Nickleby in Grenvile Street - just near Discovery Records
• Slow pace of life, friendly natives
• Discovery.
• There are some good surfing spots close by, ok Westward Ho! isn't nothing that special, but what about Spekes Mill Mouth down the coast?
• And, the other fantastic thing just has to be The Big Sheep - surely that should be worth a mention.
• The best thing has to be the numerous pubs - you have to admit that for a little town there are an amazing number of places to get pissed on a Saturday night (and I should know, I was down there with the rest of Edgehill every week.)
• Bideford is an easy place to get to as the North Devon link road now passes through it and this means that it is an easy drive from the M5.
• The most impressive part of Bideford is the old Bideford bridge which links Bideford to East the Water. The archways in the bridge are not all the same size, some are narrower than others. This was because it was payed for by the local parishes and the smaller ones could not afford to make as big an arch as a larger parish with more money.
• Bideford also houses one of the best dyslexic schools in the country. Grenville College is sited on one of the many hills and as I went to it, I can say that it lives up to its reputation.
• Bideford isn't too bad. I should know I lived there for three years! The 'Little White Town' as it is known, has the only open quay dockside still in operation in the UK (as far as I know). The Oldenburg sails from there to the island of Lundy in the Bristol Channel. It is the island's only link to the outside world.

The Worst Things

• ben clemance is stupid
• Every thing
• Poeple that hang out on jubillee square at night are the worst things. They are usually 15 and below and think they are so cool. They like to take their bikes there and just sit on them thinking that there it...WELL YOUR NOT!!!
• Boy racers, pissed townies, far too many insane people and paranoid old people.
• 1. Full of violent psycopaths who want to beat people up on Friday nights. 2. There are 4 secondary schools, 3 of which are private. The private school kids don't associate themselves with the comp kids. Absolutely outrageous. I was treated as a second rate citizen in Bideford most of the time.
• Public transport - particularly evenings, weekends and Sunday/Bank holidays
• Kappa Tracksuits are invading from outside!!!!!
• plug-ugly birds
• The total lack of a decent cinema or any decent buses to get to Barnstaple has to be right at the bottom of the list, but not far below the fact that it's so cut off from the rest of the country - 40 miles from the M5. It's just too far round the corner and out of the way for anyone to want to go there!!

The Knowhere Guide started out as a list of places to skateboard in the UK. It is a compilation of (unedited) information and views supplied by users like yourself. It is not a conventional tourist guide!

In most cases, the information in each section has been submitted by more than one contributor (the credits at the bottom of the page list some, but not all, of the contributors) and some of it dates back to the 1970s.

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Credits

Last updated: 2008-07-06