The Town Centre of Uxbridge
The population of the town of Uxbridge, London, is around 18500, according to statistical information I could find with a slight adjustment to take in recent population growth. Overall we quite liked Uxbridge, and as you see in many cities around the World there were higher income housing areas, and lower ones. We visited the town centre, or as the English seem to refer to it “The high street” four times. Twice walking
there and back, the other two times busing in and taking an Uber back to the Red Lion. It’s a fairly pleasant walk from the hotel to the town centre, albeit alongside a busy road. One sight along the way, or in fact not too far from the high street shopping area is a huge new development of apartments.
In fact, it is almost a new town in itself as it also includes a new school. Once all the stages are finished it will add an extra 267 apartments to the town.
As well as roadside shops there are two shopping malls in the Uxbridge high street area, The Chimes, and the Pavilions. The Chimes is more upmarket and has some of the big name brands in it like HMV and Boots, whereas the Pavillions, though still having a handful of big brand shops, is more aimed at the budget end of the shopping scale. What really surprised us in the Pavillions Mall were the number of supermarkets in it. In New Zealand only a handful of the bigger shopping malls actually have a supermarket, so to see no less than five within the one medium size shopping mall was quite a novelty. The major differences we noticed in the supermarkets in the Uk compared to those in NZ were firstly the large number of different companies. Whereas New Zealand has two large companies that supply the majority of supermarkets under about five different brands, meaning very little competition and as a result incredibly high food prices, the UK has multiple companies. This has resulted in a large amount of competition there, and pushing prices very low compared to Aotearoa. In fact this was the other major difference we saw between living standards in New Zealand and those in the UK, cheap food! Some of their goods were around a quarter of the price we pay in NZ, with most others anywhere from 10% to 50% lower. Another difference we noticed was that most of the UK supermarkets were smaller in size, especially the mall based ones and sold quite a lot of variety items as well as food items. They also tended to be a tad messy and poorly laid out. Though to be fair the slightly more upmarket brands and/or stand alone supermarkets were fairly big and generally tidier.
Though many of the supermarkets in the UK are generally much busier, which is natural with a larger population (In England) to provide for, they are well run. For example, several have computerised voice overs telling customers which checkouts are free as they become free, while others have a dedicated staff member telling customers “Checkout 4, checkout 8” and so on.
A real highlight of the Uxbridge shopping area is the fresh fruit and vegetable vendor that sets up not far from the underground train station and is just a few minutes walk from either of the shopping malls. As those of us who currently live in New Zealand can attest to, buying fruit and veges here is ridiculously expensive, in fact New Zealand would be at the high end of the World food price index. So, seeing bowls full of several very healthy and fresh looking fruits and vegetables all at just one pound a bowl full was quite frankly mind blowing!
There are several great places to eat in the town centre of Uxbridge, from traditional style fast food places through to a few different pubs with the good old stereotypical English pub meals. But for a massive feed with delicious food at a decent price, the little italian (I think it was Italian!) style cafe called Pop-In Cafe inside the train station is hard to beat. We both ordered what I think was called the all day breakfast and subsequently we nearly fell off our seats when the plates, also referred to as platters by most people, arrived at our table. The photo accompanying this text is really the only half decent way of describing just how big these meals were. The staff appeared to be all family members and they were great, friendly and down to Earth.
We rate the Pop-In cafe in Uxbridge 8 out of 10 Kiwis