With Halloween firmly in the past and Bonfire Night just moments away, the festive countdown can well and truly begin. And one of our absolute favourite ways to embrace the season is by visiting a Christmas market, drinking some mulled wine and hunting out some treasures from the stalls.
And, whilst many of the grandest and most well-known Christmas markets are based in mainland Europe (think Germany, Austria and Belgium) there’s plenty of hotspots worth visiting in the good ol’ British isles too.
My Favourite Cottages analysed Google and social media data to work out which UK markets were the very best – rating them on things like the amount of stalls they’ll have, how long they’re open for and the expected number of visitors. And these, dear readers, are the 10 Christmas markets they pegged as the very best (with scores out of 10)…
- Manchester Christmas Market (8.39/10)
- Birmingham Christmas Market (8/10)
- York Christmas Market (6.68/10)
- Glasgow Christmas Market (6.57/10)
- Bristol Christmas Market (6.47/10)
- Blackpool Winter Gardens Market (6.38/10)
- Canterbury Christmas Market (6.28/10)
- Brighton Christmas Market (6.18/10)
- Sheffield Christmas Market (6.14/10)
- Stratford Upon Avon Victorian Christmas Market (6.12/10)
The real shock twist is that no London-based Christmas markets made the list, but plenty of other English ones did, with Manchester bagging the top spot, followed by Birmingham. Glasgow was the only location outside of England to top the list with a score of 6.57.
Now to start Googling when they’ll be opening…
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