I want to start with something small, because it’s the honest answer.
On a Saturday morning I can put my shoes on, walk out of my front door, and get almost everything I need without getting in the car once. That’s it. That’s the thing I love most about living here, and it’s most of the reason this website exists.
It sounds like a small thing when you say it out loud. It isn’t. Being able to walk to the places you need is the difference between a town you live in and a town you just sleep in. And Guisborough — for all the things we could grumble about — is genuinely a town you can live in.
I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately, and about how easily it could stop being true. So I built Love Guisborough. This is the why.
I want to live in a town that flourishes
That’s the whole ambition, really. Not a town that’s merely surviving, or hanging on, or “still got a few decent shops left.” A town that flourishes.
I want to be able to buy my meat, get my hair cut, have a boiler looked at, find someone to fix a leaking tap, pick up a birthday present, get a coffee and meet a friend — all of it here, from people who live here. Not because it’s a noble sacrifice, but because it’s better. It’s a better way to spend a Saturday, and it keeps money circulating in the town instead of leaving it.
The alternative is the default that so many of us have drifted into without ever really deciding on it: the big weekly supermarket run, the online order, the retail park down the road. None of that is evil. I do some of it myself, and anybody who tells you they never do is fibbing. But it’s a default, not a choice, and defaults have a way of quietly hollowing out the places we live.
Here’s the thing about a high street: it doesn’t disappear in one dramatic moment. It goes one shop at a time, and each time it happens everyone says what a shame it is, and then carries on doing exactly what they were doing before. The only thing that stops that is people choosing, deliberately and often, to use what’s on their doorstep.
That’s easier to do when you know what’s on your doorstep. Which, it turns out, a lot of us don’t.
The bit where I mention my butcher
I buy all my meat from Enfield Butchers, up at the Enfield Chase shopping parade.
I mention that not because I’m being paid to — I’m not — but because it’s the clearest example I’ve got of what I’m on about. It’s a proper butcher’s. You can ask for exactly what you want, in the quantity you actually want it, and get an answer from someone who knows the difference. There’s no shrink-wrapped tray and no “sorry, that’s all we’ve got in.” If I want something a bit different for a Sunday, I can ask, and it’s a conversation rather than a search filter.
And that’s the part that I think gets lost when people talk about “supporting local” like it’s homework. It isn’t a duty. It’s just better. The product’s better, the advice is better, and there’s a person on the other side of the counter who recognises you.
That’s a relationship. Multiply that by a butcher, a baker, a barber, a mechanic, a florist, a hardware shop, a café — and you’ve got a town. Take those relationships out and you’ve got a car park with houses round it.
So when people ask me what Love Guisborough is for, that’s the honest starting point: I want more people to have more of those relationships, more often. And you can’t have a relationship with a shop you don’t know exists.
The gap I’d love to see filled
Now, the honest bit, because a website that only ever tells you how marvellous everything is isn’t much use to anyone.
There are two things I really wish we had in Guisborough: a fishmonger, and a proper greengrocer.
There’s a trader who sells fish and he’s good — genuinely good. But he isn’t here every day, and that matters more than it sounds. If you can’t rely on something being there, you stop building your week around it. You default back to the supermarket, and once you’ve defaulted for a month or two, that’s just what you do now.
Same with a greengrocer. There’s something about buying your veg from someone who can tell you what’s good this week that no amount of plastic-wrapped convenience quite replaces.
I want to be really clear that this isn’t a complaint, and it certainly isn’t a dig at anyone currently trading here — the people running businesses in this town are doing a hard job well. It’s an aspiration. It’s part of what I think Love Guisborough is actually for.
Because here’s the thing: a fishmonger or a greengrocer looking at Guisborough and wondering whether it’d work needs to be able to see the town. They need to see that there’s a community here that turns up, that talks about local businesses, that actually wants this. A town that’s visible and connected is a much easier bet than a town that just looks quiet from the outside.
That’s a job a website can genuinely help with. Not by magicking a fishmonger into existence, but by making the town’s appetite for one obvious.
So what actually is Love Guisborough?
Fair question, and I’ve been circling it long enough.
At its simplest, it’s a guide to Guisborough — the businesses, the services, the events, the things worth doing. If you want to find a plumber, a place for lunch, or what’s on this weekend, that’s what it’s here for.
But I’ve been deliberate about not building “just a directory,” and it’s worth explaining why.
You can already Google “plumber near me.” You can already scroll a national listings site and get a phone number, a star rating and an advert for something in Middlesbrough. What you can’t get from any of those is the bit that actually makes a town a town.
What we’re trying to do instead is build a community hub that happens to have a directory in it. So alongside the listings you’ll find:
- An events calendar — the markets, the fairs, the gigs, the fundraisers, the things that are genuinely happening here rather than an algorithm’s guess at what’s nearby.
- Local walks — because some of the best things about living here are free, and start at the end of your street.
- Local facts and history — the priory, the market, the stories, the people this town has produced. Guisborough has a lot to be proud of and not enough places that say so.
- The businesses themselves — but curated by people who actually live here, not scraped from a database and left to rot.
That’s the difference I care about. A search engine can tell you what’s nearby. It can’t tell you what’s worth it. It doesn’t know that a place is run by someone lovely, or that the market’s on today, or that the walk up through the woods is worth doing on a clear morning.
Local knowledge is the whole product. Everything else is plumbing.
That’s why the tagline is “Your guide to Guisborough” rather than anything cleverer. It’s meant literally. And it’s why we keep saying “We Love Guisborough. We think you do too” — because the entire thing only works if that’s true of enough of us.
What I’d ask of you
Three things, and none of them cost anything.
Have a look round the site. Not because I need the traffic, but because I’d bet there’s at least one business on here you didn’t know was in town. There was for me, and I’m the one building it.
Use somewhere local this week. Just once, deliberately. Buy your bread somewhere, get your coffee somewhere, ring a local trade instead of the first sponsored result. It genuinely does add up, and it’s a nicer way to spend twenty minutes.
If you run a business here, get yourself listed. A basic listing is free, and if you’re a charity or a community club you get the full works for nothing — that’s not a limited offer, it’s just how it should be. It takes a few minutes and it means people looking for what you do can actually find you.
And if you happen to be a fishmonger, or a greengrocer, or you’ve been quietly wondering whether Guisborough could support the thing you’ve been thinking about starting — please, get in touch. I’d love to talk. There’s a town here that would back you.
One last thing
I didn’t build this because I think Guisborough is broken. I built it because I think it’s great, and because great things need looking after.
We’ve got the priory, the moors on our doorstep, a market that’s been running for centuries, independent shops with real people behind the counter, and more clubs and community groups than a town this size has any right to. That’s not nothing. That’s the raw material for somewhere genuinely brilliant to live.
All Love Guisborough is trying to do is make it a bit easier to see all that, and a bit easier to use it.
I’ll see you round the town.
Got a business, a club, or an event that should be on here? Get in touch — we’d love to hear from you.