Famous for its cider, beer, and Hereford cattle, Herefordshire is a rural county with beautiful period homes and long winding roads with the cathedral city of Hereford at its heart. Still, the inhabitants of this sparsely populated county are not far from cities like Worcester and Gloucester, and can reach London in about two hours by car or rail. Though you might find you’re fairly reliant on your car here, and need to travel a bit to get to the shops, those who come to Herefordshire in search of a nice place to raise a family — with access to beautiful countryside and good schools — will find the relative lack of nightclubs is not much of a tradeoff at all. Hereford and Ledbury were both named among the Sunday Times’ 2013 best places to live in the UK.