News

Parts of Shepway are experiencing the extinction of the eligible young woman according to a nationwide survey which lists places not to live if you're a bloke.

Hythe, which is also featured in the book of Crap Towns is in the top ten of places where fit crumpet is far from common.

But it can be even worse in the countryside where thousands of Britain's unmarried men whose careers are rooted to the land are facing a dearth of prospective partners, according to the new research.

Where once whole generations of mothers and grandmothers built their lives around the fields, today scores of young woman from isolated farming communities are leaving the idyllic country life behind for the lure of the city, wooed by the prospect of better career prospects and social life.

Now research drawn from more than 150,000 lonely bachelors has identified the worst ten rural blackspots where the gender imbalance is particularly acute.

An initiative called the Villages in Crisis campaign to fight the phenomenon known a "extinction of the female species" compiled the list of towns and villages using e-mails from forlorn countryfolk, local research and census data where available.

Among the worst were Bere Alston, a small parish in west Devon, isolated Wolsingham in County Durham's Weardale and the idyllic New Forest in Hampshire.

Shenstone in Lichfield, Long Preston in the Yorkshire Dales and Thulston, a small village south east of Derby are also on the list of the most women-deprived areas in Britain.