Oban

Oban's harbourfront does most of the talking here — ferries loading for the islands, seafood shacks with queues out the door, a high street built for people passing through as much as for people staying put. It reads less like a commuter village and more like a working port that happens to have people living all round it.

The place sits close to the middle of the pack on deprivation nationally — a decile of 5 puts it neither among Scotland's most deprived spots nor its most comfortable — and the median house price of around £183,500 is well below what you'd pay across much of the rest of the country. Council tax at Band D runs a little lower than the Scotland-wide figure too. None of that screams affluence, but it doesn't scream hardship either: this is a place where the money sits in the middle and the property market moves slowly and steadily rather than surging.

Day-to-day life leans on the outdoors more than on nightlife venues, despite what the grades might suggest — there's a genuine spread of green space (36 separate pockets of it, if not vast in total acreage), and a night-time economy that scores well for a settlement of under seven thousand people, likely a reflection of the pubs and restaurants that cluster around the harbour trade. Health provision scores strongly too, which matters more here than in a city, given how remote the surrounding geography is — access to good care isn't something you take for granted on this coast. Connectivity is the one area where Oban visibly lags: full-fibre broadband reaches only around a fifth of properties, a grade that sits well below everything else in the picture and is worth weighing seriously if you work from home.