Taplow

TAPLOW This is where you start to find wonderful riverside villages with modest-sized yachts moored to the banks and anglers hunched beneath their green umbrellas. Taplow has lots of old cottages and a church built in 1911 with a distinctive copper spire. You can see Cliveden House, formerly the home of Lady Astor, in the distance on the cliffs above the river. Enormous houses with gardens running down to the Thames go for well over £1m, though in the village itself there are modern three-bedroom houses from £230,000. There are also lots of flats; a one-bedroom modern apartment will fetch £125,000. People who live here might prefer to go to Maidenhead or Slough to pick up the faster train service and park the car more easily.

Good for: storybook riverside landscape, smart houses.
County:Buckinghamshire
London terminal: Paddington
Journey time: 40 mins
Season ticket: £2340
Peak trains: 2 per hour
Off-peak trains: 2 per hour