h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hartlepool has been around since Stone Age times. Look at the average denizen and you can tell. Still, it's survived this long by being somewhat in the backwater of history. We seem to have been involved in national affairs precisely twice. The Venerable Bede gives us a mention in 650ish AD and we had Abbess Hild who founded monasteries here and in Whitby. A thousand years later, more or less, we are sort of involved in a rebellion to overthrow Queen Elizabeth I, being a base of operations for The Rising of the North. Then, in Napoleonic times there was a little bit of business with a monkey. Now our main claim to fame seems to be providing a safe seat for Peter Mandelson. We have a Marina and a Heritage Quay, which depicts our history as we would have liked it to be (actually it is pretty good and well worth a visit). We have some good pubs, the Camerons Brewery and the Castle Eden Brewery just up the road and a fairly decent shopping centre. We also have a football team and a rugby team that seem to be doing pretty good jobs of propping up their respective leagues at the moment. One of the best things about Hartlepool though is that you are five minutes from the North Sea and in the other direction, ten minutes from some of the most beautiful countryside.