I moved to Happy Valley – it’s way better than on TV but here’s the drawback
A COUPLE living where Happy Valley is set said it seems idyllic but the area stinks of weed.
Faye Preston and her husband Ben live on the county lines route between drug gangsters and dealers and addicts.
She also suspects some people in the area may be a victim of cuckooing, where their property is taken over and exploited for criminal gain.
Gripping BBC cop drama Happy Valley, back for its third and final series after a seven-year hiatus, is set in the picturesque Calder Valley in Yorkshire.
The popularity of the show - named after the police nickname for the area due to its perceived drug problems - has sparked an influx of tourists since 2014, when the first series aired.
Faye and her husband moved to Todmorden from Hull during lockdown.
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Her fell-running obsessed husband thought it was like a playground for him while she loved its independent shops and "kindness ethos". It is also perfect for taking their dog out.
But she said she often smells weed and insisted she once left light-headed after breathing in second-hand smoke from a joint some teens were smoking outside.
She wrote in : "I do not know anyone hooked on the stuff and I don't physically see the devastating impact drugs can have to a person readily on the streets - unlike Hull's city centre, or Manchester and Leeds for that matter.
"But I do know it goes on here. For starters, I can smell it in the air most days.
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"I know that if I was brave enough to knock on a certain door along my well-trodden dog walk, I would likely get high just by being invited in for a cuppa - because I am certain the owners would, them being from friendly, wonderful Tod and all.
"Just recently, I accidentally breathed in the second-hand smoke of a joint being passed around teenagers hanging about the empty market stalls during a warm down at my running club.
"We left a little light-headed that night and it had nothing to do with endorphins."
She said weed smoking intensifies in the summer as "thick, creamy smoke" fills the air, but she insisted she "has very little problem with it".
She added however: "It isn’t cannabis that is the problem, really. For cops, it is the hard stuff and I am happy to say I’ve not directly encountered this epidemic.
"Sure, there are plenty of signs it is here - from the clear, miniature, plastic pockets strewn along the canal towpath to the discarded needles in the bushes at the park.
"Just the other night I ended up walking a man home who told me he had, in the past, been the victim of cuckooing.
"We had got talking because I suspected - rightly or wrongly - that two lads on the train back from Leeds to Manchester were trying to take advantage of him.
"They showed a strange interest in him after the man had shown the ticket inspector his disability card.
"Something felt off so I asked if he was alright. Thankfully, the pair did not get off at Todmorden and presumably carried on their trip to Manchester."
Last month we told how residents were furious with second home owners who turned the town into a woke nightmare with pints costing £7.
Sky-high prices are pushing out locals, leaving their bored teenagers hanging about in areas that have become "no-go zones" at night.
Local residents warn of two hotspots where young tearaways while away their evenings setting fires, taking drugs, spraying graffiti and drinking alcohol.
At night the local park on the outskirts and the closed-off market area attracts bored youngsters who only have a youth club running from 3.30pm to 7pm every Wednesday night to entertain them.
A 2009 documentary, Shed Your Tears and Walk Away, made by film maker Jez Lewis, was the inspiration behind Happy Valley writer Sally Wainwright’s dark drama and documents the drug problems that lurk underneath a place considered to be idyllic.
Now there are fears the area, having undergone a renaissance, could come full circle.
Market trader and landscape gardener David Gill, 55, doesn’t think the police deal with any of the problems in Hebden Bridge, where singer songwriter Ed Sheeran grew up and poet Sylvia Plath is buried.
He says: “You don’t see many police around here. They think it’s Hebden Bridge and that nothing happens here. So many things go under the radar.
“Just last week the kids came here on a night and lit a fire on one of the tables.
“All the market traders get here on a morning, and we don’t know what we will be faced with. But we always have clearing up to do, smashed bottles and the like.
“There was a homeless guy here a bit ago and I told him he couldn’t stay here because it wouldn’t be safe for him.
“You get all sorts of people in Hebden Bridge, and they can live under the radar.
“You can get away with being strange because it’s an unusual place.
“You smell weed wherever you go. Even in the shops. I don’t like it, somebody should put a stop to it.
“It’s all got a bit too strange around here. It’s a bit too woke for my liking, with everything acceptable.
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“But there are so many people here and everything has gone up so much, you can’t even have a pint in your local pub unless you have £7.
“You’d think they’d offer prices for the locals but they don’t cater for us.”
