Top 20 places to stay active in retirement

You only have to look around you to see that the modern senior citizen is a turbocharged tearaway compared with his father and grandfather before him.A man retiring at 65 can now look forward to 18.3 years of healthy life, on average, before Old Father Time starts to take his toll. The equivalent number for women is 20.9. That is a lot of days to fill. Not all of them can be spent looking after grandchildren, mowing the lawn or watching Countdown. If you want to take up a new hobby, or devote more time to an old one, you will never have a better opportunity than in your late sixties and early seventies. And, however you map out your retirement, Britain is unusually rich in areas tailored to outgoing people of pensionable age.

Here are just 20 suggestions for those nearing retirement and dreaming of an action-packed future.

Supplement your income as a tour guide 

YORK
Mug up on your history, practise a few jokes and you will find a grateful audience in the tourists who flock to cathedral cities such as York. You won't become a millionaire, but you will earn some much needed pocket money and, if you enjoy interacting with other people, find the work emotionally rewarding, too. 

"York has excellent apartments both purpose built and in conversions, houses of all shapes and sizes, some low-built and easy to manage. Apartments start from ?300,000 and houses from ?400,000," says Ben Pridden of Savills York. 

telegraph