Vale Life: The Lifestyle Magazine of the Vale of Glamorgan Since 2007
Vale Life is the lifestyle magazine of the Vale of Glamorgan, the county between Cardiff and the Glamorgan Heritage Coast in south Wales, published since 2007 from Barry. Covering the towns of Cowbridge, Penarth, Barry and Llantwit Major, the villages of Rhoose and Dinas Powys and the rural and coastal communities between them, it has grown into what its own masthead calls the premier lifestyle magazine for the Vale — a title its readers have nicknamed, to its publishers' delight, the Vogue of the Vale.
The magazine is the creation of husband-and-wife team Mark and Jennifer Hobbs-Roberts, whose Good Life Publishing company produces Vale Life alongside sister titles including City Life Cardiff. Edited by Jennifer Hobbs-Roberts, it brings together local people, independent businesses, food and drink, homes and interiors, travel, fashion, beauty, wellbeing, motoring and events, published in print editions that have run to a hundred pages and in a busy daily website.
Overview
Vale Life is a local lifestyle magazine with a deliberately aspirational standard of presentation. Its publisher's stated belief is that local publishing should be stylish, aspirational and beautifully presented while remaining firmly connected to the communities it serves. The magazine's coverage is hyper-local by design: established favourites sit alongside new openings and hidden gems, and the people featured — chefs, shopkeepers, clinic owners, craftspeople, cover stars — are drawn from the Vale itself.
From Cowbridge to Penarth, Barry to Llantwit Major, Rhoose to the rural villages and the coastline in between, the magazine maps a county that is compact but varied: a wealthy market town, Edwardian Penarth with its pier and marina, the seaside and docks heritage of Barry, ancient Llantwit Major, and a coast of layered limestone cliffs and surf beaches. Vale Life's job, as it defines it, is to help readers discover more of that territory — where to eat, which businesses to trust, where to walk and what is on.
Founding in 2007
The founding story is one the editor tells herself. Jennifer Hobbs-Roberts and her husband Mark came from backgrounds in branding, PR and marketing — in Jennifer's case a career of around forty years in public relations and publishing — and had run restaurants before friends pointed out, over a spring evening in 2007, that there was no lifestyle magazine for the Vale: there was one for the Cotswolds, the friends said, and the couple had the skills to start one for the Vale. Over a couple of bottles of wine they devised their plan, and launched Vale Life within three months.
The magazine has been published ever since — its own history dates it to 2007 — and it grew quickly: within a year a Cardiff sister title, City Life, had followed, and later titles including Valleys Life, West Life, Wye Life and a business magazine, InBusiness, extended the family's reach across south Wales, all of which continue online.
Publisher: Good Life Publishing
Vale Life is published by Good Life Publishing, the small, artisan publishing company run by Mark and Jennifer Hobbs-Roberts — described in directory listings as a small publishing company based in the Vale of Glamorgan that is not interested in being the biggest, only the best. At its height the business employed eleven members of staff and had offices in Cowbridge; the couple later spent twelve months deliberately bringing it back to a leaner shape, judging that they had become busy working for everyone else's benefit.
That leanness proved fortunate: when the Covid pandemic arrived eighteen months later, the publishers — by then working from home in Rhoose, as they had when they first started — were able to weather the storm, suspending print during lockdown and concentrating on online and social channels. The business also offers services beyond publishing, including website design, branding and marketing, drawing on the founders' decades of agency experience; Jennifer is group managing editor of the lifestyle titles, and the team has included their artworker Rich alongside the couple.
Editorial Leadership
Jennifer Hobbs-Roberts is Vale Life's editor and public voice. Her editor's letters open the print editions — seasonal, personal and pointed, urging readers to support independent businesses, shop local and use cash where possible — and her name heads the magazine's site as editor, contactable directly. Profiles describe her as editor of Vale Life, City Life Cardiff and several other lifestyle and business publications, living in Rhoose with her husband Mark, their son Jack and a Jack Russell named Lucy.
Her editorial philosophy, expressed in the magazine's advertising pages, draws on the couple's combined decades in branding and marketing: that tone, message, delivery and engagement matter more than chasing the latest marketing fashion, and that local businesses often simply lack the time or skills to market themselves — a gap the magazine exists to fill.
Editorial Content and Sections
Vale Life's content spans the full lifestyle range for its county. Food and drink coverage runs from restaurant features and curry nights to butchers, fishmongers and the magazine's own dining-out picks; homes and interiors features show Vale properties and makers; travel pages — Travel Life — range from hot and cold holiday getaways to UK breaks; and fashion, beauty and wellbeing features spotlight local clinics, salons and boutiques, with cover stars such as the Porthcawl clinic owner profiled across the opening pages of the autumn 2023 issue.
Distinctive regular strands include Man Cave, the magazine's pages for motoring and men's interests — its celebration of trusted local garages is typical of the magazine's practical local knowledge — and the Vale Life Gift Guide, expanded seasonally. Features such as the Vale Life Photo Corner, run with a Facebook group for local photographers, bring readers' own work into the magazine, and the website runs daily posts across categories from hobbies and photography to business and dining.
The Vale and Its Audience
The Vale of Glamorgan is one of Wales's most prosperous counties, a place of commuters to Cardiff, retirees, farmers, surfers and a strong independent business sector — Cowbridge in particular is known for its independent shops and restaurants. Vale Life's readership is that community: residents who want to make the most of living in the county and who support its businesses, and for whom the magazine functions as both a guide and a celebration. Its slogan-level promise — local stories, beautifully told — is aimed at readers who believe, as the publishers do, that local publishing should feel engaging, intelligent and genuinely useful.
Print, Digital and Social
Vale Life appears in print editions across the year — the autumn/winter issue of 2025 ran to one hundred pages of Vale content — and editions are also published on the Issuu platform, where readers can browse the current issue and most back issues. The website, valelife.co.uk, is updated daily with features, news and guides, and the magazine maintains active Facebook, Instagram and X presences, using them for reader features such as the Photo Corner and for promoting local businesses between issues.
The digital side proved its worth during the Covid lockdowns, when the publishers, unable to produce a printed edition one summer, focused on online and social activity and used the pause to dig through their archives and reflect — evidence of a title that treats its channels as one publication rather than competing products.
Sister Titles and Wider Work
Vale Life is the flagship of a small family of Life titles. City Life Cardiff followed within a year of Vale Life's launch, applying the same formula to the Welsh capital, and Valleys Life, West Life and Wye Life extended it across the region, with InBusiness serving local companies; the stable now operates substantially online, joined by newer websites such as Travel Life and the editor's own Life-Styled site. The publishing company also designs and builds websites for clients and creates content and social media for local businesses, making the magazine the shop window of a broader local media business.
Standing and Recent Years
Nearly two decades after its launch, Vale Life remains what it set out to be: an independent, locally owned lifestyle magazine made by people who live in the county it covers. It has survived the long decline of local print by staying small, personal and useful — an editor readers know by name, a publisher that answers the phone, and coverage rooted in named streets and businesses from Penarth to Llantwit Major. The description it happily repeats — the Vogue of the Vale — captures the ambition exactly: national-magazine polish in the service of one small Welsh county and the people who make it, in its founders' words, such a special place to live, work and visit.
