Not since the great “Euro-whiff” of 2008, when easterly winds washed swaths of southern England with manure smells from the continent, have the nostrils of Bristol been so assaulted. This time, there are no foreign cows to blame. Instead, attention has turned to the city’s councillors, who have authorised using horticultural vinegar to kill weeds.

The chip-shop stink began to put noses out of joint when the city responded to an environmental campaign against the use of glyphosate, a potentially carcinogenic herbicide used to spray public areas including pavements. No problem, said Bristol, we’ll douse the weeds in vinegar instead.

In other areas, the council is calling a truce on weeds altogether as part of a year-long trial. And campaigners are miffed again. “The only true trial involved here will be that endured by residents as they face a year of weeds growing upon streets and pavements, and the smell of vinegar in unexpected places,” Harriet Williams, from Pesticide Safe Bristol Alliance, told the Bristol Post.

The council has said it is monitoring feedback. Should it continue to use vinegar in the war on weeds, Bristol risks earning a place on the list of Britain’s stinkiest towns. What does it smell like where you live?

Oldham, Greater Manchester

Smells like: vinegar, fish

Already familiar with the acetic wafts from the Sarson’s brewery west of Oldham, residents are periodically forced to take fish with their vinegar. “Why does Chadderton stink of fish?” Robyn Byrne tweeted from the town in 2013. The smell spread to Audenshaw, Droylsden and Ashton-under-Lyne. It soon wafted away again only return months later. “Oh my gosh it’s shocking all round edge lane droylsden, yuk!” Jo Evens tweeted at the time. The cause remains a mystery.

Peterborough, Cambridgeshire

Smells like: dog food

Or at least it used to, when between 1974 and 2013, the Mars Petcare factory churned out dry and “semi-moist” pet food at its Woodston factory (neighbours of replacement factories in Hungary and Poland now have the pleasure). The pedigree hum improved significantly when the plant stopped producing fully moist pet food. “That used to stink something terrible,” one local told the Peterborough Telegraph in 2004. “The smell now is more like a cereal product.”

Highlands, Scotland

Smells like: rotting flesh

Go for the heady scent of heather, stay for the intoxicating peaty notes of a single malt – and get out of there when you come across the stink of an alien skunk cabbage. The invasive plant species from the Americas can grow to human height and has a yellow flower with a carrion smell. The plants are smothering waterways in the Highlands and beyond, dominating smaller native species and leading to calls for them to be rooted out.

Oxford, Oxfordshire

Smells like: Old Wotsits

Oxford suburbanites frequently complain about a smell variously described as like that of off milk, unwashed feet, manure and stale cheese-based snacks. In 2014, Thames Water had to deny that sewage was to blame after more than 100 readers wrote to the Oxford Mail to complain that the stench had forced them to retreat behind closed doors and windows. A fertiliser used in surrounding fields was later blamed.