Moving to Newcastle - location advice needed

[SleepEatPoopRepeat]

We are looking to move to Newcastle from London, with a 3 year old and a newborn due later this year. Any advice on where to start looking to live. Few criteria-

• want to be out of the City Centre
• good schools
• community, village feel
• good mum network with you many kids
• must have a walkable pub or two (only criteria from other half)
• ideally I would like to live near a gym
• budget is open

Thank you for any help given!

Tynemouth or Cullercoats are lovely. It's wonderful being by the sea and lovely for families

Oh Monkseaton too. Some gorgeous huge houses there

@Dimsummummy

I live in North Shields, just a couple of streets from Tynemouth boundary and my kids go to high school in cullercoats. The schools are brilliant, plenty of baby groups, the coast is fabulous. Transport links to Newcastle are easy, using metro, and to south Tyneside using the ferry. Whitley bay is defining seeing a revival, I’d choose houses closer to park road than Whitley bay metro though (This can still be a bit rough) but it’s improved ten fold in last few years so maybe the new up and coming part and could pay off. There’s no denying it isn’t London when it comes to arts and culture-or certainly free arts and culture , but ime nowhere else in England is. It does have great schools, fab universities, great cafe culture and a choice of cheap and free museums, events programmes to suit most, great nightlife, impressive architecture and access to both coast and country. However, it’s a big move and I’d personally want to do an in person recky to make sure I chose correctly for me . I lived in parts of Gateshead before here and was never settled there. Im initially from elsewhere in England and moved here years ago. Hth.

I live in exactly the same location and my kids also go to high school in Cullercoats. We most likely know each other!

@RubyFowler it’s a small ( and in our case a perfectly located part of, the) world 😃

Amazing. Thank you everybody for your feedback. Will give me a good start in the search.

If the budget is good I would definitely go Tynemouth for cafes/village-y feel/schools

Morpeth and Whitley Bay both nice and have good high schools

Bless to the person who said Crammy but not sure it would be top choice for someone with an open ended budget (and I say that as someone from there!)

North Tyneside and the coast is nice but you’ll end up driving to town and spending hours on the Coast Road stuck in traffic.

You can get the metro and avoid the traffic completely. I do this every day and it is generally pretty reliable.

I moved close to the Whitley Bay / Cullercoats border a few years ago with similar age kids. Love it! Great primary schools, friendly community with lots of young families, decent amenities (cinema / cafes / pools) plus beaches and easy metro access to the city.

Hexham is lovely.

Yes I use the metro to Newcastle (22 minutes in from Tynemouth and come every ten minutes and run up to around midnight on weekends) or walk/cycle everywhere (it’s so pretty it’s barely a chore) as I don’t drive

You are describing Ponteland, it has everything on your checklist

Kingston Park, on the off chance that you are not loaded!

I live very comfortably at the coast on a small income. I'm in North Shields which is much cheaper, not all of its lovely but I'm as near to Tynemouth as you can get. If I tipped over the border you could probably add £100,000 to the value of my house.

OP, so much depends on your budget, if money was no object I would be looking at a house on edge of the town moor in Gosforth, 5 minutes walk to the high street (8 pubs!) loads of coffee shops and restaurants, ASDA a few hundred yards away ( admittedly about an hour by car at the moment). Walk into town about 20 mins across the moor.

Is it Newcastle or Newcastle ish? Tynemouth Monkseaton and Whitley Bay are North Tyneside, Morpeth Ponteland and Hexham are Northumberland. Be aware the coast is often a fair bit cooler than inland, might seem a great idea at the moment but it's not like this 99% of the time.

If you want similar to a London High street feel in Newcastle then realistically it's Jesmond, bits of Heaton and Gosforth. Estate agents have very loose ideas of how big Tynemouth and Gosforth are. I know you said Gosforth is too central but there is the moor between it and the city centre, most people who live there don't think of it as central.

I do quite like 5 Mile Park, wide-open ( or north Gosforth according to some) nice funky houses some with decent gardens for newish builds and right next to Gosforth Park.

We moved back to Newcastle during lockdown, dunno why we ever moved away, love the place. Gannin'yem was the best decision ever.

It does depend on how close you want to be to the city, I agree with Whitley Bay and Tynemouth, great to live by the sea but not far from town.

Other options are Wylam, Ryton, Crawcrook areas.

We've just bought a lovely new build in Crawcrook/Ryton as we wanted to be away from the city but close enough to commute to things. We are moving 100 miles north so we did a lot of research on the area & this ticked all our boxes. Not sure if it will tick yours but worth a look.

@Ladyrattles you probably live on the same estate as my parents. It's really nice. I no longer live in the NE, but it was a great area to grow up.

[quote LadyDanburysHat]@Ladyrattles you probably live on the same estate as my parents. It's really nice. I no longer live in the NE, but it was a great area to grow up.[/quote]
That's lovely to hear it's a nice area from someone who knows. Our house should be completed before Sept so I can't wait to move :) The NE is so lovely

I love Gosforth (we used to live in the centre of there) but the traffic has got seriously bad in recent years, it was 'doable' bad before.
That would now put me off.

@Dimsummummy
@RubyFowler
@Tynesider007
Any ideas or comments about these schools?
Valley Gardens middle school and Whitley Bay High, Whitley Bay
St.Thomas More Catholic school, North shields
St.Wilfrids RC college, South shields

How is the Temple Park area in South Shields?

Rolands Gill, Ryton, High Spen, Shotley Bridge, Hamsterly Mills. All near where to I grew up.

[quote MDJAMS]@Dimsummummy
@RubyFowler
@Tynesider007
Any ideas or comments about these schools?
Valley Gardens middle school and Whitley Bay High, Whitley Bay
St.Thomas More Catholic school, North shields
St.Wilfrids RC college, South shields

How is the Temple Park area in South Shields?[/quote]
I don't know much about the schools, sorry.