Should I move away from my friends to a small market town?

[appleturnovers]

I just want to know if I'm making the right decision...

Me and DH and DD (1) currently rent in a very trendy central area of a big city with loads of shops, bars, cafes etc. within 10 minute's walk. We've a close-knit circle of friends and an active social life, although we are far away from family (5 hours away is the closest. My parents live opposite ends of the country from each other and DH's parents live abroad, so we have 3 far-away places to visit, 2-3 times a year each, which is tiring and expensive).

We’ve just been given notice to leave our flat, and there is is absolutely no way we could possibly afford to stay where we currently are due to rising rents and house prices (we eventually want to buy), so the two options we've come up with are:

1. Move to the very distant outer suburbs of the city we’re in - so we'd technically still be in the city, albeit no longer within walking distance of our friends/the city centre, over an hour away on public transport, plus technically even further for our families to come and visit us as we'd be a long way from the city's central train and coach stations; or

1. Move to the other side of the country to a small market town, close to one side of my family, slightly easier connections for my DH's parents when they fly over, although 1 hour longer for my other parent to get to us on the train. And we'd have no friends at all nearby.

We are leaning towards moving to the market town, because whilst we'd be further from my mum's side of the family, my dad's side would be within "popping in distance", thus cutting the number of long-distance journeys we have to do every year by a third (leaving us more energy to do the now-slightly-longer trip to see my mum). We also think that if we stayed in our current city, we would have to live so far out in order to afford a house that realistically we probably wouldn't see that much of our friends or enjoy the benefits of living in the city anyway (especially since we've got a baby now and none of our friends have).

But is there any flaw in my reasoning? Is it madness to leave a close-knit friendship group behind? Has anyone else got experience of either moving from city to suburbs, or city to market town? Are there any other pitfalls I haven't considered?

I couldn’t think of anything worse - but that’s me! If you think you’ll make friends easily (I definitely don’t) and you’ll be happy then go for it.

@TheCountessofFitzdotterel

I am a fan of market towns for bringing up children because they (well at least, the one I grew up in and the one I live in now) seem to be in a sweet spot between being safe enough for children to have freedom at a relatively young age and connected enough that you don’t need to be a taxi for your teenagers. They do need to be near enough a city for the teenagers to escape from sometimes and for you to go to for specific activities or socializing if your town is too small to find exactly what you want.

Yes, my ideal is either to be in a busy village, or on the edge of a market town. With a city on the train line for when they're older.

I grew up in a busy rural area (holiday hot-spot) and we had tonnes of freedom because there was only so much trouble we could get into, but we could still nip to a city for a special day out.

@ComtesseDeSpair

Agree that it totally depends on the town. I lived for several years in a village equidistant to two market towns which couldn’t have been more different.

One was popular with commuters into the major city 35 miles away due to its location and easy drive in, it was therefore quite cosmopolitan and had many residents who had either moved out of said city or come from other parts of the UK and abroad.

The other was far more more parochial and the sort of place where the majority of residents had lived for literally generations. In many ways it felt like nobody had properly grown up; you’d go into shops and cafes where the staff were in constant spats with each other because of long-standing family disagreements or because they’d been “enemies” at secondary school and had never left that mentality behind. Many people were very inward looking and thought of aforementioned major city 35 miles - which I commuted into daily - as a far off land that they only visited once a year to go Christmas shopping! Utterly strange place.

Ooh what town was this?