If you left London, do you regret it?

[Hareyy]

Both DP and I are Cornish. We’ve spent almost a decade of our lives living in London. Live in a small flat in Z1 and walk everywhere. Do a lot of cultural things. But feels like we’re starting to yearn for space. We can’t afford anything more than a one bed here, and the thought of living in suburbia gives me the creeps.

So we’re thinking of leaving London for somewhere more affordable. Back to Falmouth? To Edinburgh? To Bristol?

If you left London, do you regret it?

I just meant was that my everyday life in London isn't 'fast-paced' or 'hectic' or any of the other clichés that always get trotted out on these threads

I think the congestion of people & traffic has slowed everything down & it annoys me as I want to get places fast 😆.

Moved from London to the NW. no regrets except being far from family. I would hate to move back.

No, I moved to Norfolk 15 years ago now. It is important thought to make sure you really understand what life outside London will be like. Consider areas such as transport, culture, restaurants and the proximity of good friends. Set against this is the slower pace of life, lower costs, more space and the ability to take up and expand new interests such as riding.

We did the very common London- Edinburgh move and I don't regret it at all. The scale is different, so even a suburb means you are at the very centre (not a vague toe in the edge of a zone) in 20 minutes. You can walk everywhere and have the option of either hills or beach within 30 mins. There are culturally intensive months but loads on the rest of the year and DH and I haven't struggled work wise.

It's expensive, less than London, but the prices change every ten minutes walk from the city rather than adding 20 minutes by tube for each drop in price. When I visit London now, I feel nostalgic but also very aware (especially with small people in tow) that the "30 minute" commute I told myself I had was only if all the stars aligned and wasn't really true. We now consider 50 minutes travel a "day trip" which horrifies my London based brother - so horses for courses.

Yes. A lot.

No regrets and wish we'd moved 10yrs earlier! We were in a flat between zone 1-2, had a spare room and roof terrace, so not tiny, but I yearned for more peace because it was on a busy high st.

Things I love:
-Hedgehogs and birds in the garden
-Growing veg and having a larger garden and house
-We can walk to the sea and the dog loves it

Things that are different:
-I drive nearly everytime we go out whereas previously we'd walk/get tube etc
-Although we've met people, we will likely never been seen as 'local' even though DH did grow up nearby
-I have to travel further to buy speciality ingredients
-Public transport is fairly poor and a taxi could take 2hrs!

The scale is different, so even a suburb means you are at the very centre (not a vague toe in the edge of a zone) in 20 minutes.

Thats a good point, I visited a friend in York recently & she lived about 15 mins walk from the centre, it was really nice to be that close to everything but still have an amazing house. She also had a really nice little high street around the corner. You would need millions for that in London.

I think it depends what you move for.

A lot of people leave London just because they can’t afford it / can’t afford a big enough house. I think those are most often the ones who regret it - they weren’t seeking a different lifestyle, they just ended up with one for financial reasons.

If you’re moving for more of w purpose, I suspect you are less likely to regret it. And if you move to another city, where the lifestyle can be broadly similar vs the ‘move to random suburban commuter town based on speed of its links to job’

Nearly every family I know in London is in a state of turmoil over ‘what next’ as the next ‘rung on the housing ladder’ is huge and really for very little - but the alternative of leaving means an entirely new life.

I did it slightly differently in that we moved from London aged 30 to an Asian capital city for 15 years and in my head I was always going to move back to London, but then didn't - we moved to coastal Dorset. Been back 5 years and I don't regret not moving back to London - I still really enjoy spending time there and we're on a direct train line, but a few nights at a time is enough and I like living on the coast. If we hadn't moved to Asia I think we would still have moved out but likely not as far- probably St Albans or Gerrard's Cross.

Nope. Not one bit. I live within an hour and a half ish of London so I can still go in and get my “fix” when I need to and plenty of hybrid workers live here and commute in once a week, but where I live is a lovely place with a strong community and so much going on when you look into it. The “natives” complain about how this place is going down hill, but having lived in many places I think they don’t realise how good it is and how lucky we are. The youth provision here is amazing, there are so many clubs and societies. We have beautiful countryside all around/not far from the towns, and the houses are comparatively affordable.
When I go back to London to visit family now I get a sense of nostalgia, but it’s very much a chapter closed. I feel safe here and that my children are safe.
I don’t think it’s a case of London or not though. The country is a biiiig place, some towns and cities would be better to live in than London, some way worse. You have to find somewhere that feels like a good fit for what you want. It’s also not like you can’t travel into London for the odd weekend still. You don’t move out and get banned from visiting.

ETA: I also couldn’t have afforded to buy in London, and if I had it would have been either somewhere really bad (although nowhere really is cheap anymore regardless) or on some outskirts anyway. Not having housing security means I probably would never have had children.
HOWEVER, if I already owned a house in London I wouldn’t sell it and move out, I’d rent it out because it’s very easy to get priced out of the market once you leave.

Yes. We moved for various family reasons, but I really miss living in London.

We're only just outside London, and it's a lovely location as and of itself, but it's not the same.

Yes. Me and DH moved out over 20 years ago and both regret it. We originally moved abroad and, stupidly, sold our house rather than renting it. When we came back to the UK we could not afford to live in London.

We now live in East Midlands which we both like but would rather live in London. We go back all the time, sometimes just for the day but other times for up to a week.

If we won the lottery we would go back

I don’t, but I think of it as a necessary move to allow me to progress in life. If I had stayed there’s a good chance I wouldn’t have got married, wouldn’t have kids etc. I’ve been lucky professionally in that I’ve done better out of London than I could’ve done in London too – on one hand you can’t count on that, but on the other it does reflect a calculated risk. All in all it’s worked out much better.

The thing I missed most was transport. Going from never having to schedule a journey, to no sensible buses, trains hourly in the evenings, having to buy a car … that was all hard to take.

One odd thing was how much I grew to hate having to go back. For years it seemed so dismal and downright unpleasant. I’ve got better at it now that I’ve worked out how to do it – treat it like a surgical strike, get in and get out fast, keep moving, stick to swish but previously-boring areas. The cardinal rule is never find yourself unoccupied aimlessly for an hour, you start rethinking your entire life and whether it was ever any good, and no good can come of that!

No, although I do miss aspects of it and like visiting. We moved to near the centre of a smaller city that has plenty going on, and we can walk, bus or train to most parts of it. The countryside is easy to drive to. We could never have afforded a house in centralish London.

No. We were in London for five years, in zone 2. Moved to the south west, to a small village near a city, then had two kids. I love it, I love having a garden, I love going to the beach after school, I love countryside walks, I love how friendly people are, I love being part of a small community. I thought I’d miss London, because I loved living there, and when we left we told ourselves we’d go back for weekends regularly. Well that was a decade ago and we’ve been back maybe three times.

I lived in Falmouth for a while.

After London it feels a long, long way from the rest of the world. Fine if that's what you want, but if it's not 100% what you want then the peninsula feeling is real. Even Bristol or Exeter are a long way away and in summer getting anywhere takes ages.

Any chance OP you could visit the ‘burbs’ with a teeny bit more of an open mind?

I’m in zone 2/3 (Greenwich/Westcombe Park/ Blackheath) a really nice village feel, 10 minutes walk to Greenwich park for me/10 minute walk to Blackheath’village’. Busy/vibrant, Greenwich in particular feels like city

Stupidly easy to get to Charing Cross in 14-18 minutes.

I’ve got 1600 square feet and a garden for under £600k

Things about London that you will miss -

• Free galleries and so many world class exhibitions going on all the time that you could see several a week and never run out.
• After an evening out that feeling when you drop down into the tube and the station is packed with happy people who've all had a good time, a glass of wine and the atmosphere is like the bar in the Jump Around video.
• Summer in the parks. All the people, kites, dogs, picnics.
• How smart and optimistic places like Kensington High Street feel compared to pretty much every other high street. You will miss seeing posters for luxury goods even if you never buy them. The optimism they hint as keeps you looking forward.
• The variety of food you can get just everywhere.
• London pubs. No others are like it.
• The creative people everywhere.
• Really brilliant public transport.
• The feeling that just around the corner international sport is being played, a superstar is on stage, the king is opening parliament and someone is writing an newspaper article that will change the way thousands of people think.

’ve got 1600 square feet and a garden for under £600k

Surely you wouldn’t get that sq ft at that price in today’s market?

I note a lot of people’s decisions focus around having children and needing space / family support / better schools for kids. Which the OP doesn’t mention whether it’s a factor for them.

I lived in a flat in zone 2 when I had my daughter and space was an issue but we constantly contemplated moving out. I love London and just couldn’t bring myself to do it. I’m sure I could have done it and made a go of it if we’d moved whilst my daughter was young and in school but it was thinking ahead to AFTER that, that stopped me from doing it. I couldn’t bear the thought of my daughter leaving home and being stuck somewhere so quiet for the rest of my years.

I’ve stuck it out and compromised on zone, moving a little further out to zone 3/4. Still London vibes and although I’m not bang in the middle of the action anymore, I’m there in 20 minutes on the tube.

My daughter’s now a teenager and regularly tells me she’s so glad we stayed. She loves it too. Space and garden and support etc feels really important when they’re little, but when they’re a teenager that shifts and there’s so much enrichment for them here.

Decision making probably a little different if you don’t have kids and you need to do a deep dive into what you want.

Well, I grew up in a suburban dormitory town close to London, lived in London itself for 10 years, and for the last 20 years have lived near Falmouth.

London was great in the 90s, but I loved it for its alternative, DIY culture and couldn't get over losing that and the ensuing gentrification. London life must be quite hectic nowadays with the constant struggle to earn enough to pay for somewhere to live and I couldn't handle that. Plus, when I do go back to visit I am saddened by all the new ugly blocks of investment apartments everywhere:( .

Falmouth is buzzing at the moment- there certainly isn't any lack of culture or interesting stuff to get involved in! (I'm always silently laughing at threads where posters automatically equate rural with lack of culture 😆).

But you do have to drive everywhere (especially if you live in a village, like I do), my teenager is suffering from the poor public transport (Although he will be driving soon), it is still anything but multicultural and the food is nowhere as good or varied as in London.

IME suburbia is the worst of both worlds though. Still built up and congested, and usually lacking in interest and culture unless you want to travel into London, which can be a schlep.

You don't have to go full suburbia!

There are lots of 'inner suburbs' in London where you would get a bit more space e.g. Chiswick, Dulwich, Wandsworth Common, Richmond, etc., and they definitely don't have suburban vibes. All still very expensive though.

I've lived in London 50 years and now retired in a 2-bed flat - everything on my doorstep and within walking distance. I make full use of everything the city has to offer and will never leave. My now late ex moved to the south coast and moved back after about four years - he missed London. He did move to a very suburban area, leafy and quiet, but featureless IMO. When he died the house sold very quickly - 3 bed semi with very large front and back gardens, just the type of family property that people with children want. Horses for courses.

@crackofdoom “London was great in the 90s, but I loved it for its alternative, DIY culture and couldn't get over losing that and the ensuing gentrification”

I try not to hark back to a golden age, but as an infrequent returnee it really is noticeable how this aspect has just gone. I hope these things might have moved further out and as an infrequent visitor I’m just not seeing them, but the eccentricities that made London unique and cool just aren’t there anymore, except maybe at the very high end. Officially we talk like the diversity makes it uniquely interesting but that’s cope imo, much of what you see is just the same as you’d get anywhere in Eurasia.

I moved from London to Frome 18 months ago. I'd lived in London all my life and I'm 60 this year so it was a big change!

I always said I'd never move but I was getting increasingly frustrated with the place. The noise, the crowds, the crime, everything. Plus I really wasn't making the most of it, especially since the pandemic. I rarely went into the West End, the major shopping areas (though TBF places like Westfield gave me the ick but places like Camden Market, Covent garden, Greenwich were nice but busy). Everything is so far apart as well, though obviously TFL made it easier. Many of my friends and family had moved out and my mum had died so my social and support network had shrunk.

I miss TFL and the diversity and get pangs of missing it but on the whole I'm loving small town life. Everything is walkable and there's loads going on and I've made friends here. When I do go back to London I think 'nice to visit but I wouldn't like to live there.'

keepwakingup

you can still get 1100-1200 flats with gardens (sometimes communal) with that

or if you’re prepared to walk 10 minutes further to a proper suburban 1930’s estate (I’m not 😂 I prefer flats) you can get 3 bed semis, big gardens, converted lofts and fancy kitchens