to ask if it's grim moving up north

[Eugenekrabs1]

I am from the south (England) and have lived here for most of my life. DH is from the north but has lived in the south for many years. We have children who are school age.

Circumstances have changed for us recently and because of this, we are considering a move to H's northern homeland. I'm wondering what other people's experiences of moving their family have been like.

H has friends and family there whereas I (although being welcomed by them) will not have any friends and will need to find a new job. Our kids are not keen to move.

In short, we don't have to move but there are lots of pros to us taking the leap. At the moment I have a list of pros and cons which I will proceed to bore you with....

Pros
Bigger house with little mortgage
Job change for me (something I want)
DH is close to friends and family - lovely for him
Can get a dog (all want one, current house small)

Cons
Taking kids out of schools they are happy in. They will have to make new friends.
Once we sell in the south it is unlikely we will be able to afford to return
No friends/family close to me
Leaving an area I like (but a house that's too small and expensive to extend)
Rain up north

I'd be grateful to hear any tales of similar moves. Is it grim up north or should I just stop being risk averse and make the move?

'Yes OP, 'the North' is one great homogenised blob where no area differs from another... they're all grey, damp and filled with match stalk folk chomping on pie crusts. Tis grim indeed '

And the South is full of arrogant, anti-social rich people with no sense of geography who would never cope in robust Northern climes.

Or you could all just travel around a bit and make up your own minds.

South Manchester and North Cheshire is probably one of the most family friendly parts of the country. I was worried, moving from Guildford but it was awash with family stuff and the boys settled really well.

Your children won't have to go to school. They can go straight up a chimney when you move and start paying their way.

It's like down south, make sure you live in a posh part and you'll be fine.

Depends where you're moving to and from. I'm from a big northern town but would never leave london now. But if I was choosing between Reading and Leeds or something I'd be fine with the northern version. However, I actually agree that the rain thing is a con. I remember constant grey skies where I grew up and it does get depressing.

'Near Manchester' covers a multitude of sins. Yes, some parts of Manchester are grim, but just a few miles south in Cheshire there are beautiful places, but not cheap. Expect to pay £500,000 minimum for a family house in a nice area.

I should think you could have an excellent quality of life by making the move. Manchester is a great city in itself with good job prospects and culture and there is beautiful wild countryside and coastline not too far away.

However if the weather is a concern for you then think carefully. One look at the solar energy maps will show you how much less sunlight there is in the NW compared to the south.

I know my mental health and energy levels are affected significantly by grey, cold days and I would not move north for this reason alone.

(I live about as far south west as you can get in the UK and we barely get a frost, let alone snow in the winter!)

But why wouldn't there be family friendly stuff to do? Northern families want to do activities with their children too. Northern children are just children, they need activities and friends and all of that normal stuff. It sort of proves the point that some southern people see people up north as different and 'other'. It's crackers.

Lancashire is godzone county. And as for rain - we've had more on holiday in so-called "sunny" Devon than in the Lake District.

YABU with far too many clichés about" the North"

My post was in jest Mischief because the OP asked about 'The. North'. I would never claim The South was without variation because I have travelled the UK extensively.

Lancashire is the best though .

A few points to add from me from personal experience:

• I was moved as a primary age child and whilst I didn't like it much for a short time, I got over it quickly and, with hindsight, was happy my parents made the move. They'll be fine
• I moved to Yorkshire in my 20s and I did notice the difference in the weather, it was noticably wetter & was necessary to carry a brolly or have a hooded coat for most of the time. I also had to scrape ice off my car every day for months in the winter and have to do it literally a couple of days a year here (Essex)
• for financial reasons alone, I would rent your South house out and rent a North house if you're unable to buy up North whilst keeping your current house.

Good luck, on balance based on what you've written, I'd say go for it, sounds worth the risk to me.

Actually, I did live in Lndon for a couple of years after Uni. I loved it but there is no way we would have the quality of life there that we have now here.

Our house would cost a least twice what it is worth here, probably more. We'd pay a fortune in travel to work. We could only afford to buy somewhere way out of London.

To those saying that there are equal amounts of family stuff to do - I don't think this is true, necessarily. How much free stuff councils put on varies wildly, and I think london benefits from massively more funding than other places. There's also a lot of free cultural stuff in museums/galleries in london. You also often have to travel a lot further and by car to do things outside london. I don't know how places in the south that aren't london compare to the north though.

Actually, scrub my previous post. It's awful up here. Really grim. Everywhere is soot and whippets and flat caps and dark satanic mills. The rain is constant and its winter for 9 months.

And we don't like Southerners

You are going to have to sell this to your children bigtime if you want to avoid a lot of stress, so I wouldn't...:

'We would move to the area DH's family/friends live because we would have people to socialise with etc straight away. Although it's not a very pretty place and there are other amazing places mentioned above, it seems to make sense'

Choose somewhere lovely, with good schools and a decent infrastructure and somewhere that your children will see as desirable. They will have a tough time adapting, DD learnt how to speak Lancashire out of the house and would swap over to southern English as she crossed the threshold as a response to bullying.
You may appreciate not having a lot of your DH's family continuously looking over your shoulder and commenting on how you are adapting and laughing at your funny little ways whilst you are settling in.
Being half an hour or more away might be a good thing.

I kind of miss the rain actually. I live in Sweden now and we just don't get that kind of '40 days and nights' kind of rain you do in the UK. Proper rain, like. It's been consistently sunny the last month and rather warm, and some deep primeval Yorkshire part of my soul is unsettled at the wrongness of it.

Its funny what you miss...

Its grim up north. I won't mention my afternoon spent on a beach in sunshine with my sister & cousin & 4 small children, with 20 mins notice. We had so much fun building dams.

It was quiet, clean, we are part of a proper village community, we have a decent local primary school with none of the hassle down south. Catchment is simple, you live in the village, you go to the school. Job done.

Why would I live in London?? It baffles me?

But please tell everyone it is grim up north, that way we keep it's loveliness for ourselves :)

we moved from Devon to Yorkshire when I was 13, and my sister was 11. It was rough at school for a short while (teasing about accents, and being in different places in the syllabus in different subjects) but we soon settled. We have both lived elsewhere in the UK and abroad, but have both returned to raise our children in Yorkshire.

When we moved up here, our parents sold a bog standard 3 bed semi in an average area, and got a 4 bed detached in the poshest bit of our city (footballers, CEO's & solicitors for neighbours etc etc).

Go for it - you don't have to live right next to your friends/relations, but being much nearer will make it easier to see them anyway.

We moved from near Manchester to Essex a few years ago. I wouldn't go back. Weather is tons better and love it here.

I think one of the wettest places in the UK is Cornwall. Geography 101...

We've had 'children of the South' join our school (Lancashire market town), with no problems whatsoever. As far as I'm aware, the other children have been too busy making friends to really notice the difference in accents.

My advice would be to move to somewhere 'nice' because other people from outside that area will also have moved in because of what the area has to offer.

Our town has a pretty canal, a river, a high street filled with independent shops and loads of community stuff going on. There are lots of similar places around Greater Manchester, Cheshire and Lancashire.

I'd go for somewhere that suits your family, has great schools, and families of your age. You don't necessarily have to move to the exact town your DH's relatives live in.

Theycallmemellowjello, I wasn't comparing to London. I was comparing to Guildford but we have also lived in Tunbridge Wells and St Albans. All very similar and similar to where we are now except we also have Manchester and all it offers on our doorstep plus the Peak District and Lakes and hour/hour and half away. This is NCT heaven plus every extra curricular activity you could think of within 15min inc a plethora of sport, martial arts, horse riding, archery, every type of dance class, Olympic pool and velodrome. More parks and green space than we could need; Tatton Park, Lyme Park, Dunham Massey, Styal Mill all within 10/15min drive.

Yeah, terrible oop 'ere op. Stay away.

Ssshhhh nomorerenting they'll all want to come!

It's great up north. But Manchester barely qualifies...