To want to move up North in my situation?

[Barefootsummers]

We have 2 children and would love a bigger family. We currently live in the south east in our own home which is a small 2/3 bed flat with no garden. Up North we could afford a detached house with small amount of land (550k). Thinking West Yorkshire. I love the countryside and this lifestyle rather than fancy restaurants / boutiques etc. We could work in similar jobs up North. It's a no brainer for me but my DH is not convinced. His reasons against are that the housing market is always secure in the south east, schooling is better and it affords more opportunity. I guess I'm not looking for anyone to tell me what I should or shouldn't do but just need some perspective on this. Anyone? Thanks in advance!

[Distractotron]

Have a look at Nidderdale. It's beautiful 😊

[AccrualIntentions]

QforCucumber very true I don't even really mind being dragged down to visit my Boro relatives because we always head out of town to the gorgeous countryside.

[BarbaraofSevillle]

Is that Roseberry Topping in the distance Q? That's a lovely walk.

Saltburn by the Sea is a really nice old fashioned seaside town, just a few miles south of Middlesborough.

I really don't know where some people get their ideas from - truely baffling.

[DarthMaiden]

@Ttbb

Who the he'll is harvey Nichols? I didn't say that there weren't some great places up north. Yorkshire dales are lovely but if you're used to living somewhere nice northern cities can be a bit hard to stomach.
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So exactly where do you live that's as nice as places like York and Harrogate for example?

[BarbaraofSevillle]

Sorry - east of Middlesborough. It's Redcar that Saltburn is south of. But a lot of the east coast is truely stunning - Northumberland, Whitby, Filey, Robin Hood's Bay. Lovely, just lovely.

[CrowyMcCrowFace]

Another vote for the Hudd here.

Xh & I had a beautiful doer upper 6 bedroom victorian house. Cost us about £235 in 2009 (& sold for about the same 2 years ago as part of acrimonious divorce. Ah well.)

Schools are good - King James School or Holmfirth excellent. Queen Elizabeth Grammars in Wakefield (easy train commute for dc) also very good if you prefer the private route. State Sixth Form college at Greenhead is brilliant.

Less than an hour from Leeds or Manchester to drive or by train, & in 10 minutes drive you're in beautiful countryside.

Admittedly you do get '4 seasons in a day' quite often. I live somewhere hot now, & an Arabic colleague with a wife from t'north of England was recently complaining bitterly about freezing his arse off on their 'summer vacation' visit to the in laws in Winterfell. He liked the pubs & clubs though.

If I had to live in the UK again, it'd be an absolute no brainer.

[QforCucumber]

It is indeed Barbara I live in a leafy suburb of Middlesbrough so it's a regular weekend stroll. DM lives near Saltburn and ds loves going to the beach with her.
Accrual it's not a bad place really but I can see why it gets the bad rep - especially with the lack of employment, and lack of want from a lot of the central residents. Middlesbrough town centre isnt somewhere I spend my spare time - much preferring the drive to Newcastle/Leeds/York for days shopping etc. Which is a shame as the potential really is there.

[PickAChew]

I've never been north east but always imagine it to be grey and run down with lots of rain so it's very interesting to read here how nice it is.

Now rain is one thing the NE isn't famed for - when it rains properly, it's usually because there's a storm passing over. Now we do get some absolutely ruthless winds and definitely more than our fair share of snow, partly due to the altitude of a lot of the region. We can be snowed in and DS1's school 45 mines away has barely a covering.

And the fog on the Tyne is real, all right. We definitely had it on the Wear, this morning and it persisted all the way down into North Yorkshire.

Average temperatures in the NE are about 3C lower than the SE, but I like that - I can't cope with heat - we had the mugginess today, despite the fog, and I was bloody miserable with it when we weren't in our air conditioned car!

But not rain. The Pennines have normally wrung the clouds dry before they reach us :o

[LoniceraJaponica]

"I really don't know where some people get their ideas from - truly baffling."

From watching Coronation Street I expect.

[EB123]

I am in West Yorkshire, there are some beautiful areas, so much to do for families, fab shopping, bars and so on. I grew up in the SE so have a strong southern accent but I can't remember the last time anybody commented on it.

[potatoscowls]

I love the manchester accent

[potatoscowls]

And yorkshire

[Mummaofboys]

I live in the North and always have but I think you may have the wrong idea about swapping South and North living. You say you can get a similar job up here which is quite possible but the wages are lower which is why homes are cheaper, so you will prob have less disposable income. There are plenty of people here wanting jobs it's not like you can just walk into any job you wish, we are not all stupid and need southern people to take up good jobs.

[hethinksimstupid]

I saw this house the other day. It's absolutely gorgeous www.onthemarket.com/details/3823051/

[Hereslookingatyoukid]

Oh Saltburn is my happy place! Absolutely beautiful, particularly in the middle of winter when there's no one else there! And Roseberry Topping is the back drop to my wedding photos! It's awful up here though, nobody else should move up! 😉

[guinnessgirl]

I was born and grew up in the SE, moved to West Yorkshire for uni, and never looked back. It's wonderful - so much going on, stunning countryside, better quality of life, cheaper cost of living, and lovely friendly people on the whole. Why not try it, as PP have said, starting with renting and then selling up and buying if you like it? What's to lose?

[PickAChew]

Middlesbrough and Stockton town centres do seem to be trying to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. I quite like the compactness of Middlesbrough if I want something specific and I'm passing through. It's a lot more diverse than many other town centres in the NE, I find and has more interesting drunks! There seems to be some interesting arts stuff going on and some of the parks in both boro and Stockton are very well maintained, unlike the ones in Darlo, some of which are just downright scary.

I live in a very cheap house in a mining village close to Durham. 14 years today and the most bother we've had is a cheap plant pot being nicked from our back yard and used as a football! The other end of the village bears the signs of dereliction that so many mining villages are blighted by, but this end is lovely and peaceful and the primary school is amazing. Apart from the extortionate (but good) public transport, it's a much better place to be not well off than many places down South or in any inner city, I suspect.

[SenatorBunghole]

London has the worst property affordability of any UK region mumma. Ratio of average wage to average home price is worse in London than anywhere in the north.

[MortifiedinAsda]

Im excited to see the weather is not rainy but cold. I love crisp frosty winter days and as i said before the snow too. We will be going up to the NE for a reccy in a month or two - the idea is to rent first and then buy later if all goes well.

Will also look at independent schools as well as village schools - it depends on what we can rent really as we need to rent somewhere with a bit of land for my sons pony and daughters horse. We would ideally like to be no more than about half an hour from Durham.

I do worry a bit about DS1 as he will have the disadvantage of having a southern accent to start school with as well as a stammer which comes and goes - im hoping that DS1 who is 8 and DS2 who is 5 will settle in and get their accent on within and a year - if nothing else so that they can settle in.

[LoniceraJaponica]

Mortified MIL lives in Northumberland. She still gets plenty of damp and rainy days.

[MortifiedinAsda]

I'm from Devon originally and nowhere is as damp and rainy as there! As long as its not too hot i don't mind, we live in Norfolk now so the SE and when there is a heatwave in the UK its always the hottest in the SE.

[YorkieDorkie]

The biggest "grey wasteland" I know is called London the north is stunning! Not now mind... winter is coming. 🐺

[ShellyBoobs]

Another vote for Huddersfield.

Someone else mentioned HD8 - that's not far from us. There are some stunning villages and from some of them Wakefield and Huddersfield are only 15-20 mins away, with a train from Wakefield to Leeds only taking around 10 mins.

15-20 mins in another direction and you can be somewhere like Holmfirth.

I spend lots of time in London and other cities on business but always look forward to getting back home. There's really nowhere else I can think of that offers the stunning countryside we have alongside easy access to thriving vibrant cities like Leeds and Manchester - even London is only 2hrs from Wakefield.

£550k in HD8 could realistically buy you a fantastic house in a quiet location with a bit of land and within the catchment of Ofsted 'outstanding' schools.

[UrsulaPandress]

Look. Why on earth is anyone trying to convince southerners to move up here?

They won't like it. It will be cold. And wet. And nothing to do.