@OneDayIWillLearn
I’m probably taking your search too much to heart @Bigmove25 but been thinking about you this morning, maybe as we are also in the process of a big relocation which is taking a while to get off the ground.
Well you have definitely given it more thought than I did yesterday. That's for sure! But, jokes aside, it’s a very big deal, this relocation malarkey.
😉
Do you think there is a risk you are letting the perfect be the enemy of the good? You seem quite quick to find reasons why places aren’t suitable and I get that as I’ve done similar things as we’ve been looking. Also as you browse more and more houses/ suggestions with different attractions it gets harder not to get an ever longer list of things you’re looking for. For example we’ve looked a couple of places near the sea and while that wasn’t really a criteria I now find myself thinking ‘oh but it’s not walking distance of the sea’ with everywhere else. Or once you’ve looked at somewhere with amazing views then anywhere that doesn’t have those has it held against them.
I think I’ve only really discounted Cheltenham. Even Stroud (ish) is back on the table. Apparently DH said no to Stroud town and not to the villages (calling BS on that one but will let it go!) turns out he is open to both Minch and Nailsworth (and both have pavements, yay)... but now I don't need the worry about primary schools so now I wonder if Malmesbury or Chipping Norton would be more sensible or somewhere new!
Lovely Thame is only discounted as it's very expensive being so well connected to London (not due to the murders). 10 years ago we needed access to London. Now we don't.
i think you are looking for somewhere with no compromises and I’m not sure such a place exists, especially as some as the things you are looking for are kind of opposites. If there was a vibrant village with pavements all round it but in a lovely countryside location, several pubs to walk to, a local theatre and gym but no traffic or pollution, with a great but easy to get into secondary school, academically excellent but not too pushy, ideally walking distance to the school and also the sea or a river but no risk of flooding, low house prices and a welcoming but established local community with great ethnic diversity…..well I think you’d have found it by now and probably so would all the world!
This isn't a search to find a perfect place, just a thread for new ideas of where to look (Bedford anyone??????) and some advice on which areas that have become too monied. Ultimately schools and what there is for tweens/teens to access will be he deciding factor.
I don’t need all those things… just asking mumnetters to pointing to places that might have some of them. I think I’ve said I’d rather have a supermarket and council gym than Daylesford farm shop (&yoga). Doesn’t mean I won’t move to a place without a local council gym. I was just pointing out that I’m not particularly ‘fancy’. 10 years ago the Cotswold fit the bill. Countryside, great pubs, farm shops, live gigs etc but other parts of the country are fast catching up .
We hired a Cotswold relocation agent pre-Covid as there wasn’t much on the market even then (things were getting snapped up before we could get down to view) hence asking if things are just as bad (as they then went nuts over lockdown). So it wasn’t lack of trying. We gave up and as we need to apply for schools so stayed in London.
I suspect your search may get easier if you pin down a couple of non-negotiable criteria plus a budget and then try out a few places for a few days holiday and also try to trust that you will be able to be happy somewhere even if it isn’t perfect in every sense of the word. People are living happy lives in all the places that have been mentioned.
I, have visited many of the suggested places (Cheltenham so many times I even ended up in A&E once… but that’s another story!!) and will be visiting others that are of interest. Many suggestions on here about Oxfordshire villages, Worcestershire, Rutland and some PMs about Herefordshire and Shropshire are going to be investigated. We started this search 10 years ago, things have changed and it would be silly to still be looking in places that offered us great pre-schools etc
you mentioned on another thread that your budget is £500K to £2m….but surely how much you spend in that range will make a big impact on how soon and to what extent you can semi-retire, which will make massively more difference to your day to day lives than where exactly you live. Why not try, as a thought experiment, a wide search of 4 bed houses at £600-£750K, for example, and see if there are any houses or locations that catch your interest.
Budget is what it is because London houses are expensive. Don't necessarily want to spend it all as I don't see the need to scale up the new house to fit the budget. A long way south of £1m would be ideal.
a friend who did a big ‘out of London’ relocation recently told me that 80% of her life is still pretty much exactly the same….if you have young children and are working I suspect many people would find the same with a relocation.
I'm SAHM and DH can now work anywhere and probably part-time. Hence the ’semi-retirement’ (although I probably should change that to FIRE - to keep us young!!!)
Good schools are important but you can never guarantee your child will be happy at any given school and schools can easily change when a head leaves/ some other random change comes along or reputation changes.
Yes, that’s why I want somewhere with options so a move would be possible if needed. I can go private for but very happy with state school offerings in London and am sure there are other great schools elsewhere. I don't want private to be the default. The Times parent power only gives a 2-D view of a schools. MNetters give a far better balanced view.
Or perhaps you actually want to stay where you are? But just spend more weekends doing countryside trips if that’s important to you?
I also think it’s always going to be tough to leave a place where you have been happy for a while - our current move involves leaving an area and house we very actively chose and we do have friends and family in the area that it will be a wrench to leave. No new house and area are going to be great enough to stop me having some sadness about what we are going to leave. And every time we have seen somewhere we are in any sense serious about the sadness and ‘but what about the things we will be giving up??’ anxiety thoughts start up. But on balance I still feel it’s the right thing to do and I’m excited about it, though it will be different in many ways and I think the change will have ups and downs in the early days.
No I’m ready to go. DH is also ready (he’s the one now pushing for it). But we have time to do a little more research. I hear you about your concerns. I know our house will sell in a heartbeat as it's become very sought after recently and there's very little for sale. That's part of the reason for the move now rather than in a few years - to cash in - but I also know once we go there's always so little on the market we'd struggle to come back to what we currently have now if we make a big mistake. So it feels very final. The new (annoying) neighbours are making it an easier decision though…. as even the 'same' can change!
anyway, like I say, I have probably spent far too long thinking about this so feel free to ignore the ramblings of someone in their own mid-life crisis relocation!!
Do you want to swap? You work out mine and I’ll do yours? 😉