Alton, Old Basing & Fleet

[LittleSweep]

We are planning on moving from SW London to Hampshire soon. Have one DD (2). I have heart almost unanimously good things about Fleet .

Does anyone live in Old Basing - I get the feeling its an older persons area ? Seems nice and leafy but I can't really get a sense of it.

The other area we like is Alton - which seems like a lovely market town but I've read rather a lot online about it being rather chavvy. Is this just a bad reputation or actually true?

Alton is a lovely market town, it does have chavs but I think everywhere does. There's lots of mum's groups and the surrounding area is beautiful and accessible for walks, parks :)

If I had to chose between the three I would go for Alton.

I would agree that Alton is . . . swamped with chavs.

Fleet is the place to be IMO. Parks, fields, ponds, top notch schools, friendly people, lots of space, leisure centre, plenty of families with Children and not chavy at all.

Google Fleet as it has been recently voted the happiest place to live twice in recent years.

All the best.

I live just outside of Alton in a village which is lovely but the town centre really doesn't have much going for it. I wouldn't call it chavy though - bit harsh! Just the usual town centre issues that every town has. Old Basing is a bit old people and not much to do and I'm not keen on Fleet because it sits on a sink hole but the 2 senior schools there are really good.

schools in Alton are good afaik, has a good 6th Form college. it's a nice enough town. villages outside Alton are lovely.

Other places to consider are Hook (good transport M3 and mailine to Waterloo) housing's probably about the same prices as Fleet/Basing.
it's a large village, but has pubs, a tesco, sainsbury is planned, has takeaways, good primary schools, feeding to good secondary.

there are playgroups, and mums and toddler groups too.

depends what you want, if it's country, peace and quiet, fresh air and green places to run kids legs off, think slight outside of the more towny places.

if commuting is important Hook, hartley wintney are good (HW is more pricey though) Odiham even more so.

Basing is ok...bit of a basingstoke/chineham overspill.

places like Sherfield on Loddon have nice new places to live and you can access train/road system fairly well.

DS does a class in Fleet centre every weekend, so I know the high street well, it has a good range of shops and services. anywhere around here is pretty good for families tbh.

Thanks everyone. We have now sold our house but not found anywhere to buy. We are fairly focused on fleet / church crookham area but the market is so sluggish. Getting v nervous hoping something we like comes up ??