Commuter towns with cheap season ticket

[Psychgrad]

My DP has a job based in London which requires him to travel daily to various parts of london (for example, Wimbledon/ Upminster/ Bexleyheath/ enfield). He gets his travel paid which isn’t too much because we live in zone 3 in London. However, we are thinking of moving out of london in a year or two and his boss said he would pay up to 2k a year on travel if we decide to move.

I don’t know where to begin looking, I was thinking Leigh on sea or folkestone as we heard they have culture/ diversity similar to london(not sure if that’s true) but the season tickets are a lot more than 2k. To narrow it down, we like beaches/ nature/ hiking as well as nice independent coffee shops/ restaurants. We’ve always lived in a city so somewhere where there are things going on would be ideal. We’re also planning on having children in the next two years so somewhere that has lots of baby groups/ good schools would be great too!

Does such a place exist?

No such place exists if you want a beach as well as far as I'm aware due to season tix price- somewhere like Hastings would suit- but higher season tix- closest I would suggest is somewhere like Twickenham or teddington or Hampton or kingston- no beach but nice walks - parks and river

There's no way that Folkestone has the culture/ diversity similar to London!

You can find out the cost of a season ticket here:
www.nationalrail.co.uk/times_fares/season-calculator.aspx]]

As I said above, you can get the nature/hiking but not the beach

If you want cheap(er) transport but want to feel more out of London, you're probably best off looking at the outer limits of the tube - Epping has lovely forest nearby, for example. Otherwise, you'll need to subsidise travel but maybe move somewhere with cheaper property so that you don't lose out overall. Not sure anywhere in the south has the same diversity as London, tbh. But certainly there are lots of places of improving diversity - someone posted a diversity map of the U.K. on a thread the other day.

Another £2k say, spread over a year isn’t a massive amount if it means you can buy a cheaper/nicer house or have a better quality of life.
Would you consider a bit more and the £2k is just a contribution to this?

Essentially the further out you are the more the season ticket will be.

I'm in zone 5 SE London and a point to point season ticket (i.e. no bus/tube etc) is currently exactly £2k

I think you need to decided how much above the £2k you are willing/able to spend

Do you mean contribute another 2k to travel ourselves on top of what DP’s boss is offering? So that would be a season ticket of 4k. That might be an idea actually as we would have more options and I think Leigh-on-sea is about 3-4k a year for an annual ticket.

And yes we definitely would like to buy a house at some point. Our incomes won’t allow us to buy in London anytime soon so this is why we need to move.

Yeah we’ve looked into Epping but it’s quite expensive to buy.