Annie welcome to Mumsnet. If you'd like to chat to people local to you, you can join the Mumsnet Loal boars here
local.mumsnet.com/find-a-local-site
On there you can find your town and learn about meet ups and baby classes etc.
There are also loads of different boards on Mumsnet just for talking about things you might be interested in.
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/_chat this is chat...and you can just dive into the conversations there or start your own...
There are hobby boards, education boards....everything you could think of.