Moving up north, best places to live

[Sleepylou]

Hi folks,

I’m just after some advice please.
Please bear with me, it’s going to be quite the novel 🤦🏼‍♀️
Myself, husband and two young sons are looking to move up to Northumberland.
We currently live in a very small village down south in West Sussex, were pretty far south and fairly close to Brighton.
Our eldest son goes to the local village school which he is very happy at, it is very small and suits his needs/personality well.
We are very lucky that we are able to walk to school and have a lovely park and green incredibly close.
Our reason for moving is that we are completely priced out of the area that we have always lived, and renting is just too expensive, £950 for a small two bed house. This is just about fine for our current needs but a property where we live for what we actually need would set us back about £1300-£1400 a month.
My husband works as an engineer in London but also has a job in a supermarket doing 3 nightshifts a week, as you can imagine we cannot continue like this.
I’m unable to get a job as I look after our youngest son, due to husbands earnings we don’t qualify for the free nursery hours, and we have no family available to help us out with childcare, even so this would still not be enough to cover living costs, potential unexpected bills etc.
We have had enough and want better for all of us, hubby spent 6 years at uni and at the moment it feels like it was for nothing. We are getting no where fast.
Up in Northumberland we can actually afford to buy our own house that’s suitable for our families size, where as down here we really have no hope, a one bed flat would even be too much.
We’d be able to have evenings and weekends as a family and money to spare to go holiday etc, things that do not happen currently.
I apologise I’ve rambled, my question is, what villages are nice to live in but have some community feel and a walkable primary school that isn’t huge.
We have been looking at Alnwick, Morpeth, Pegswood but we really have no idea.
My husband would need to be around 30-40 minutes commute to Newcastle for work.
We’re all excited for a new adventure and looking forward to see how much friendlier people are than us southerners 😉

Morpeth and Alnwick are lovely.
I'd avoid Ashington , Bedlington , Blyth, Cramlington (I live in one of those and wouldn't recommend 😆) . I grew up in Morpeth , the schools are brilliant and there's good transport links to Newcastle as well. Good luck with the move!

My dp grew up in Alnwick, mil still lives there. I love it, want to move there but dp won't move back due to the fact its a little village and he doesn't drive. It's a very touristy (is that a word? ) place in the summer, sil hates it due to tourists not being able to park properly 😂

Alnwick is a bit far for a 40 min commute to Newcastle. Ellington, morpeth and better.

Thank you bath and bread!
This is great to hear they are nice areas.
Could you please tell me what kind of villages they are. Do they have a park? Green? Local shop?
We will obviously be visiting but wanted to narrow down our areas to see before hand.
We can deal with touristy, Brighton is touristy all year around 🤦🏼‍♀️ People can’t drive properly let alone park 😆

Dementedswan how much of a commute would you say it is please?

I'm an Ashington lad (Hirst if you're a local).

Avoid anywhere that used to have a colliery would be my main piece of advice!

Start with where in Newcastle your husband will be working.
Then look at how he will be commuting to there.
Then look at what transport options are available.

Big differences in an acceptable 30 minute commute if he can only use public transport versus a car. Or motorcycle vs car if commuting for a 9-5.

Now choose:

east - Seaside
west - Tyne valley
northwest - Cheviots hills

Spend hours browsing sites such as:

englandsnortheast.co.uk/ashington-newbiggin-lynemouth/

and avoid places on that page!

Be aware that seaside within 30 minutes commute is either desirable and out of your price range or has the usual problems of time-expired seaside resorts.

Try experimenting with this commuting time tool

app.traveltimeplatform.com/search/0_lat=55.00915&0_lng=-1.57955&0_title=NE7%207ND%2C%20Newcastle%20upon%20Tyne%2C%20England%2C%20United%20Kingdom

app.traveltimeplatform.com/search/0_lat=55.00915&0_lng=-1.57955&0_title=NE7%207ND%2C%20Newcastle%20upon%20Tyne%2C%20England%2C%20United%20Kingdom&0_mode=driving

map showing collieries

www.dmm.org.uk/maps/1951n00.htm

Thank you grumpyolderbloke, that’s all really helpful.
He would most likely be driving to work.
So are you saying to be near the coast will either be costly for a nice area or the place will be a bit done with and cheaper?
Can I ask why these places are best to avoid?

@GrumpyOlderBloke that's tickled me. I'm also from the Hirst area !

OP he is right. Northumberland is beautiful but ex mining towns aren't the greatest places to live , they're run down and the councils don't want to invest in them.

Morpeth has several parks , loads of shops , a leisure centre and 4 primary schools , two middle schools and a high school.

I would move back to Northumberland tomorrow if I could, best place in the world :)

My top choices around there would be
Tynemouth
Alnwick
Morpeth
(Some parts of) Whitley Bay
East Boldon
Jesmond Vale (if you want to get closer to the city)

Thank you bubblegumbottles, it's nice to hear how highly you rate the area, its handy to have a selection of places to research.

In terms of cinemas, restaurants, bowling etc, would the nearest for this be Newcastle?

Is it pretty standard to have the 3 tier schooling system in the north?

There's a cinema and bowling at Cramlington as well as a Clip n Climb and a kids pool. Morpeth has a few restaurants (Italian , Turkish ect), Cramlington has some nice restaurants as well as places like Hungry Horse and Nando's.

I think most of Northumberland has changed to academies now but in Morpeth it's still 3 tier.

Ok, perfect, thank you 😊 from what I could tell from a quick glance there is a lot to do around. It's just very hard to tell when the place is just a name on the map at the moment.
Things will become clearer once we've visited.

How does shilbottle rate? Or is this still just Alnwick?

Shilbottle is quite rural and would be quite a long commute to Newcastle. I'm unsure what the public transport is like .

Pm'd you OP

I would say it's a good hours commute by car from alnwick to Newcastle. Could be even more in rush hour traffic.

Cramlington to Newcastle is around 20 mins.

Bedlington to Newcastle around 30 mins and about 40 mins from morpeth.

Cramlington might be better for you as a pp said there is a cinema, bowling, clip and climb, swimming, airbox, and lots of parks. It's not exactly rural northumberland but an easy access location for commuting. It's only 12 mins via train into Newcastle.

We would rather find the right place for us over how close it is to Newcastle, it's handy to get a grip on how far different places realistically are to commute.
We'd rather it be a bit further but exactly where we want to live.

As people born and bred in the north would you have any negativity to us southerners with a 'posh' accent? We're really not posh btw 😆

Have you looked at the warkworth area? It's lovely in that part of Northumberland.

FYI if your into cheese Morpeth has the most fabulous cheese shop !

Also a little further inland but still very handy for Newcastle is Hexham ( they have a Waitrose )

I'm just south of Newcastle and can take mil home to Alnwick in about 45/50 min on a clear run on the A1. (sticking to speed limits.)

Do you need to be Northumberland? How about moving your search south to County Durham? Probably more options re: school and transport

I would probably look a bit further south than Alnwick.
I used to live about 5 miles south of Alnwick and it took me 35-45 mins depending on the traffic to get to the Tyne tunnel. Once I got off the back roads it was just A1/A19 but was awful sat in stationary traffic at the very end of my journey.

I loved living in the countryside, and didn't mind the commute except when the weather was bad as it was near on impossible getting out of the small villages in the snow.

We now live in Whitley Bay which is much more convenient for public transport etc, and is really easy to get in to Newcastle city. Plus the beautiful seaside is right on our doorstep!

Good luck with your hunt.

What about west of Newcastle? Wylam, Prudhoe, Hexham? Or Ponteland? I haven't lived in any of these places, so couldn't comment on their sense of community, but there's some nice housing, and good schools. Morpeth is a great place - again, good schools, lots to do, easy reach of the coast, countryside and Newcastle.