Moving near Preston

[AussieBrooke]

Hello, I'm from Australia and desperately trying to find a nice little town or village within 30 minutes drive to Preston. We have young children and a great school is essential. Any recommendations on where we should or should not be looking?

Thanks

Redpanda I don't think so, been quite a few times and seems nice to me. Maybe a bit soulless but good access etc. I can ask my friend for more info if you like?

I'd recommend you avoid Buckshaw "Village". Awful place. It's a ginormous housing estate (2k+ houses) built on brownfield land that used to the owned by the government and housed one of the country's biggest munitions factories. As a result of this population influx, local services in the area are overrun and creaking. Traffic on the A6 is horrendous. There are lots of new build houses in this area for your budget as so many houses have been built that Chorley now stretches into Preston as one big suburb and the old villages have been pretty much lost in the mass of new builds and population explosion. That's the Central Lancs Development Corporation's handiwork for you.

I live in lytham.good schools, nice little town centre. Good sense of community. St Anne's is nice, staining, kirkham, warton, freckleton your spoilt for choice when it comes to nice towns and villages.

Some fantastic recommendations here- thanks so much. So to briefly answer your questions, we come from a beautiful area in Australia, but my husband any I have both lived in the UK for a few years before, so certainly understand what we are getting ourselves into. Personally Preston is not a town I would live in. We need to be based around that area purely for work reasons only. I agree that Lancaster is a much nicer city to be near. I've had my heart set on Garstang, but unfortunately I've never visited there, so I'm purely basing my decision on my Husbands recommendation and the internet. However, with some recommendations on this site, I feel
It's a real contender. I guess my wish list is, a semi-rural town that has a great community feel and a fantastic school. I would love for the kids to explore the outdoors and have the opportunity to participate in after school activities in order to develop friendships with other children their age. Once again, thank you for the great responses

@AussieBrooke have PMd you

HundredMilesAnHour basically explained for me there. Cheers!

Just be aware that there's been massive academisation of schools in mid Lancashire, so do your research carefully. Things are not always what they seem. Also a lot of Catholic schools in the area (the Red Rose held out against Henry VIII as best it could - Preston comes from 'priest-town'). I was a teacher till last year so I know whereof I speak.

Garstang is a nice area. There's smaller sort of areas on the route between preston - garstang which are decent too
Woodplumpton is quite pretty, closer to preston. Cottam is again another smaller area
I would probably grab google maps and look at that route between preston - Lancaster so the A6 road and check out some of the areas off the route. Depends how rural you want to be as well