Moving out of london - how do you decide where? - sorry a bit rambly

[RuthT]

DH and I have lived in West London for years and slowly but surely our friends have started to move out. I wanted to move when I had 1st DD and now am very early preg again and DH have now decided he would also like to move to get a life change. I want to give up stressful job that is in West London in HR and have convinced myself that I'll be ablr to get a 3 day a week job (either contract or perm) in the city once completed mat leave. Could be kidding myself!

So we're toying with the idea of moving out to somewhere commutable before.

We have narrowed it down to Bath/Bristol area or Herts/Cambridgeshire. We have seen Harpenden and really liked that but prefer Cambridge as a city.

But to be honest that is as far as we have got and now I am not sure how to find likely places. I can't seem to find out where has fast train services and it's hard to search places for the feel of a Harpenden or Cambridge! I love the community feel of the bigish towns with access to shops near by and a city in 30 mins. (have also seen Saffran Walden and liked that too)

I know this is one of those "only we can make the decision" situations but I'd be really grateful to hear from people who've moved out to those areas and how you managed to do your homework, how it's worked out etc etc...I know there is such a wealth of MN opinions out there and I'm really interested in what you think.

Sometimes I think the area can be less important than who is there - parents, siblings, friends etc. We are doing a similar thing to you and have chosen to go where we have the most family. Most employers need HR people so you are quite lucky with that . Both the areas you mentioned are nice though.

We moved a couple of months ago, from West London, to Saffron Walden. We always intended to move before ds got to secondary school age but thought we would end up in Bucks (near dh's parents).
The direction of the move was dictated for us by dh accepting a job near Cambridge (but we checked out the area before he accepted the job and if we hadn't found somewhere we wanted to move to then he wouldn't have taken that job).
Things that were important for us were..good schools (primary and secondary), reasonable commute to central London and to dh's work, good community feel, and house price had to be low enough for us to get a house with a big garden.
We started looking at the villages north of Cambridge (just driving around), spent a day exploring Cambridge itself (ticked all boxes but to live close to the station we would have ended up with an identical house to our London one, with no larger garden), and then kept working south until we hit SW and it just felt comfortable.
I used www.rightmove.com a lot to get a feel for house prices in the areas, and www.upmystreet.co.uk to get school performance data and got lots of advice from mumsnetters who lived around Cambridge.
We love that we are only a short drive/train trip from the malls of Cambridge, have plenty of independent style shops in SW, schools are good, people are friendly, trains have been fine for me (so far :-) ), and we just feel so much less stressed! Oh, and we now have a 0.25acre garden so the kids are almost living outdoors

I bought this book but it is out of date and very minimal on info
Might be worth getting from a library

We were worried about the commute so looked at that as a priority. I need to get to Liverpool Street, and DH needed to get to Canary Wharf every day, so this pretty much told us we needed to live somewhere around 30-45 minutes outside London on a train line going into Liverpool Street. Not sure where you work, but would this approach help you at all?

This is all really useful. Please keep it coming.

Well we both live and work in Ealing. DH's job is a QS so it involves travel mainly into London and out to Hemel Hempstead.

I would prob have to give my job up if we moved, but I am fed up of the hours and not seeing DD.

First work out commute and costs. Go to the railtrack site and do a journey plan (ie how many trains, how often, how much - can you get to work and get home in reasonable timeframe)

Agree budgets are probably key to your future plans, so as well as commuting costs and convenience, don't forget to check house prices and think about mortgage repayments. I've known a few people move to Cambridge from London thinking they will be able to afford something 2x as big only to get a rude shock!

Otherwise, I guess you need to list all your other criteria (quality of schools, access to friends and relatives, leisure facilities, chances of making new likeminded friends etc) and weight them sensibly before you use the top few as screening criteria.

Hopefully that will narrow down your choices. FWIW, I'm forever on threads telling people that Cambridge is a brilliant place to live, but I didn't last more than 12 months commuting from Cambridge-London, so I hope you have more stamina than me

Hi there
We're kind of in this dilemma - esp as recently discovered I'm pg. Here are some threads that I've been on re: this topic which I hope help.

where to begin?
family life in london

good luck whatever you decide.

Pink Martini - you see I also have this dilemma because I recently discovered I was pg for 2nd time.

I just don't think I will be able to hack f/t work and they won't be able to make my role p/t. So the only way we can survive financially is to move out.

Where are you thinking of moving too?

We made a list of our priorities (eg city town or village? what type of access to London? what type of community? etc) and dh looked around to see where he was likely to get work in his field. He decided M4 corridor or Cambridge area and we went for M4 corridor as we felt Cambridge limited our options a bit. Then we looked on maps (road and rail) and identified areas to visit and drive around. Once we had shortlisted towns we looked at the Ofsteds for schools in them.

So far, it's worked well. Though I do miss the convenience of London. And London itself. And having my parents around the corner.

Forgot to mention fixing a budget - quite an important aspect! So get your place valued to give you a ball-park estimate of what you can spend, then, when you have some areas in mind, look on websites like Upmystreet and (umm I've forgotten their names) house selling websites to see whether your area is affordable. We went from 2bed flat to 4bed house with garden - far nicer for the LOs.

Hi there

We made the move out of London almost 3 years ago. We knew we wanted to stay NW, so got the train map out for Silverlink and Thameslink and visited every stop on the line! We wanted to live quite centrally in the town, but be able to walk to the train station - quite a few places were ruled out which needed a drive to the station.

We ended up in Berkhamsted - and love it. We didn't know anybody who lived here (although we do have friends in Harpenden and St. Albans). I wouldn't worry too much about not knowing people - it's pretty easy to meet people when you have kids. And there are lots of people in commuter towns who are in exactly the same position of having moved out of London.

Only thing to bear in mind is the train fare - bit of a killer. We made sure that we didn't go too mad on the mortgage as we knew that we had a lot in travel coming out of our wages.

I went back p/t to my job, and the journey is actually quicker than when I lived in zone 2 (train takes 30 mins into Euston). However, there are loads of head offices in and around Herts/Bucks, so might be a good chance of landing a p/t job.

Hope that helps

Sorry just wanted to say congrats to PinkMartini as I was on your thread talking about chicken/egg situation and when to move out of London (before / after DC). I remember you were TTC then.

To RuthT, as someone else said, have a look at thetrainline.com and you can type in any station of a place that takes your interest and see if it is commutable.

We basically sat down with a map printed from SouthWest Trains website and circled all the places we liked that were within an hour's commute of London Waterloo. We are moving to Winchester next month!

I would live West if i worked in Ealing

certainly not cambridgeshire what a ferking nightmare that drive would be every day

bath and bristol are very expensive

Oh - would def recommend giving berkhamsted a look - v similar to harpenden (we looked there too).

Our financial director commutes from Cambridge - quite a long one, no?

You might also like St Albans - quick train service into city, and bigger town than Harpenden/ Berko. Pretty big high street, with some big names there, nice pubs and restaurants. The Abbey and walks around it are really nice. Although quite ££ (due to train running direct into the city).

All really close to Hemel Hempstead for your DH's job

Yes, Berkhamsted is lovely and a quick commute to London and Hemel.

Been to St Albans and not sure I really like the town - but it was wet miserable days when I have been in.

Love Cambridge and the market square

Must look up Berkhampsted

Why not rent your place out and go and rent in Cambridge?

It is a lovely city and there are loads of London commuters living there, if you really don't like it you wont have burnt your bridges and can choose somewhere else.

Looked at renting our place but the rent wouldn't cover the mortgage. Otherwise would be a great suggestion

I live in Cambridge/Saffron Walden area and commute to London daily - there is no way I would consider commuting out to Ealing/W London even if I lived a stone's throw from Cambridge Station. If Cambridge is too far east, why not consider the "other place" (when the floods have receded).

Hi RuthT. We moved to Harpenden in September. We needed to get into London and looked at lots of places. We are really happy here, 30 mins on train to London, very good schools. People here have been extremely welcoming and have met lots of people (and my children are a bit older so thought this might be diificult). Is quite a good community feel though.

There are though lots of other lovely places though, Welwyn is nice and on the other train line, Wheathampstead, Redbourn (if want more villagey), St Albans is nice in the sun if you want a bigger town, lovely parks there and in Harpenden.

We didn't go to Cambridge til after we'd moved, and kind of glad we didn't as I really liked it, wouldn't have wanted to choose! The commute from Harpenden for us though, and we came in part for better lifestyle so didn't want to increase commute too much if poss.

We just kept going to visit places not far from each train line (look at firstcapitalconnect.co.uk) and then asked lots of questions on here!

Ruth - we were living in Ealing whilst dh worked near Cambridge - that was main reason behind our move - would def. not recommend trying to commute from Cambridge to Ealing (even though I love living out this way)
Is your dh likely to change jobs in the future? Is it worth him looking for an outside-of-london job whilst you concentrate on the new baby and then moving to match his job?

I live in Hemel Hempstead, been here 8 years and its really come up. If you went to rightmove and searched for houses in Hemel and then scrolled down the left and picked 'Boxmoor' off the list, that's probably the nicest part (Victorian houses, villagey).

Berkhamsted and St Albans are nicer but more expensive - it very much depends on how much you have to spend. St Albans is much more 'city' than Berkhamsted.

Any idea how much you have to spend? There are some beautiful places in the country round here - round Ashridge estate, Little Gaddesden, really lovely villages.

Another vote here for St Albans and Berko.