Living in Blyth or Ashington, Northumberland

[SandieJ]

Hi everyone,
Me and my OH are considering a move to the coast not too far from Newcastle and I'd like to know what Blyth and Ashington are like. Does anyone live there or have family there that could tell us a little about the area? Things like the best areas or areas to avoid.
Thank you 😊

I've lived in Ashington for all of my adult life. It's fine, just a normal run down town, and the rent is cheap. There isn't much to do, granted, but a new railway line with a direct link to Newcastle is being built. I grew up in Morpeth and my family still live there - I'd never move back.

Anyone have experience with the Ashington Northumberland college site?

Blyth has the worst public transport links in England, this feeds into the very high unemployment and poverty.

I went to Ashington college as a mature student - I started 4 years ago and I spent two years there. It was fine, I got the qualifications I needed and the staff were supportive.

It really doesn't, public transport is much better there than much of the north east

You really think so? I’m just parroting what was said on BBC radio news, plus the experience of my friends who have family who live in Blyth. Where else in the North East has worse transport? I would say it’s better in Newcastle, Gateshead, Sunderland and North and South Tyneside.

Probably better to look at North Tyneside areas next to the beach.

I worked in Blyth and Ashington 20 years ago in the communities and it was grim, in particular Ashington. I remember not being able to get a choice of brown buns in sandwich shops in Ashington High Street, only white! I like both but that memory sticks. Also got a family member living there now, she hates it but stuck for practical reasons until retirement. The Ashington accent is also 'unique', - my old boss from Scotland was really confused and had to ask me what was wrong with someone's voice after a meeting. Nothing wrong with regional accents but just to be warned its a local thing!

Blyth Beach is nice with an amazing fish and chips and ice cream parlour, lovely beach huts, park etc and this is a nice part.

Where else has worse transport connections in the north east?

Loads and loads of places are much worse served by public transport than Blyth. Comparing it to the NewcastleGateshead conurbation hardly seems fair. It would be better to compare it to towns in County Durham and Northumberland than the city of Newcastle.

These are the maps for just one bus company. Blyth is pretty well served. And with several express buses too.

I’d rather be reliant on public transport in Blyth than Prudhoe for example.

I would say that both are historically quite deprived areas that have since had investment which has led to there being really both desirable areas and really undesirable areas in both often just a few streets away from each other. I'd have no qualms living in either but I'd want to visit and get an idea of the area before I committed to a home.

I do know around south beach in blyth is lovely though.

I can't imagine that being true. Loads of buses go to blyth.

This is from a report about ‘transport deserts’ in England (bettertransport.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/legacy-files/research-files/transport-deserts-2020.pdf) from 2020.

That report suggests that consett is particularly buggered transport-wise.

Blyth is too large a town to feature I think, but Ashington is considered very well served with things likely to improve further with additional rail links. Blyth I suspect would come out as a transport oasis too if they counted towns bigger than 30k in population.

Interestingly, it’s based on connectivity to a major town. So Prudhoe does well too because it has a train station to get to Newcastle (or Hexham). But trying to get anywhere else would be tougher by public transport than from Blyth. For a town if it’s size, Blyth is pretty well connected to lots of places in Tyne and Wear, without having to go through Newcastle to get there.

I was really to @CeeceeBloomingdale who said there are lots of places in NE with worst public transport.

These places have a significantly smaller population than Blyth. No of the places on that list are places I would choose to live.

Tbh, I think there’s some sort of Blyth martyr complex in the north east. It’s the worst possible everything. And it’s so unfair.

I wouldn’t choose to live in Blyth (for lots of reasons) but I have lived in areas of major uk cities that are much tougher than Blyth.

Yet I keep seeing stuff presenting Blyth as if it’s some sort of lawless mad max wasteland with no transport links. It’s really isn’t that bad. There are even quite nice bits.

I don’t think it’s that bad but the heroin capital of Europe’ a decade or so ago didn’t help its reputation.

Rougher rather than tougher.

I grew up in west central Scotland. There are plenty of places in greater Glasgow that are considerably worse than Blyth. In pretty much every way imaginable.

My husband is from greater Manchester. He’s of the opinion that NE England just doesn’t commit to ‘shit hole’ the way that NW England manages. 🤣

Blyth really isn’t the end of the world as locations go. I know people who chose to move to Blyth. People who could afford to live in bloody Darras Hall if they wanted to. But they wanted to move to Blyth. They love it there.

Googling doesn’t suggest that Blyth has ever genuinely been ‘the heroin capital of Europe’ (a term that gets applied to all sorts of places in various countries). It has at various points had the worst drug use issues in NE England but I’m not sure it’s ever been quantitatively the worst even in the UK.

Obviously, it’s not going to help Blyth’s reputation. But several of the UK’s major cities have ongoing and very longstanding heroin problems. Really bloody bad ones. Scottish cities have been pretty consistently terrible for drug issues since the 80s, for example.

It may be that it’s not what people expect of a town of about 35k people in Northumberland, so it seems more remarkable to people than Manchester or Dundee or Glasgow having serious issues related to drugs.

Blyth and Ashghanistan as it is often known are very different to most of Northumberland, I lived in Blyth for many years.

I thought the bus service was cracking, if you live within walking distance of the bus station there is a bus every few minutes to Newcastle. Train line opening to passengers again soon which can only help.

It's not without its problems but show me a post industrial town in the UK that is.

Housing is really cheap too. Don't move to Cowpen. Pronounced Coopen.

Nope. I live in a town in NT, my boss and a few colleagues live in Blyth and they have so many more options than I do. I'd say it's one of the better connected places in the whole NE.

I was on holiday in Newbiggin and loved it. Regular buses from just outside apartment , much better public transport than in rural Yorkshire, where I live. Blyth and Ashington looked like typical large towns. Nothing special, nothing bad. Friendly people , just need to listen to them carefully, as accent is hard for someone from outside. I didn’t know a new train station is being built in Ashington, worth remembering. I probably would chose Blyth to live, because of beautiful beach.

Thanks 🙂 Prices are part of it. Close to hospitals, we're both getting older. Access to a beach and not too far from Newcastle.

High Heaton

Thanks 🙂 I've also looked at Newbiggin, I've only seen one house for sale with our perimeters and the layout was pretty bad but it's somewhere I'd consider.