How has leaving London affected your family life?

[alittleteapot]

Didn't know where to post this, but parenting as good as any, as part of my fear of leaving London is I know how to do it pretty well here and am scared of starting somewhere else. But DP very keen to get out of the big smoke. Wants a slower, cleaner less claustrophobic life. I need a bit of buzz in my life so thinking perhaps somewhere like Stroud could work. But am London through and through and it would be a massive leap of faith.

Interested to hear about other families who've left London and what sort of experience they've had. Can see countrylife lovely for young kids but can't imagine anywhere better than London for teenagers (but I know that's me just not knowing different.)

I have a teeny mortgage but not much in the way of a job Meg :o

Haven't read the thread, so apologies if I'm repeating others.

DH and I met and lived in London, and were so London mad that we got married in Covent Garden and had our reception on the Thames!

However, once DS was born, we moved slightly farther out in order to get a two bed flat (still in London, but Zone 4), and once we had DS, London stopped being something that seemed available to us? No spontaneous restaurant/theatre trips, no popping into the town for a walk on the South Bank, etc, etc. Everything because a planned mission (as it has to when you have DC) and we ended up not utilising anything that London had to offer any more.

2 years down the line, with a toddler climbing the walls of our flat, we decided to make the Big Move. Left London, moved to a medieval market town (about 17,000 people) with good transport links to closest city and back into London. Got a 4 bed house with garden for less money than our 2 bed London flat! Made friends, found nursery for DS, and basically were are as happy as pigs in muck.

Nothing could compel me to move back to London now, not after having had a taste of life outside of it. Don't get me wrong, I still love it, and really enjoy going back there with DH (something we can actually do now because my folks are so close for babysitting), but it's just not a practical place to live with kids unless you have a lot of money to have a large property in a good area with some outside space and good schools. IMO, anyway - feel free to disagree!

Right, have read through now (should've just done so before, hey!)

Also want to agree with what someone said about friends, old and new.

I knew more neighbours/parents from toddler groups in 2 weeks than I met in the entire 10 years I lived in London. And with the exception of maybe one or two people, they're all lovely, switched on, interesting people with different ideas on life. Not country bumpkin at all!

WRT old friends, we make sure that we invite someone down to as for 1 or 2 weekends each month. Having people come down and stay the night means that you actually get some good quality time with them rather than a 2 hour dinner, for eg. Initially it also quite funny to see the on their faces when they (a) saw the massive house we now have, and (b) when they find out how little we paid for it!

Also, in addition to good transport links, we also live within walking distance to the town centre with its coffe shops/libraries/butchers/market etc, so we rarely drive too.

Am about all these lovely arty towns by the seaside where you don't need to drive and can have barbecues on the beach. I want to live there.

Where I asks you? Anyone want to recommend one of these dream towns?

malinkey, can't speak for anyone else, but I'm in Kent...

I'm in Kent too :o

christine we could be neighbours and not know it!

Teapot - PM me if you want more info. I don't want to give too much away on here but i did a similar move so happy to chat

Am about to bankrupt myself to shell out a small fortune on rent so that DS and I can live in a small flat near a decent primary school in London and the thought of being able to afford a house and being able to walk down to the beach is so appealing.

Right, I'm going to start investigating the Kent coastline...

That would be lovely NoWay :o I'm always trying to spot fellow MNers!

dikkertjedap we are moving back too. Partly for us it's the fact I commute to London and hate that, but also for the reasons you mention,

Teapot I would really think twice before going if I were you - my dh wanted us to move out too, but I wasn't sure. Wish I'd stuck to my guns!

christine you can Pm me if you want to find out where I am/let me know where you are!

Where are these lovely places that you have all moved to ??! They sound just like where I want to move to. I live in London surburbia - still only Zone 2- and can walk/bus to all the kids activities and school and feel that I have everything on my doorstep BUT have 3 kids in tiny house with tiny garden, the kids have no freedom and state secondary schools round here are not great so we have been looking to move out, completely out as opposed to further out into surburbia, and can't find anywhere that has the same benefits as where we live now or which has a feeling of community.

We don't have to commute back to London - I think that would be really tough. DH goes back about once a fortnight - the rest of the time he works from his new office in our adopted city (a 20-min cycle ride away). I'm mostly a SAHM with a small working-from-home business.

dikkertjedap Your post tells exactly of my concerns if we moved out of London. It's just geography at the end of the day, kids can still have a very good childhood in London, we are not worse off by raising a family here, in fact IMHO it's more enriching for the children and provides a good balance for us the parents.

I have 2 friends who have moved out of London, one by the sea and one in the home counties and I get the feeling life isn't better especially as both dh's are either commuting into London to work from the seaside and the other spends weeks abroad. To me absent father and husband not a better quality family life!

Just my twopence....

I couldn't live here if I had to commute back every day. And that's why housing is cheaper - it's really a bit too far to commute.

Right then, if any of you Kent people are still there - out of this list are there any you would definitely recommend/not recommend?

New Romney
Folkestone
Ramsgate
Deal
Sandwich
Whitstable
Faversham
Canterbury
Sevenoaks
Tunbridge Wells
Tonbridge

I know some of these aren't seaside towns but the ones inland are nearer London so might be more doable.

Thank you!

I moved to Bristol and think it was the right decision; I couldn't see how I could be happy in London unless I won the lottery - I could never have afforded a house and I hated the way my bit of London seemed to have adopted de facto apartheid. travelling around took ages.

Yes, there are amazing things to do in London, my daughter could do something different every weekend. BUT we are only two hours away so if we want to do the London thing it is no problem.

If you love London, you would probably find moving somewhere very remote or 'surburban' a massive shock to the system, but there are many different places and choices. London isn't the only interesting and dynamic place to live in the UK. It is certainly the biggest and the most diverse but that has its downsides too.

Hello malinkey! I'll try to answer, but please bear in mind that I'm only an honourary Kent person (seeing as I've only been here 15 months!)

New Romney - don't know it

Folkestone - it's okay, a bit run down but I've seen a big improvement

Ramsgate - large seaside town and port, up and coming, new Turner Contemporary gallery going to make a BIG difference to Thanet (Margate, Broadstairs, Ramsgate)

Deal - apparently lovely, but limited transport links

Sandwich - same as Deal, loss over Pfizer factory will not have a good impact I wouldn't think

Whitstable - beautiful, quaint, arty fishing town, but overpriced considering the limited availability of property

Faversham - lovely market town, good transport links, good time to buy there as Londoners are buying there instead of Whitstable now as it's just as nice but property much more reasonable

Canterbury - cathedral city, absolutely beautiful, all amenities, but again it's more expensive. Traffic there, all day every day, is a nightmare too.

Seveoaks, Tunbridge Wells and Tonbridge - don't know West Kent as well, but I do know that these are desirable areas with proportionate property prices. Very, very expensive.

Ha ha I grew up near one of those god-forsaken places on the list. Don't do it! That experience is what puts me off as I described in my earlier post.

But, I could pos do Canterbury. Is small city so bit more culture and there's theatres, cinema, public transport and mix of shops.

The first four in your list are not very nice (one of them is the aforementioned place), a big company is leaving Sandwich which will take many jobs so not somewhere I'd choose to go now, the others are better except Tonbridge.

If you're looking at that sort of thing then consider Hythe (near Folkestone) but bit less rough - it has a Waitrose dontcha know

And Rye, Lewes, Eastbourne, Brighton, Hove, Worthing, St Leonards in Sussex worth considering.

Thanks NoWay! That's really helpful.

Mmm, so even though it's not a seaside town exactly, Faversham sounds really interesting. Will have to investigate further. I know Ramsgate a little bit but think it is probably too far from London.

Have I missed anywhere important off my list do you think?

Or you could do like me and move your family to friggin Norway, and live right up north, at the bottom of a ski lift, and let your kids hurl themselves down mountains pretty much every day after school in winter. And hike up mountains in the summer.

Great for kids and family fun. But oh how I miss London. Nobody else seems to miss London much. Especially not the kids (now 8 and 5)

Thanks Katie. Yes, Lewes is nice isn't it? I like Brighton but not sure I'd want to live there full time.

Will add Hythe, Lewes and Rye to my list as places to investigate.

How about Hove or Worthing? Like Brighton but less... Brighton. More pensioners