A flat in Crystal Palace, or Sutton, or a house in Catford?

[confusedperson]

Hi everyone. I am in a very deep thinking as to what and where to buy? We currently live in West Norwood and are looking to buy our own place, i.e. for me & my two small children. My budget is around 200k, and that is about what we can afford. Crystal Palace is nice and trendy, but not so good for children? (just guessing) Sutton is nice and family orientated? In somewhere like Catford (or similar, I am looking in south part of London anyway) I could afford a house rather than a flat, but is it worth it? I am so confused which decision to make? Anyone got a good advice?

MI, my opinion is only mine, others are of course welcome to love it. To me the very word reminds me of joyless concrete, alcs kicking each other's teeth across the arid wastes outside Tescos while the glue sniffing boy hung precipitously over the edge of the car park roof above. And there is no greenery, only the teeny strip of park, that has least been cleaned up a bit.

Try growing up in Norwich (shudder). I am still unable to understand why anyone would visit Norfolk for recreational purposes.

Lewisham Park is not, IMO, 'tiny', though. What with going from the station to beyond Lewisham Hospital. And it's not the only park.

It's thin. What other parks be there in walking distance of town centre? Used to have to go all the way to Blackheath/Greenwich or Beckenham Place the other way.

I went to Norfolk on a freezing barge holiday a few years ago. It is just so inordinately flat.

OK, take your point about its slenderness.

It's just...oh, I come back from picking up my girls from their buzzy multiracial school and chatting to a range of interesting, clued-in, bright parents who also live round here. And then I see this thread going on about how the best thing about Catford is that you can get out of it easily to Naicer Places, and indeed that most of it is Not Very Naice and that our kids All End Up In Gangs.

Yes, I can see that is a bit horrid. After Catford I moved to another place that everyone despises (but I love), and spent the first few years defending it. Now I just smile and say nowt.

I did like the Himalayas in Catford. I dread to think how many brandy coffees I downed in there. The waiters used to hug us when we turned up, I think we kept the place afloat singlehandedly.

Hully that's the grimmest part of catford down there by Tesco. It is horrid. Those flats are app being demolished soon.

Where I live has massive green spaces, there's loads of green in other parts of catford. I don't know what strip you're talking about, is it Rushey green? That's not a park!

I've made loads of lovely friends here through the children and my neighbours are all lovely normal, and even intelligent people that also like living here.

Ten years sentence I served there. Where IS all this mysterious hidden green I never saw nary a glimpse of?

Blythe Hill Fields, Ladywell Park, Ravensbourne Park are all up behind the station :)

There's that big Mountsfield Park and others over at the other side.

Have a look on google maps. It's true!

Ok. Have looked. I'll give you Mountfield, but the rest is a big traffic-choked wasteland of horror and despair.

Ladywell Fields is lovely. They've redone the playgrounds and have landscaped the stream/river that runs through it. see

where's the traffic? It's right on top of a hill overlooking London

Blythe Hill Fields, that link is above. Sorry :)

Right, so perhaps it's not the desert wasteland of gun-toting illiterates that everyone was suggesting, eh?

It's turning into a Hully Hates Catford thread lol.

Last time I drove through the gun shop wasn't there either. (Unless I missed it).

And it's got the massive cat.

Catford is HUGE - there's so much of it, that you can't really base hatred on that grim bit near the gun shop.

I must admit it's not my favourite place but that's mostly because a) terrifying great grandmother lived in Torridon Road (actually all of my mother's family from Torridon/Ardgowan/Sandhurst Roads). Spirit sapping journey to spend painful hours there. b) childhood dentist there. c) Was left in some creche at the shopping centre aged about 4 and have never forgotten

Where IS this Blythe place? Not what was called Hilly Fields in my day?

I don't hate it, it just makes me shudder and shrivel with misery.

I get that feeling about Bexleyheath.

PLease tell me you don't live in Bexleyheath? If you do I meant no personal jibe.

It's just I had to spend rather too much time there lately and I a little part of myself shrivelling every time I drove up to the Broadway.

Yep, that too.

Where else?

Most of east London

No, it's not Hilly Fields, it looks across to Hilly Fields.

Here

It even has a really funky festival every year. You know, food and music and stuff and arts and crafts. See previous link.

Erith.
Belvedere.

Knew them well. DH lived there when was a student.

Never have to return. Yippee.

That's Honor Oak, that is. Don't cheat. You can't go round just claiming all the green bits at random for poor old Catford.

I'm trying to remember the name of the place so vile I have expunged it. It was built on a toxic dump too, sort of out beyond Greenwich. Think it begins with a P. Damn early onset.