For those who moved from London to commuter belt - Glad you made the move?

[rainydaysarerubbish]

Just curiously really. We are currently in a flat in London with our 8 month old and are thinking about moving next year although can't seem to decide on where!

One moment we think yes lets move out a bit and get more space the next we think we like being in London and having everything on our doorstep. The next week we think we can't justify spending such a huge amount of money on such a small house ... you get the picture!

So for those that have made the move out - good choice or do you wish you were back in London?

We're still in London, but I have 3 friends who all did this move 18 months - 2 years ago.

• One is very happy and settled in their new home and town
• One loves their house and garden, but still wishes it could be magically transplanted into her old area
• One has just sold up and moved back into London again.

I do think the 'where' is the key. Not in terms of one specific place, but somewhere where the commute isn't too hellish, there are plenty of kids activities (which are also a way to meet people), you can still walk to convenient things like shops, station, nice local pub etc as I think moving to a car-orientated lifestyle might be too much of a shock.

DH and I moved out to Surrey three years ago and we are looking at moving back into London again. I grew up in Camden, so had always lived very central, everything on my doorstep as you say.

It was a bit gritty which concerned me when we had DD, but that's something I really miss as well. I wasn't born in the UK and everyone is, well, white out here. I hate the dependency on cars and the general pace of life here, it is quite sleepy and content, whereas I'm very much into the arts/theatre and slightly non-conformist in some of my interests! I don't discuss these with my neighbours and other parents here as they are clearly conservative when we discuss politics etc. I feel quite isolated here as there is a certain way of living which is just very different from the vibrant, multicultural, anything-goes attitude you get in central London.

we have recently moved from north london out to hillingdon/harrow area (on the border) so still kind of in london as in can still get the tube etc, but much further out.
do you drive? because the thing im finding most a pain is that i dont drive and out here most people do and it seems like life would be so much easier once i drive, as things are more spaced out and having to drag my 3 yr old round by foot gets quite annoying
the good side is that we have a nice house now way bigger and better than what we could have got where we were, which is a big plus as we have the space and no more landlords as we have bought it (hugeeee plus as wehave had nightmare landladies over the yrs) so now we have stability.
i dont kno if you are renting currently or not, as that may make a difference how you feel and also if you want more dc or not? for us it was better as we have 3 dc and now have room for them to play, and room if we want more dc in a couple of yrs
as for the area, i think i have adapted to the new area mostly, met some new friends etc i still miss my beloved holloway though!! (i know its a dump really its just i was settled there so it felt like home) however it is possible to visit easily on the tube so when i miss it i just go back. if i moved somewhere a bit more futher that i couldnt visit i think i would have found it hard
i do think its more important for dc to be settled & have space and i like having a nice house so overall i think its best moved and we did just in time to put school applications in so glad we didnt wait. it wouldnt have been easy starting school for dc with no stability & keep moving all the time between different rented flats. when they are your dc age its not too bad but as they get to school age they will need to be settled, although if your london place is your own and permanant its not such an issue.
my advice would be if you are thinking of moving in next couple of yrs and dont drive try to learn first

Sorry to read of your experience traitorslater. The description of yourself you give sounds very like me. I always swore blind I'd never leave London when I had kids, and as it happened DH got a job abroad when I fell pg so we all scooted off to Switzerland. I thought it would at least be Zurich, but we ended up in quite a rural part. I shocked myself by actually enjoying it, although I think there's been something about knowing it's not necessarily forever that has helped my face not being spent in a permanent rictal look of abject horror.

We're now moving back to the UK, and weirdly I just knew that I really didn't want to go back to London. So we're braving it, selling the urban London house in Peckham Rye, and upping sticks to Kent. I have the slight terrors for all the reasons you give - will it be too white? will I have anything in common with my neighbours/other mums? etc etc.

I have to say though, nothing would have induced me to move to Surrey. I grew up in Sussex and perhaps naively/wrongly find there to be a world of difference between Sussex/Kent and Surrey, which has never felt to me to have a heart of its own and to exist mainly as a slightly more expansive version of London itself.

We moved from London to Surrey, hated it almost immediately, and so then moved again to Kent (Tunbridge Wells). We're just under an hour to London by train (so you can go to the theatre in the West End and get the last train home), have fantastic schools, great community, sea about an hour away, beautiful countryside, National Trust places etc. There is a thriving arts scene - with a theatre, museum, arts centre. It is obviously fairly white, but it's a great place to be and we haven't regretted it for a second.

We moved to St Albans from Crouch End. The reasons were various but boiled down to London just didn't seem like a a brilliant place for raising small children. Where we are now we've got big parks within easy walking distance, open countryside a mile or two away, a lower crime rate, better air quality etc while still having good facilities and decent transport. And London's only half an hour away on the train.

To be fair, St Albans isn't quite as big a cultural melting pot as North London is but there's still a good mix of people from all over the place albeit with substantially fewer drunks and junkies sleeping in the shop doorways and shouting on the streets.

When we first moved I did miss the ease of going out to see live music and theatre as there is inevitably a much more limited choice available locally. But once I made some friends around here and explored more I've come to really love it. I like the slightly slower pace, I like the way that it's easy to find some peace and solitude when needed, and I like the community spirit when we get together.

I couldn't imagine being back in London with children. I'm not generally one to worry about crime but I would be a lot less happy with giving my DCs the freedom they've got here if we were still in Crouch End.

we moved out of London and then moved back again! Alot of the reason for us was that we were still commuting, and it was an absolute pain, too tiring and too expensive (and we didn't see enough of the children), but also we just missed London.

My children all really enjoy it too, and weirdly do have more freedom than they did before. I also didn't like the reliance on the car outside of London, also it was a very different atmosphere. Nice to have a bigger house, but that was about it for us.

We moved from East London to Kent and are very happy that we did. Good schools, nice mix of people, quieter streets, bigger property for the same money. The only downside is having no family and few friends out here, but the ups outweigh the downs.

we moved to Kent too - a village nr Tonbridge. I love it - we have a massive garden, great schools and a great commute to London. When my children have left home we may well move back to London but family life is great here. Pretty much all of my friends moved down here for the same reason - we've all come from London!

We made the move 6 years ago (pre-DS) because we wanted to buy and were fed up of renting. In the early days I missed London (even though I still went in every day for work). I missed everything being on my doorstep. Now I have DS I can't imagine living in London, I think it would be hellish. We're still close (35min on train) so can go as and when we please but I'd not live there again.

Oh and we lived in Kilburn and moved to Surrey.

I wouldn't move to Kent because it is a bit of a nightmare to getting out of kent again and visiting the rest of the country except for London of course. I have London friends who have moved to kent and like it there but find that their friends from west and North london rarely visit.

Neither me or my DH work in London anymore. We didn't want to have a long commute which is why Surrey won over say Hampshire or Sussex which we did consider. Many of my neighbours go to London each day less than a hour on the train, but add on the tube journey at the other end I couldn't do it day in and day out but many people do. Our maximum commuting distance was 40 minutes to work, ended up with 30-40mins depending on the M25 of course.

You have to weigh everything up - how rural you want to me, commuting time, schools and commute to schools, size of house (we could have had acres of land in parts of kent or hampshire for the same price but less commutable).

Also how many children you plan to have, one child I could have stayed in London once two arrived it seemed cramped and everything seemed a huge effort with 2. Maybe I'm a wimp!

We moved from Hackney to Barnet/Hadley rather than leave altogether (not a London postcode `n strictly its Herts, but we're on the tube and we were both scared of leaving London completely and needed the tube for work!). Got more for our money (traded a pokey 3 bed terrace for a spacious Edwardian 4 bed semi with big garden) and don't regret it for a minute. We have toyed with the idea of a move to the South Coast, but will leave that until kids are secondary school age if we do do it.

I do have three good friends who have left London for commuter belt - for Amersham, St Albans, Sevenoaks. The latter two have no regrets and love where they are, but that may have something to do with the fact that they are loaded and live in plush mansion-type houses . The Amersham ones are settled, but my friend (wife in the partnership) does wish they could afford to move back to London. Mind you, they moved from a flat in Regents Park, so were real centralites before they moved - big culture shock!

We moved away from London for two years and detested it! Couldn't wait to come back. Don't think we'll move out until we are a lot older (and we are already middle aged).

completely echo traitorslater's views. We have just moved from greenwich to south london (zone 3) - it doesn't sound like much of a move outside of london (still only 15-20 mins to the City, Victoria, London Bridge), but our surroundings are so sleepy - you cannot see a person on the street after 18.00 ! We made the move as there are better schools around in the area - but I can't wait to go back to London 'proper' - the community is much more diverse and progressive for sure !

we moved from east london to hertfordshire 5 months ago with 3dc. we all LOVE it, only wish we'd done it sooner. still only 30 mins on train to liverpool st so don't feel like we're THAT far away.