To Move Or Not To Move.. That Is The Question (schools, housing, etc.)

[BillyBanana]

O' Wise Mamas, I'm after some opinions/suggestions. I am new to this site, and I was told that this is the best place to go for ideas. Apologies for the long post, as I'm trying to explain the situation as best as possible.

DH has been offered a new job, and it's based out of Reading. I work in Portsmouth so we've been looking at Winchester and surrounding areas to move to, as it will be half-way for both of us to commute.

Here's the problem - We have lived in a sub-urban village in Hampshire near the coast for the last 15 years. It's a very quiet place, surrounded by woodland and coppices and filled with young familes and professional workers, where the demographic is usually between mid-20s and mid-50s. People are nice and friendly, and the only anti-social behaviour one would come across is a stray Tesco cart (quite rare) or someone not cleaning up after their dog, or the annoying deer which creep up at nights and eat your roses and tulips! Anyway, in a nutshell, a nice-enough area, with an outstanding primary school and fantastic amenties within walking distance. We love it here so it's an understatement to say that I'm terrified about moving into a city like Winchester. I'm not sure if it's fast-paced like London, as I heard a lot of ex-Londoners have been moving there in recent years, or slow and tranquil, despite being a city. We are simple people with simple needs, and just happened to be hard-working enough to have earned ourselves a decent lifestyle. I worry that we won't fit in, in a place like Winchester which is rather middle-class and "upmarket" from what I hear. Also, we don't know where to move to, as most houses we've looked at in Winchester are so expensive, and for the price of a 3-bed terraced house in Fulflood, you could get a 5-bed, 4-bath house with a huuuuge garden where I currently am. We'll be putting all our life savings and investments into this next house, and we are scared sh*tless about making the wrong move and losing it all. So we're toying with a few ideas. Him renting first, and me moving in soon after. Or him buying there, me staying put until kids start secondary school, or us both moving there, renting for some time and moving back here.

However, my biggest concern is schooling. Kids are 3 and 1, and we were planning on sending them to a local private school which is quite small with reasonable fees. But I've read good things about schools in Winchester, and it would be quite nice to send them to an outstanding state school instead. I don't want to mess around with their schooling, and seeing we can live anywhere we want, I want the deciding criteria to be schools. However, I don't want to invest 700-800k in buying a house near a school only to find that the kids won't get into the school we wanted.
Any advice would be gratefully received and appreciated.

So here are the questions -

1. What's Winchester like, to live in? Will I be out of place there? We're a nature-loving, hippie family (the co-sleeping, baby-wearing, hating plastic kind) and I don't know if we'd be the oddballs there. (we don't even have a TV; that's how weird we are lol). Been to Winchester so many times, but as a visitor, but never been around the residential areas. Will people smile or wave when you walk about?

2. How long do we have to live in a catchment area to be eligible for a particular school? Say, St Francis or St Bede's, or is it just a lucky draw? Husband wants the girls to go to Westgate, and I am not taking chances with buying a house in the catchment area, and still not being able to get in.

3. Same question with secondary schools?

4. How good are family-friendly/child-friendly activities there? Any leisure centres around?

5. This is a difficult one, but any areas to avoid? I'm sure there is good and bad everywhere, but as a timid mom of two, who is shy and doesn't blend in easily (I have a strong American accent), I wouldn't want to be an outcast.

Thanks, everyone :)

Winchester to Reading is a nightmare journey though. Just wondered why you have decided on there.

I'd not consider Winchester as a commute to either Reading or Portsmouth (for the record in 1984 for a few years I commuted from Reading to Eastleigh for work and even back then it was hell going north (the M3 extension opened not long after I started there, before then it was dual carriage way from M3 J7 to Chandlers Ford)

Instead I'd look at Alton / Hook/ Farnham triangle. This I would consider the mid-way point between Portsmouth and Reading. More villagey less city. Have absolutely no idea on schools other than have friends (3+ kids each) have been very happy with their kids schools as there are some nice ones around the area.
Commuting in to Reading is hell wherever you commute from, but, speaking from experience, the road up from Hook is not too bad if you go early enough. Depends where in Reading he's working too - some places are better to get in to by train - from Hook you change at Basingstoke. I think you'd fit well into Hook or Alton - I've friends in both places who are also of the nature-loving/hippie/co-sleeping/baby-wearing/hating plastic kind Lots of like-minded around you eg www.altonherald.com/article.cfm?id=126655&headline=Time%20to%20educate%20the%20plastic%20population&sectionIs=news&searchyear=2018

And Alton to Portsmouth is a fairly easy commute, I'd drive through Selbourne as my favourite route between the two if early enough to avoid the school run (school parking looks like it might be not such a good route) and onto the A3.

Thank you, Ariela & ReservoirDogs , appreciate your reply. I should have made it clearer in the first post that husband's office HQ would be Reading, but most clients will be in London, hence more commute there. I think the condition was that, he's got to be closer to the London/Reading area, rather than some remote village on the coastline. Winchester seemed like a happy medium, as he went to college there (Peter Symonds), and worked in Hyde for 3 years as a first job. But that was 18 years ago, so we have no idea what Winchester is like, to live in. The schools are really good in Winchester from what I saw on Locrating. Also, we did consider Alresford, but I was worried about commute and lack of amenities, as it seemed quite rural (the houses that we saw anyway).

Ariela, the issue I had with houses in Alton (unless you went for brand-new builds), was that, the living space was big, which was nice, the gardens and land around even bigger, which was nicer, BUT the kitchens were the tiniest room in the house!! Didn't people ever cook?! :-D I love my food, and I spend time in the kitchen, more than I should be, cooking for myself and the offspring, and I would definitely need room to move about. We'd bought a house (well, almost), but the sellers pulled out just before the exchange, and the it was the best ever kitchen! I fell in love with it, and that's set a benchmark of sorts!