Any insider information on Hitchin or Bishop's Stortford?

[chrissey]

Does anyone live in Hitchin or Bishop's Stortford and would you recommend living there?
Our daughter has just turned 1 and we realise that we can't go on living in our 1.5 bedroom flat without a garden in London any longer. However, as we both work in London and have friends and family there we need to live somewhere accessible to it.
We think we'd like Hitchin or Bishop's Stortford, but have no insider information about either town.
Is it nice to live there? Are there parks? Are there mother and baby/toddler groups? Are people friendly towards newcomers? Is there stuff to do at weekends?
Please can someone offer advice.
Thanks

I live a few miles outside Hitchin in one of the villages, and it is my nearest big place (although it really isn't very big).

We moved here just over a year ago and have no regrets.

Hitchin is a pleasant enough town. Not very exciting, but a nice place to bring up children. The vast majority of the shops are quirky individual ones - great for buying quirky things, but you need to go further afield to buy clothes, furniture, electrical goods etc.

There are lots and lot of mother and baby groups. You could go to a different one each day. I've found people to be very friendly on the whole. If I go into town I invariably bump into someone I know and have a chat. There is a wonderful Waitrose in the centre (and a Sainsburys but it isn't very good).

Don't know about stuff to do at weekends. Do you mean non-babystuff? No experience of that, I'm afraid (we don't have any local family so never get out at weekends).

We chose to live outside of Hitchin itself because we wanted somewhere good for dog walking, and it suited dh better to use the Thameslink Line rather than the one from Hitchin station.