Colchester advice please

[Rubbleonthedouble1]

Hello

I’m considering a move to Colchester with my young family.
Which areas are better or worse to live in? What’s Colchester like to live in?

Thank you!

We lived in colchester for 3 years, although ended up buying in braintree for work. Areas I would avoid 100% greenstead or anything near the uni, also old heath isn't great (especially near speedwell close). Decent areas are rowhedge, wivenhoe, Stanway and lexden. High woods has some good and some bad, I was always told to avoid Chinook road as it's not the best. If you can afford it I would definitely recommend one of the outer villages, I personally loved rowhedge or fingeringhoe. Bare in mind with stanway the amount of housing going up, when we first viewed houses it was relatively quiet but since going back it has become very congested and overcrowded.

It's also quite nice to live in, lots of nice areas but it's very much a uni/army town. The best way to get a feel is to go in term time (October-early june) and see what the town is like. We would have been happy to stay living there but we wanted to be closer to chelmsford.