Want to leave London, have no idea where to go!

[Buggritbuggrit]

We’re looking to move out of London, like everyone else. The issue is that we have no idea where. Neither of us is English, and we’ve never lived anywhere in England that wasn’t London. Please help!

We’re an interracial couple, so would ideally like somewhere with some racial diversity where neither we nor our kids were unusual.

DP loves the great outdoors and I love the hustle and bustle of Islington. We’d ideally like somewhere with both of those things, decent schools, house prices that aren’t insane and a manageable commute into London.

Apart from those criteria (and I have no idea if any of that is reasonable), we’d be happy with anywhere in the South East. Budget is about £600K. If anyone has any recommendations, I’d love to hear them.

How often do you need to commute?

Bedford, Milton Keynes, Northampton, Hitchin..or closer in: Chorleywood, Bushey, Rickmansworth,
or Aylesbury, Amersham....so many places

I love the hustle and bustle of Islington
You're going to struggle being too far out of a major city, in that case. What commute are you talking about?

@GreyhoundG1rl We both work in Central London and would need to come in a couple of times a week. Also, most of our friends are still here. So, hoping to find somewhere where the commute won’t be too painful and London won’t need to be a distant memory.

@whatisthislifesofullofcare Thanks for the suggestions. I’ve just had a quick look online and some of those places don’t seem to be very ethnically diverse. There are apparently 274 Black people in Rickmansworth, for example - so less than 1%. I’m prepared for there to be less diversity than I get in the middle of London, but would prefer that my child not be the only non-white kid in their class. It’s pretty important to us.

Commutes are ridiculously expensive. For example from where I grew up in the Midlands it’s an hour to st Pancras for an eye watering £800 a month. I’ve lived in a couple of other UK cities and while I like Bristol and Manchester, they’re not London, they don’t feel anything like London, and you won’t get the Islington vibe outside of London. It’s probably more cost effective to move to zone 4/5 so you’ve got the outdoors of Surrey or Hertfordshire on the doorstep (depending if you’re north or south) and central London a half hour train ride away.

@TedMullins £800 a month?! I honestly initially misread that and had to go back to it. And I thought a Zone 1-2 travelcard was a ridiculous price. Really puts things in perspective!

I am worried about the lack of ‘buzz’ (he’s definitely not - he has no buzz requirements), but wondered if that was just me being a silly Londoner. I’ve been to other places that I liked (I also really like Bristol, for instance), but never lived anywhere else in this country. So, my frame of reference is pretty limited.

Yes, £800 a month is correct. If you Google season ticket calculator you can put in your destination stations and it’ll give you the price of a season ticket weekly, monthly and yearly. Trust me, it ain’t pretty.

Honestly there isn’t another UK city like London. Bristol is probably my second favourite but it’s not really commutable, takes around 2 hours. Regional towns and villages are also very white. Where I grew up there literally was one black person in my school. That was 20+ years ago and now I think you may find 5-10 black people in that school soooo... yeah not much improvement on that front. You need cities if you want diversity but you really can’t beat London for having multiple cultures all living on top of each other.

Stay in London but move to Highams Park, it is a quick commute to Central London but has Epping Forest on the doorstep.

Maybe Brighton? If you are only commuting twice a week you can just get day returns but does get pricey.

It's difficult - outdoor space is super easy to find, hustle and bustle- people normally move out of London to avoid hustle and bustle and its normally something you'ld only get in cities though sometimes get very busy seaside places like Brighton. Tends to not be that much diversity outside cities.

@Gemma2019 I’d never even heard of Highams Park, but it looks very promising. Thank you!

@Silkiescat Brighton (and Hove) definitely on the list. It’s one of the few places that seems to tick everything on both our lists. It’s so expensive relative to everywhere else we’ve looked, though! I suppose because it ticks lots of people’s boxes.

Look for houses in zone 5 or 6 as it's within your budget. Don't buy a 3 bed house. It's either a 2 bed or 4 bed house.

Finally, wait for stamp duty holiday to end on 30th June so that the house prices can come down

What do you want for 600k?

I grew up in Harrow which is N London zone 5. Very diverse population so no chance of being the only non white child in the class. It's obviously far more suburban than Islington though.

I agree with Gemma - somewhere in that kind of area (or centering your search on a large, wild park / easy access to outdoors but with a Tube nearby) might be a fruitful approach.

Northampton is lovely and very ethnically diverse, with a 50mins train to Euston.

Think long and hard about whether you want to commute. All the evidence is that a long commute makes people more unhappy. If you can move jobs, I would leave the SE altogether and go to another UK city. You mentioned Bristol, what about Manchester, Leeds or Glasgow if you want buzz?

Brighton and Hove or Lewes both have something of an Islington vibe. Hastings is nice, but small. Otherwise you might need to look at a city to get the same kind of feel. Manchester and Leeds are nice. York is beautiful but not quite as much going on.

Will you need to commute to London and therefore live in the SE? As others have said it's very expensive.

FWIW, we spent a while on this question and decided to stay. We live in SE London now - it's much greener and calmer. If you're currently in central North London maybe look at Dulwich or Richmond, or elsewhere south of the river.

Some towns around London are more diverse than is immediately apparent, by which I mean they may not have large non-white populations but your child wouldn’t be the only non-white child in their class.

Bishops Stortford is diverse in this sense, though non-white families are in the minority. My DN goes to primary there and maybe a quarter or more of her class are from non-White British backgrounds (ranging from second generation Central European to non-white).

I second the comments above about commuting - we moved out but commute. If we’d had the option, I think we’d have had a better quality of life remaining within the TfL zone as the cost of the commute has been horrendous - or deciding we were leaving London altogether and heading for the leafy suburbs of another city. South-west Sheffield would be a good choice for a city vibe but leafy suburbs and easy access to the outdoors.

Yeah definitely check the cost of the commute for both of you - it may cost more than your mortgage..

Chesham/Amersham springs to mind - Chesham is at the end of the Metropolitan line but is plonked in lots of lovely Chiltern countryside (great garden centres/cafes/)

Driving into Chesham and leaving your car at the station is very easy in the early morning - this opens up multiple villages within 10/15 minutes drive. The tube very rarely has any problems whereas National rail stations have a few days a year when it's a nightmare.

The towns of Berkhamsted/Tring are ten minutes drive (and have their own national rail, not tube stations)

University towns are likely to have a more diverse and international population. So you could look at Cambridge, or Brighton.

But it's not London.

In the U.K. as a whole, the population is nearly 90% white, so outside big cities like London or Leeds or Birmingham, being the only black child in a class will be statistically pretty likely.

We live in a university town. My Dc's primary class doesn't look very diverse but actually several of the children are not British, or have a non-British parent, or speak another language at home, or have lived overseas. So it is perhaps more diverse than a similar looking-school in a neighbouring town.

Birmingham second city and ethnically diverse. Fast train to London takes about 1 hour 15 mins into Euston. House prices much Cheaper then London. Motorway network good if you drive.

Folkestone is fantastic. We used to live in Crouch End and feel it has a similarly quirky character. Spolit for choice with coastline and countryside for him and tonnes of events and creative stuff going on for you. We pop up to London a few times a year (and DH still commutes - its less than an hour door to office) but we find we choose to less and less as there is always something going on here. 600k would get you a decent period property close to station and sea.

You could try zone 6 - somewhere like Ewell, which has a nice village vibe, Epsom is busier but the high street is uninspiring although a few decent independent coffee shops etc. The benefit is Epsom Downs on your doorstep and then Surrey Hills so close for proper countryside/big walks. Schools are really good, it feels pretty diverse and has a fashion college that attracts international students although I couldn’t tell you the stats.

Oh and it’s just over half an hour to Waterloo or Victoria!