What moment did you realise it was time to move out of London?

[Queeva]

Did you have a particular moment where you realised you'd fallen out of love with the city?

I don't say this just to be contrary but that works both ways - we can get out of London any weekend we want to the countryside as there are plenty of places to go within an hour.

DH and I born and bred Londoners…him south, me north. Between us we’ve worked and lived all over London. We decided to move from London suburb when daughters were about 8/9 years old so about 10 years ago. Schools were awful and overcrowded, traffic was dreadful, I used to commute by train and tube and hated it, plus we wanted a much more outdoorsy lifestyle. Sold our 3 bed semi with postage stamp garden and bought a 4 bed detached in Suffolk with big garden for less money. Surrounded by countryside, near the sea, loads of wildlife. I do miss aspects of London, but we’re only 1.5 hrs away so can go for the day.

grew up in London (west London)... went to uni elsewhere, moved around a bit... lived in cool places like Brighton, pretty places like Cheltenham - but have been back in London for 20 years - this time South and would never live anywhere else. Have even been looking at places closer into town for retirement - little flat in Barbican (practically a retirement village).

We have an amazing community here - we were lucky and bought a house we could afford in a non-gentrified area but with an amazing community - never felt unsafe walking home from the station, never cleared up crack shit from the garden - can be at London Bridge in 15 minutes. Have many parks and lakes nearby and love it. Kids have grown up here and I don't worry for their safety.

I really can't imagine feeling that it is time to go

There's a big difference between going out for the weekend and hiking/biking whenever you fancy.
It's the same way I feel about 'an hour from London'... it's never going to be just an hour once you count the journey to the specific place from your central station. For me it's too long to pop out for an event and back.

@Filthycop I get that you're sharing your experiences and have acknowledged you're lucky but this and a lot of other posts are quite smug on a thread about people leaving London... 'can't imagine wanting to go'.

As PP have mentioned a lot of us would have loved to stay in London. We just can't afford it. Well, I guess I could, but then I'd be working all the hours God sends to live in London and not reap the benefits.

I'm not sure it was an emotional reaction as such. We lived, at that time, in a very nice bit of SE London (technically it was Kent) but it was literally around the corner from some particularly not nice areas of SE London. The day we went off to Herts was just out of curiosity and when it came to WGC we realised, THIS is what we want. A nice little town centre, looks well kept, nice parks and woodland, lovely houses. I just realised how many parts of London were, in comparison, a bit of a hole.

(I'm sure someone will be along soon to tell me how much of a cesspit WGC is but we don't live there anymore either and that was purely because we could get a bigger property for much less in Yorkshire)

Older London dwellers will have quite a different view due to house price growth.

@AscensionToCheese - not smug at all - I rather suspect I live in the shitty area that @Phos referred to. it is most definitely affordable and I watch a lot of 'naice' families dip their toes in the edgy urban area and move away when their kids are due to start school.

One size doesn't fit all and there seemed to be an implication in the OP that one always reaches a time to leave London, it's simply a matter of when.

Then there were posts saying it is only the incommers who want to stay - I was just disagreeing as someone who grew up here an who has experienced other places too.

There is an option to stay as well.

@Filthycop OK now I'm gonna bite - I was referring to Catford. We lived in Beckenham.

I love London, but I did have a 'WTF' moment last week when I realised my toddler was standing in a puddle of urine in the lift at the station. A few days earlier I had seen a man charging off gripping a screwdriver up his sleeve.

I know these things are not London-centric but urghjhhh.

We weigh up the pros (a billion interesting things to do with DD) versus a quieter pace of life. I know living in the country is not without issues either - I am on a fb group from the village I grew up in and good grief, its busybody central.

I live in the West Country and can't wait to move back to London

'Affordable'? How much is a two bed terrace? Three bed semi?
The OP didn't give me that impression at all, it was clearly for people who had left. But we all have our own biases.

Just looked up Beckenham.
https://www.rightmove.co.uk/house-prices/beckenham.html?propertyType=TERRACED&soldIn=1&page=1

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/house-prices/catford.html?propertyType=TERRACED&soldIn=1&page=1

375K for a one bed terrace - insane!500K for a 2 bed.

Of course, when you stretch the meaning of the word, people have 'options', but what does the word mean?

A 4 bed house with large garden is a luxury, if you moved you probably value space and quiet. Fair enough. But a 3 bed terrace isn't!

FWIW I grew up in a tiny house in a developing country. I wouldn't mind flats, but the regulations r.e management companies etc in the UK are so dire that I wouldn't touch one unless I had no choice. Mainly because they are still not seen as long-term homes, except in London but legislation hasn't caught up.

I do feel sorry for Londoners though. People in other places tend to bang on about tourists, second home owners etc in places like Cornwall but it's London that has a major problem. it's just nicely obscured by the massive disparity in wealth.

Also I didn't fancy growing old in London I used to see elderly people no family or friends looking old and worn out by life stuck in little pokey flats

It's so funny, and I know it's two sides of the same coin, but I see the opposite. My parents moved into the centre and I think it's an incredibly freeing way to grow older. They're constantly at theatre, cinema, restaurants with friends, cultural events and talks. Easy to get to the airports, trains, Eurostar, and being in a flat instead of a big house makes travelling easier as they can pretty much lock up and leave. They walk almost everywhere or take the tube, occasionally, if it's very late, a taxi, so don't have to worry about driving or being isolated by bad weather. Easy delivery of necessities, access to some of the best medical care in the country.

Any big city has the same problems tbh. I mean, the discourse here is binary ('London' vs 'the countryside', nothing else exists in between lol) but I do find that a lot of London haters just don't like cities.

There was a study that indicated the most unhappy people were in suburbs as we generally are either city or country people. In the burbs you seem to just get the worst parts of both.....

This thread has helped me to clarify that I may also be better off moving into central London myself rather than moving outwards. I have been down on London for months but last week, I got lost around the little streets of Covent Garden and loved discovering shops which I had never seen before. The regular level of novelty offered is not enough for me but somewhere central and close to the parks would also be a good insurance policy for the future.

There was a study that indicated the most unhappy people were in suburbs as we generally are either city or country people. In the burbs you seem to just get the worst parts of both.....

I'm in z3 & have always classed that as the suburbs although others will vehemently tell me the suburbs are something else!

Also I didn't fancy growing old in London I used to see elderly people no family or friends looking old and worn out by life stuck in little pokey flats

I'm sure I read that housing developers were targeting older people as they are the ones who can afford to live centrally!

I agree with this study. We moved to the suburbs from zone 2 and I loathed it with a passion - we were renting to try it out (I was never really on board, my husband thought we would enjoy family life with a bigger garden but he soon discovered unhappy wife = unhappy life.) Now happily residing in zone 3.

I never had that moment. I left for work, mourning all the way. I still adore spending time in London, though I haven't even lived in the UK for years. I still feel a Londoner -- it was a very elastic, inclusive identity.

@Sunnydaysareahead what do you class as suburbs? I grew up in z3 & live there & see it as suburbs!

One big difference I notice for my dc is that I'm a 2nd gen immigrant & my road, school was very multicultural. I'd say the majority were 1st or 2nd gen immigrants. A lot of this multiculturalism has been pushed out of my area.

When I blew my nose after being stuck on the tube and it was all full of black gunge. Grim.

Really really do not see the appeal of London in the slightest. It's possible the most unBritish place I have ever lived in, it's dirty, it's hot/humid, everyone ignores you and you've got no chance of buying a nice family home.

If you're rich rich, I could possibly see some appeal (theatres, restaurants etc) but for the vast majority, life is simply better elsewhere.

Not Bank station? I was in a lift to Bank Docklands light rail the other day and there were several notices around the lift and in it essentially warning folk not to urinate as they were on CCTV and TFL would be after them. Never seen such a thing - those bankers!

I think the "unbritishness" is what a lot of us really like about it

Everyone is different and we don't meet/live by/socialise/work with identikit versions of ourselves

I know what you mean, some of my work colleagues in zone 1 think I live in the sticks 😂but I'm still on the tube which makes a difference to me (and feels less suburban) as it makes London more accessible for theatre, museums etc etc. Plus we have all the diversity of restaurants, cafes, people and conveniences so I don't feel it's the burbs!

When we lived in the suburbs it was zone 6 network rail and even though it was only 20 mins to Waterloo it felt a real effort to go into London plus locally we were limited to mostly pubs if we wanted to eat out.