Where to relocate outside of London?

[lovelylittle]

Hi everyone, first time poster here! Myself and DH are looking to move out of London to buy a house and be closer to the family and the countryside. We are both originally from Lincoln and would honestly love to move back there however we want to keep our careers in London and we are aware that Lincoln, whilst beautiful, is probably a little to quiet for us now. We are ideally looking for somewhere not too far from Lincoln (under two hours) but commutable to London 3x per week. Any advice would be really appreciated!

Stamford? 1 hour 55 to Lincoln.
Norwich? 2 hour 15 to Lincoln.
Market Harborough? 1 hour 33 to Lincoln.

Not sure Market Harborough and Stamford are livlier than Lincoln!

If you're looking for somewhere livelier than Lincoln, then presumably you need to be looking at cities, which really restricts your choices. That probably means that you need to look at Nottingham or Leicester. I'm not sure I'd want to commute to London 3 times per week from there, though.

Leicester's pretty quick on the non-stopping train, but expensive.