Thinking of relocating from London to Cardiff - Advice please

[Sycamoretree]

General disillusionment with career, family unfriendly lifestyle, ridiculous West London mortgage and crappy catchment area lottery has resulted in our wistful musings becoming a more realistic plan to up sticks and move our family to Cardiff. DH's family are all in the general area, and it would work for us both career-wise.

Can anyone advise on nice areas to start doing some tentative house hunting/pricing in? I wouldn't want to have to commute more than half an hour. DC's are both pre-school age, so we'd want to be close to a good state primary school.

Also, what kind of price bracket would we be looking at for a 4 bedroom house with a garden in a nice area?

I'm trying to ascertain whether moving to another popular city would actually give us a better lifestyle, or if I'm just kidding myself.

Tho' I might add, plenty of 'well to do' types live there now.

To have a good old gossip about 'er in Eclipse street of course!

Yes, there have been rumours about the area becoming gentrified since Lloyd George was a boy. Though i think the houses got to be so expensive (for a grim inner city area) that real local people were priced out of it. Certainly just before we left, the only people moving into our street were young professional couples.

Yes I imagine they were priced out of Roath - for a while parts of Splott were marketed as 'the new Roath' by Estate Agents.

Personally I'd skip Cardiff and head to Swansea instead, but I'm Cardiff people wouldn't agree!

On a more serious note, Cardiff is a fab place to live, work and play.

Yes I understand Swansea is rather Swish these days

My ILs live in Dinas Powys - tis lovely with a big common and gorgeous houses, though not great shops. Good primary school (so I'm told) and easily accessible from Cardiff, plus it's close to Penarth (Penarth is, as everyone else has said, great - but I lived there as a teenager and can barely pass within 100m of the Railway pub without getting a little memory of Southern Comfort hangover and feeling sick, so I tend to avoid).

I notice no one has told you to go and live on Barry Island

Barry is ok tho' it used to have a bit of a 'Cowboy town' image not sure if that is true anymore but I might be wrong!

Oh yes and Dinas is nice what about Wenvoe MissClavel?

mosschops if you went to work in an office in France and everyone spoke French would you think they were rude?

izyboy Thanks for mentioning Gwaelod y Garth on this thread. It gave me the idea to go for a walk up the mountain this morning, which was absolutely gorgeous. We would have gone in the pub if we weren't so muddy. We were kicking ourselves for not taking clean shoes as well. Is the food nice?

Hey, we are considering Cardiff if we move out of lovely Stoke Newington (could get a huge, lovely house for our flat - well, not right now cos we can't sell it ).

Love Cardiff

• multicultural (this is actually a pluspoint for us rather than a problem)
• bilingual (Welsh/English official language really excites me, as a linguist)

-artsy -a big city/urban -near the coast -near London and relatives

fab. Will prob be Roath Park area - when the kids are school aged. Not really worried about anti-English sentiment, never really seen it tbh.

Mary dont worry about muddy boots Babs wouldn't mind-they are used to walkers. Yes I can confirm the food is lovely, it is a friendly pub and they are very tolerant of kids and dogs. Glad you enjoyed your walk!

Izyboy - I work near there and I have not once been to the Garth Inn, I shall work on making up for that forthwith!!

Migola - if they could all speak English I would yes! They could at least have a couple of convos in English couldnt they?

Mary - one of my best friends lives in Splott, she has a drug dealing house opposite hers and when we have dropped her off after nights out there are plenty of prostitutes walking around. Im guessing now that Bute Street is a no go, this is the new place to be seen!
Im not trying to wind you up, just speaking as I find and have seen.
I wouldnt want to live there anyway

Mosschops really? honestly? I agree it would be rude not to try and include you in any conversations especially as you were the new girl, but if they were just going about their day to day stuff then it would SO unnatural for them to do it in English

hockeypuck pop in for lunch - you wont regret, it people come from all over the city to eat there.

sorry- 'regret it,.' I would only place the 'Bunch of Grapes' slightly higher for pub grub because my son loves their very good chunky chips.

However the chef (and he is a chef not a microwave operator) at the Gwaelod uses fresh local ingredients, well cooked and interesting. You can enjoy lunch/dinner infront of the real fires in the public bar or the restaurant upstairs.

I live in splott. Although technically speaking it's Roath but you get sniggered at if you call it Roath. No drug dealers near us and it's a pleasant enough street.

It's Tremorfa which is the really bad bit isn't it? I live very close to Newport road so not in deepest darkest splot. Not far from the ROyal Oak.

Royal Oak (Splott)used to be a bloody fabulous boozer - with an incredible landlady. (oops do you see a theme here for me?) Is it still kept as a shrine to Jim Driscoll and boxing?

Anyone been to the Vulcan (Adamsdown)? Now there is an original Brains pub completely spit and sawdust one of the few left in Cardiff - but I believe they are about to bulldose it to make way for 'developments'. God what a loss to our city centre heritage (seriously).

They still have the boxing ring I think, though last time I spent any real time in there was a few years ago for new ywar's eve.

Heard about the vulcan, it's closing and being bulldosed for sure