Calling all Cambridgeshire folk!

[HarrietTheSpy]

Please tell me about March and if you know it a village called Manea. Near Ely. Pretty? Pretty friendly? Close to decent schools (state or private?) Live in outer London now - would you bother to go here for a big relocation or would you keep looking elsewhere? Interested in Essex/Cambridgeshire.

xx

No to the Fens (apart from Ely). I don't think that the schools in that area are much good.I think DS used to play football against a team from Manea and it was considered the back of beyond. South Cambridgeshire/NW Essex have good schools and are generally fairly friendly - lots of people there who have moved out of London or who work in biotech type industries. House prices vary a lot - period properties can be expensive but most housing stock must be a lot cheaper than London.
One day a week commute perfectly simple from Ely. I commute daily from S Cambridgeshire.

Sweetkitty, et al
Would we have good access to the Norfolk coast there? Seems so from the maps, not sure how quick it would be due to road links, etc.

Lilymaid
NW Essex isn't so terribly far from where we are now - Harlow-y etc. Not sure it would feel like enough of a change and again adding all the costs up plus the fact our mortgage would be quite similar probably...hmm...Do like Saffron Walden a lot though.

Am interested in villages around Colchester potentially though AllBuggiedOut.

Grendels. Thanks for the link. Always open to suggestions. It's cute however we're looking for drama which the other place has. Resale value is a big consideration if we did all that work. Was a question I had too.

There's good access to the N Norfolk coast from anywhere around Cambridge via A14/A11 - though if you were living in the Fens the journey would be shorter.

No, I can see totally why you like the other place. There's something bizarrely appealing about it, isn't there? Something tells me you're a bit of a book fan too, and I wonder whether it appeals to the sense of the dramatic / story-telling / mystical? Did you ever read the Green Knowe books? That house is also in Cambridgeshire (Lucy M. Boston was a colleague's aunt or great aunt or something).

BTW, one interesting thing about old farm houses is that farmers are extremely good at doing a bad DIY job, using things they happen to have lying around the farm anyway.

Oh, and has anyone said flooding, yet? Do check out where the regular floods are. Some houses have stone floors for a reason :-)

Hee hee - Grendels is so evil and dream killing, but has 3 builders in today banging away at the kitchen

You are so right Grendels, that is hilarious! I have visions of myself being able to stop doing the day job a bit and focus on my writing more. Definitely looking for the house atmosphere to be "right" in that regard. My real dream is to live in a house with its own story to tell too... Haven't read Green Knowe books but off to check them out...

Totally know what you mean by the ad hoc DIY. We have seen random walls put up and loads of shoddy work done in some places. One person put a loo in front of a window!!! Right in front of it.

I mean a floor length window by the way.

I can totally believe it!

Apparently ex-farmhouses are notorious among building professionals for sheer oddness of the DIY in them.

I'm now having fun trying to find you a house in a better area - how about this?

www.cheffins.co.uk/cheffins-property/high-street-cambridge-8809

But I can see it doesn't have the slightly insane drama of the Manea house - which is quite 'Carrie's War', don't you think?

In my experience, buying a house that needs renovations totally sabotages any attempt to sit down and write, leaving only the brainpower to Mumsnet as you listen to the builders trooping in and out of the house. Seriously, before renovations began, I was writing about an hour a day (in theory I work full time). Since they began, I manage the occasional ten mins to keep my hand in. Luckily I enjoy the renovations and have plenty of PM experience, but I do somewhat think 'aren't I supposed to be writing a booker-prize winning novel?'

p.p.s

Is it just me or are there plants growing out of the roof of that house?

Would agree with other posters that the Fens (with possible exception of Ely) are very much an acquired taste - remote, empty, quite desolate and with a very "local" mentality - a colleague of mine was a solicitor at a Fenland firm and says that there were very few surnames in the client cabinets, if you get my meaning. I couldn't contemplate living there myself but I imagine it must suit some people, although I think it's a big adjustment if you haven't grown up there, particularly coming from somewhere as busy and cosmopolitan as London!

South Cambs, north Herts and Essex and west Suffolk are all lovely, I'd recommend any of those as a rather easier transition. Alternatively, Huntingdonshire (the corridor north of Cambridge towards St Ives and Huntingdon) can also be quite nice but is more reasonable in price that the areas above and has good communications with the A14, train and soon the guided bus between Huntingdon and Cambridge.

ROFL at 'very few surnames'...

Carrie's War - excellent. I LOOOVE IT. You haven't even managed to put me off with that vision although I'm sure my daughters may wish that you had in years to come, if this is freakishly meant to be.

What is sad is I suspect that I will get there and feel really deflated. As has happened before.

Okay, I have a conference call I have GOT to Go. Will look at link later. Cheers

You people are NOT putting me off at all. Think of how my daughters will be able to dine out on these stories in years to come (after they've fled to Wellington, NZ that is).

Even the local Fen folk used to joke about their webbed feet, there is definitely a "your not from round ere are you" in certain places. I remember going into the bakers when I first arrived and everyone turning roudn to look at me when I asked for something, it was the weird Scottish accent.

Just looked at all the property for sale in Manea now cannot believe it, there's that many houses in Manea.

You would have to drive everywhere and can imagine for teenagers it wouldn't be that great

Wonder if they're planning to build a huge something, like nuclear reactor, and everyone is trying to get out?!

Anyway,DH lived in Blackburn for three years. I was travelling up from London for one year of that, lived there for two. I never, ever got asked by any locals what I was doing there. They knew I had to have some reason. However, in London I am asked on quite literally a daily basis. With my accent remarked upon (Yank.) I feel like I should come equipped with a tape recorder I can switch on when it starts.

My vicar told me this story.

He asked an elderly man in our village (who had be born and lived their all his life) whether his wife was also local.

"Oh no", said the man. "She wasn't local at all. She came from X."

X bein the next village, some two miles down the road.

Had a quick look as intrigued by your literary hints (I'm a great reader and write fiction). Well, it doesn't strike me as that cheap for an isolated place. Don't do it. I moved out of East London to East Midlands and I'm moving down again as I miss the cosmopolitan and intellectual stimuli of a city. I'm only renting, so it's not a big mistake. Thinking of Cambridge or Oxford but I reckon Cambridge is more family friendly and less noisy.

Suffolk is very pretty and there are good schools- state/private/grammar(in Essex). Coast not too far away either. Bury St Edmunds is a lovely market town surrounded by plenty of lovely villages. The commute is to Liverpool Street. Ooh, Woodbridge is very nice if an easy commute isn't a necessity.

Saffron Walden is very nice too although more expensive and a bit too close to Stansted - there are good schools there too.

Parts of Cambridgeshire definitely have that 'in-bred' feel.

East Anglia is a fab region- plenty of lovely thatched cottages, undulating farmland and TRACTORS.

Oh and N Norfolk can be reached without having to go on the A14/A11 either which makes it more pleasant.

Bella
This house is being sold through Cheffins...I think I can safely post that as it doesn't appear anyone is going to rush off and gazump me, and anyway loads seem to have figured it out already.

We were planning to have lunch in the area before heading over. Would that tearoom be a good place to start? Anywhere else you could suggest?

Sainsburys do still deliver round Ely way though, if that's a factor. Would definitely second Ely as a good choice, or one of the surrounding villages. We live in a group of four cottages with open fields to the front and back, feels like the middle of nowhere but can be at the train station in about 10 minutes.

BellaNoir - have lived near Ely for two years (one of the W villages) and have never been to Peacocks, have definitely put that on the list of things to do this summer holiday, thanks!

Oh, it's a totally different house to the one that I thought it was! That's hilarious. I thought you were going for a total wreck.

Um - if you like the house when you see it, I'd spend a bit of time looking round March, Manea, Wisbech and Littleport on a Saturday night.

I think it would be fair to say of the local secondary school that they are trying very hard in a challenging area.

news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/education/08/school_tables/secondary_schools/html/873_4501 .stm

www.neale-wade.cambs.sch.uk/ofsted/110884_inspectionreport.pdf

"The Neale-Wade Community College is a larger than average, mixed school. More
than 94% of students are White British, approximately 2% are from other white
backgrounds and 1% are of mixed ethnicity. Very few use English as an additional
language. Over one third of students have learning difficulties and/or disabilities,
which is significantly higher than average; these include moderate and specific
learning difficulties and behavioural, emotional and social difficulties. An average
proportion of students is known to be eligible for free school meals. The area served
by the college has relatively high unemployment rates. The college has been
awarded specialist status for mathematics and computing. The sixth form shares
joint provision for AS- and A-level courses with Cromwell Community College in
Chatteris. Post-16 Level 2 courses are provided for the local partnership of schools at
the College of West Anglia."

In my experience, some people in the Fenland areas can also be rather racist, sometimes perhaps with some logical reasons behind certain prejudices, and this might be difficult for you moving from London. (This is trying to be a fair and tactful way of putting the idea that you may be distressed by things that people say, and yet at times find it difficult to argue with.)