Poole - what's it like?

[fruitcorner]

Hi, do any Mumsnetters live in Poole and if so, what is it like? My DH is quite keen on it but although living somewhere near the sea would be lovely, Poole didnt really "grab" me when we drove round, seemed a bit too manicured with not much going on in terms of local shops, cafes etc. We were looking at Lilliput/Parkstone area (based on schools). Any thoughts?

bump!
Are there no mumsnetters in Poole?

Expensive. That's what it's like! It's the Whitstable/Brighton/Southwold of the moment, and so everything is hellishly expensive, and full of second homers.

I live in Bournemouth It's very pretty and compact....though, if you are hoping to be more towards Poole, check out Westbourne!!! It's LOVELY! really cute boutiques and pretty houses. Kinda expensive, but well worth it!

Poole is beautiful and although we love going there in the summer/occasional weekends (DH lived and worked there when he first started teaching and we still have his flat - 30,000 way back in 1997) it's not somewhere we'd give up London life for.

We go to Lower Parkstone/Ashley Cross and enjoy the decent transport links to London Waterloo, stroll down to the village green to make the most of the cafes/village library and charity shops and can while away days down at Sandbanks, a mere 5-10 minutes drive away. Ashley Cross (near Parkstone station) is perfect if you're looking for cafes!

However, in the years since 1997 it's very clear that the homebuilding/explansion programme has had a massive impact upon Poole; drive through from Bournemouth to Poole and it's noticable that many of the 1920/1930s family homes that come up for sale are knocked down and replaced by flats or miniature houses thus increasing the density of the area. Meanwhile the infrastructure, especially the roads, hasn't kept pace so the roads are incredibly busy and the summer queues are far worse than they ever used to be. We hear more sirens in Lower Parkstone than we do in Lewisham even though we live near the hospital, fire station and not that far from the enormous Police station!

As we don't live in Poole I shouldn't really offer opinion on the schools but I shall anyway... we still have lots of teacher-friends who work in the area and know lots of people whose children attend local schools. The grammar school system affects the schools in Y4/Y5 especially since the system has been changed and now encourages people to get their children into state schools before secondary transfer (some kind of priority thing I believe). Friends whose children have SN (of the emotional variety rather than physical need) have found Poole LA rather 'backward' when it comes to flexi-schooling or any sort of imaginative thinking whereas Dorset LA is generally considered to be more forward-thinking.

Every summer we ponder selling up in London and moving to Poole but then we sit in traffic that we never experience in London, and look around at the sea of white faces and realise that it will always be somewhere that we love visiting but could never make our home.

Um- isn't there an area centred around Poole that features in the social deprivation/ child poverty stats? Bizarrely in the midst of the relative wealth of much of Hants and Dorset?

Just caught up with my original thread, thank you for all the posts, very interesting to read the different views! we are still undecided....