So... tell me I'm doing the right thing leaving London, as I'm having a major wobble!

[sushistar]

Our house has just gone on the market. DH has got a job in the South West, near my mum and dad, lovly country town. We'll have a lot less money stress tere, better schools, near family to help with kids. But I've lived in london for over 10 yrs,. and the house going on the market has just made me feel all worried - are we doing the right thing???

We're leaving London for Dublin this summer. We've been thinking about it for about 3 years and tbh I was terrified about it for about the first 18 months. It does seem quite final. In London you always feel that you could move and go anywhere and London itself is in constant flux, I felt that once I moved to Dublin I would basically stay there and nothing would change in my life until I died. (I'm a glass half-empty type, can you tell? )

Now that it's almost upon us, I'm really looking forward to it. It will be fabulous for my parents to have their only grandchildren nearby, and also fabulous for my DC to see more of them.

You might feel a lot more positive when things are more decided. Knowing the school that DS will be going to and the house that we will be living in has made it all much more real for me, and therefore I can emotionally detach from this place.

Maybe ask the newsagent for the names of everyone in the area who gets the Guardian .

I certainly am surprised by the number of people round here who think the Daily Mail is a newspaper.

I'm sure you're right Bran - at the moment we've just but our house (which I love, although it's titchy and stupidly expensive!) on the market, and I feel sort of homeless!

But next weekend we'll be househunting down there and I'm sure whjen I see some houses I'll be able to imagine myself there a bit more, and see it as more real - as something to go to, not just something to leave behind.

I'm so glad chunkamatic and woodforthetrees that you've been able to make friends - it's that that scares me most. But I think having little ones makes it so much easier to meet people - and you automatically have one thing (the dcs) in common to start you off...

I realised today that all the people I know here in London are, of course, the ones who've decided to STAY (or havn't got kids so havn't had to make the choice yet). So it's nice to talk to people who've made the same decision as us and chosen to GO, it makes me feel less alone and crazy!!!

Sorry about my crap typing!

We moved from London to a small Kent village 6 years ago when DS was 8 months.

We went from living in a vibrant, cosmopolitan and multicultural London village to a small, whiter than white Kent village full of families and older people, sandwiched between one down at heel disadvantaged Kent town and an extremely affluent one.

I miss the different nationalities and sheer variety of people I used to come into contact with. I see noone in their 20's here. When I go to events where 20somethings are, I stare at them greedily trying to take it all in so as to remember what they look like! I get my fix of a more culturally mixed social life by keeping in touch with friends from my London days.

However, having led a peripatetic life until marriage, I welcome the chance to become a real part of a small, friendly community, which having lived in towns and cities I had never come across. Speaking daily to people who share similar political views, read the same papers, have the same priorities in life just isn't that important to me.

Mumsnet is great for that anyway. I have discovered that now I am older and more secure and confident in my decisions and thinking actually its a lot more interesting talking to people that have opposing views to mine.

I don't intend to move. I went to about 10 different schools growing up, and had difficulty making lasting friendships as I was never anywhere long enough. I don't want that for my DC. They have a big garden, many local parks and open spaces as well as varied outdoor activities, heartbreakingly beautiful countryside, wonderful neighbours, a great local school in walking distance, and, most importantly, when they are teenagers, a train station at the bottom of the road so they can experience everything London can offer when they will appreciate it fully.

OP we left London 5 years ago and I LOVE living in the SW.
I really recommend it, the lifestyle outside of London is much better IMO - its not all about work and achiving higher salaries. It's a lot about the simpler pleasures, and being with the kids is lovely when there's gorgeous countryside and beach on your doorstep.
You can still visit London. I do, and I am glad to leave it when I do! It feels too full of people (and I live in a city down here) and too hot and too frantic and desperate, and just not real life.
Good luck and I hope you love it as much as we do!

Thanks Belgrano.

Taffetacatski, that doesn't sound fun tbh - the lack of variety of people is one reason I DON'T want to move to a small village. It would drive me nuts. We are moving to a medium town, approx 60k people, so hopefully there will be other young families there. I don't mind if people have different views to me, it's more if I can't find anyone interested in stuff I'm interested in - I don't mind if they don't agree!

I so agree with you about not moving the children too often - I moved a lot as a child, and always felt that my cousins (who could say 'I'm from xyz town') were really lucky. I always didn't really know where I was 'from' iyswim. I hope my dss grow up with roots, a place they feel they can come back to.

sushi - its absolutely fine! its very white here so on the surface it seems very samey. I guess if you don't delve any deeper, a lot is samey, and on some levels there isn't a great variety...... but get to know people, and most people don't come from round here, the closest friends I have in the village are from Scotland, Ireland, South Africa and USA.

and beyond that, and all the conforming at the school gate, you find out more about people and they really surprise you. I have lived in lots of places where people have similar views/taste/priorities and IME it gets competitive. I hate that. it doesn't happen here and thats a big part of why I love it.

as a rabid lifelong Labour supporter and Guardian reader, I have surprised myself by becoming quite friendly with the local Tory councillor, who has a DD a similar age to mine. We have very interesting debates at DD's village music group.....

Like StrawberryCornetto we moved from SE London to Sussex 3 years ago. I commute 2 days a week and work from home the other 3.

We've never looked back. Sometimes I'm on the tube and I can remember intellectually that I loved London when I first came (DP and I are both from the North originally, we were in London for 18 years) but it's completely gone. Even when people ask me about things to do in London, I'm stumped, I can't see the place any more - I just see dirt, grime, crime and commuters zooming along at top speed tutting if you dare to spend more than 2 seconds paying for your overpriced coffee (like there aren't tubes every 90 seconds anyway)....The pressure to speed about has just gone.

We never went out of our local area once we had DD and the proximity of theatres etc just didn't make any difference, they might as well have been a 4-hour round trip as they are now for the amount of times we actually went.

It's taken a while to make friends and we only have a few, but then we didn't have many in London either - people were always moving on. Here, the challenge that is everyone seems to live a stone's throw from 4 generations of their family, not to mention everyone they were ever at school with, so they aren't interested in meeting new people. There are lots of ex Londoners though so we all hang out together!

Have a look at rightmove.co.uk, you can search nationally so that will give you some idea of houses. Also have a look at google maps and get some idea of the area. We meant to move out for 2 years before we actually did it and spending some weekends here really helped to get a sense of the place and get our heads round how life would be.

Sushistar - I could have written your posts a year ago. We moved out of London, after 11 years there, at the end of July 2009.

I haven't regretted it once; I LOVE it where we are now, have met lots of new friends from a variety of backgrounds, and although I like visiting London now, as tourist, and I think it is a wonderful city, I wouldn't go back to live there.

The absolute worst thing about living in London is all the people who leave. I've lost count of all the people we have had to say goodbye to over the years and all the friends my children have lost. So at least you'll be avoiding that! Hope it works out for you.

I was just talking about my move to Dublin last night with a friend of mine who moved to Norwich from London about 4 years ago. She was telling me how it was the best thing the family could have done and she doesn't miss London at all now.

I have lived in many places in the UK, London being one of them and I really don't understand why some people think everyone from outside of the capital is so different from them.

I don't like the Daily Mail either but used to skim through my Mum's copies, and the people in the "lifestyle" pages all seem to be middle class working mums from London!

Anyway, that's beside the point, when I lived in london I found many of the people I met rather boring to be honest, very narrow minded and thought London was the be all and end all of the universe and couldn't understand why not everyone wanted to live there.

I now live in a small town in Devon and the people here are all very laid back, very open minded (and best of all) really friendly, nothing like what I experienced in london. I think that you can find like minded people wherever you choose to live, I promise we are not all philistines outside the M25!

Bumping this because we have exchanged contracts on our home in NW London and are moving to Banbury, Oxfordshire.

Deciding to move out of London (DH and I are born and bred Londoners) was like a lightbulb moment. Most of our friends moved out of the capital as soon as they had children; we no longer have the time to enjoy all of London's facilities; property is extortionate and we've had enough of the dirt and grime.

Ooh Ronx, I have just moved out of Banbury! It's not a bad little town and still very close to London, I hope yoy enjoy.

*you

We moved out of London to West Kent about 3 years ago and I don't regret it for a second. It took a bit of adjustment at first, and I had to really make an effort to make friends, but through school and nursery I quickly established friendships and now I feel so blessed to have lots of really good friends around me. The children are settled, the people are fantastic, and London is only a train ride away when we want to do museums or theatres or something - but the pace of life is so much slower.

Even in Taunton (my parents live not far away from there), London isn't THAT far away and the trains are fast into Paddington. I would move to the West Country in a heartbeat, but DH can't really transfer from being London based, hence coming east rather than west.

Best of luck with the move!

Thanks rocklover! We are looking forward to the move as we have family and friends in the area. Plus, we wanted to live on the outskirts of a town - neither DH nor I are village lovers!

Ohh, so lovely to hear all these positive stories about the Big Move. Rocklover, I so agree that it's a horrible stereotype about people outside London, and I'm sure it's not true, but it's just my anxiety making me imagine the worst!

God yes. Moved from London back to Cheshire when pg with DD just under two years ago. Am thankful every single bloody day

I think it's a huge advantage for you that your parents will be nearby sushistar. It really helps to have some sort of support network available, even if it's just someone to whinge to about settling in problems while you're building up your friendship network. You might find that your parents will be available to babysit, and even if not they'll be close by enough to take the DC to visit which will be lovely for them.

One of the things that I'm quite relieved about is being nearby while my parents are getting older. At the moment if they needed my help I would have to sort out childcare of the DC and fly over, or, more likely, stay here and worry while my DB has to take care of everything. Once we've moved we'll be less than 15 mins from my parents' house.

We moved to rural Cotswolds from London 4 years ago and love it. Even MIL is moving here soon, my parents already close by.

I do miss London but walking to small village school, good secondary schools are a winner. Everyone is really friendly. Lots of Telegraph readers here though, you can always get a Guardian in the shop

Sushi - do you feel better now?

Keep the positive comments coming, people - we leave London for Sussex on Friday and I am feeling sick with worry!

Lotkins I am on ML from the Telegraph, so I should receive a warm welcome .

pcworld - good luck. Whereabouts in Sussex?

We moved from London to Sussex just after Christmas - live in large village just north of Brighton. The first few months were hard - mainly because of the long cold winter in an unfamiliar place dealing with early pregnancy and a toddler - but now summer is here we absolutely adore it. And even when it was tough, I didn't miss London at all.

We're just over an hour away on the train and I've only been in 4 times in 7 months - more than enough for me. One of those trips was to a posh central restaurant, one was to the theatre, one was for a big shopping trip and one was to a big museum - trips which would have been easier when we were in Zone 3 but which we never actually did!

We have more space, more light, less traffic, better choice of schools, easy access to beach (20 mins) and hills (from door) - all things we wanted when in the city.

The one thing that has been hard is making friends, but I think that is my naturally quite shy personality when meeting new people rather than inherent lack of friendliness around here. I've got involved with two local community groups which is making it easier, and brave the toddler group every Monday - and have met 2 lovely women and several other pretty nice ones that way. But this is a long term move, so I am in no rush to make friends as I know I can take it at my own pace.