Moving out of London

Interesting you say that... Best possible plan is to have a smaller place in London once (if?!) the kids leave home, and have a place somewhere in that countryside thing which I've heard about.

Middle of France is very cheap, Suffolk isn't. Middle of France is harder to get to but it's quite nice once you're there.

It's somewhere in between a plan and a pipe dream really, may just hang out in walthamstow forever.

I just want enough.

Indeed. The more I pay off the mortgage the fewer hours I want to work. I don't aspire to a bigger/nicer house or more stuff. (I do have garage envy though.)

It remains tight but our quality of life slowly improves. Only working 4 days a week (and my wife only working 3 days a week) is brilliant during the school holidays. Same with salary sacrifice to get an extra 2 weeks' holiday a year. MiniGB is very happy in a good local school (there aren't many, if any, shit local schools around here).

We don't want to move out of London (Mrs GB grew up 3 miles away from where we live, and never wants to be further than that) and we're in the lucky position that we've got enough space for our needs; we couldn't afford any more anyway. I'd happily live anywhere (grew up in the sticks - small village south of Cambridge, University in Sheffield, lived in big cities and small towns in the US for a while, but mostly 15 years in London).

Sure, a big garden (with direct access) would be nice, but there's hardly a garden in this area that's big enough any child when they get past 6 years old (for a decent game of football, cricket, etc) - that's what the local parks are for. Our small garden (without direct access) is still big enough for sitting in over the summer with a paddling pool or a sprinkler for entertainment.

20 minutes on the train to Waterloo, 10 minute run (crossing two minor roads and barely seeing a car) and I'm on Wimbledon Common. A bit more of a run/cycle and one major road to cross and I'm in Richmond Park.

If London works for you then it's great, when the time does come to downsize (kids leaving home, etc) or bail to the sticks completely the longer you've been there the better the return is likely to be.

But there are plenty of reasons why London doesn't work for everyone. I'll admit we were lucky to have bought 10 years ago (even though it was near the peak of the market at the time), but we were careful to buy something that could last us 30 years if it needed to, and we've only got one sprog (and no chance of any more).

Foreign and West London opinions dont count

My in laws live in what I would say is an ideal place. It's quiet. It gets snow. It's near (ish) to Puy de Dom.

However, it's really basic. And it's an hour from an airport. It's also an hour from the station which serves Paris. It's definitely not weekendable. @ChasnotRobert

cultural desert

Mmm... dessert...

It just really stuck.

Public transport and getting around in Oz (especially when you're drunk) is properly fucked.

Even though I'll rant about it I fucking love London's transport.

@Crispin_Glover Sydney is a really shit place

Indeed.

And it's an hour from an airport.

Hold on a mo. What percentage of people in London do you think could get to an airport in under an hour? Properly door to do, not "the train/tube only takes 40 mins on a good day". London Airport doesn't count because it's mostly for cunts.

Take my Alfie (although I'd probably have to pay you), he's 13 - Monday, Wednesday and sometimes Friday nights he's at his boxing club at Lambeth North, Tuesday nights he plays steel pans after school, Thursday nights he plays football in Tulse Hill, Saturday afternoons he plays football in Brixton, Sundays he meets up with friends, last Saturday he took the train to Box Hill to do some walking/map reading for his D of E award. He gets around everywhere on public transport, I don't need to be a taxi for him, he has an amazing group of friends from school and outside of school. It's fucking brilliant, it's what quality of life means to me.

Ah I see - it's an actual 'thing' in the US. I even listened to an episode of This American Life about it #stuffwhitepeoplesay

London doesn't have a monopoly on these things though. Other cities in the UK are cosmopolitan, with stuff to do and have good public transport too..

Or for a bigger house that isn't jokes expensive.

What I meant was:
Family come to pick us up. There's no train from the airport to the station.

Nope, I've never associated it with that

You're right. I grew up in Leicester and it had all that stuff (minus that good public transport), London just has more of it.

Those articles... pfft

Moving to LA "we want to live in a city that's a livable place to work, where we can raise our family, and where we can run our respective small businesses" dafuq?

"walkable" ? Really? I thought they banned walking in the constitution?

"The USA is putting curbs on surveillance" ahahahahahahaaaaaaaaaaaaaa hahahahaaaaa

"Tube effectively out of service on weekends and bank holidays" Bullshit.
"you have to pay to drive your own car, and 20p a minute to park it" Yeah, ride a bike you lazy shit.

"you can't start from scratch in London anymore. If you're not backed by family money or earning above the minimum threshold (a six-figure salary), then your standards have to be vastly different from mine". I guess they are vastly different.

"When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life"

• not hippy
  

Kids are the biggest factor for us. Without them we'd probably stay in the city, but once ours got to about 3yrs old it got less fun being here, I want more open space and less pollution for him.

Why are you posting then?

Big gardens can fuck off - who wants to spend their weekends gardening?

Schools can fuck off too - full of noisy little shits.

Quality of life for me - not having to ride 2hrs just to get out of shitting suburbia and into the 'slightly less likely to be run down by some twat' lanes of the countryside. Then I realise my idea of countryside is the Chilterns and they're just as full of twats with no concern for cyclists as suburbia.

Buying a private tropical island is the only answer.

Same thing. Fucking povo middle class scumbags, waving their Waitrose bags around the place like they own the joint.

Bro, do you even Fortnum & Mason?

Arent you from a tropical island?

Also 'countryside' is 6 miles away from my current gaff in the deep mythical dark zone 4 in SE London, big garden, good schools and Morleys bought for same money as a studio in Hackney few months ago .. thread should be renamed to 'I can't afford to live in Hacnkey/insert cool area name'.

it's an hour from an airport

It's taken me an hour to get to Heathrow before and I live 10 fucking miles away from it.

Tropical? No. Bits of it might be tropical but I grew up in an irrigated desert thousands of kilometres away from the tropical bits.

I only lived in London for a hot minute compared to most in the thread, but I've recently swapped it for Amsterdam.

Spent two years living in Peckham after three years at Kingston uni. London's got tons of plus points: food, art and design is world class, there's a shop for just about everything, an amazing blend of people from all over the world. I especially liked SE, though I witnessed a massive amount of change in just the short time I was there. Change in a big city is inevitable but the speed at which it was happening was what started to scare the shit out of me. I got made redundant (not something you expect at 24) and that was a bit of a 'take the red pill' moment; it felt a bit like everyone was in a collective state of wilful ignorance about quality of life, costs etc and I'd suddenly been snapped out of it. Having no money coming in suddenly makes you question buying that second £5.50 pint whereas before you would've just handed your card over. I went from not being able to afford it to wondering whether I wanted to afford it.

I ended up doing a small amount of freelance in Amsterdam, which led to more, which then led to a permanent job. I've been here for 5 months now and it's great. I get paid 50% more than in London, rent is about the same and generally your money goes a bit further. Cycling everywhere is great. As someone that cycled everywhere in London the most refreshing thing is how completely entrenched it is. It's raining? Cycle. Need to get somewhere fast? Cycle. Need to transport your 2 kids, dog and weekly shop? Cycle. All ages and sizes can be found in a saddle. I've seen old ladies pull manoeuvres that make London couriers look like amateurs. The commute is 15 mins very relaxed cycle, most of which is through Vondelpark. The first few weeks are a bit of a shock because if you leave work at 6pm you can get home, cook/eat a proper dinner, and wash up by half seven - you suddenly find yourself with the rarest of commodities in London, free time. Here it feels like you aren't working purely to exist, work is just what you do during the day and there's plenty of time to do whatever else you like. All the beers are bloody delicious (and strong). Food's ok. People bringing a couple of joints instead of a bottle of wine is still pretty novel. Lots of stuff just makes sense - it's a very easy place to live.

Not to say that I don't miss certain things about London, my friends being the biggest one. I can't complain about my current commute but I do miss having 1+ hour per day of fairly intense cycling in London commuting (I also slightly perversely miss how dangerous it was). The small scale of Amsterdam can be nice but the variation of London is hard to beat. Worst of all, nowhere does chicken wings at 3am.

Unless the housing market returns to something resembling the real world I can't really see myself returning to London.