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I'm probably not the right person to ask as I love London and moved just outside for a dull set of practical reasons. If I moved properly away from a big city it would be to <2k village / countryside.
What is the list of things you don't like about where you are at the moment?
hugo7-
Where do I start... Well, it's on the A10 - so horrendously busy. We knew this when we bought the house, but we had to move fast, were limited on choice and assumed we'd get used to the noise - no. It's a linear village with no natural centre. It does have a good kids' playground and community orchard off the main road, but it feels bleak and isolated; there's no cafe so people don't tend to congregate there. Two pubs and a third former pub-turned-Indian-restaurant have closed in the past three years. Despite being just a few miles from Cambridge, the bus service is piss-poor so everyone drives.
On the plus side, the school is great, there is a brewery which has some great tap nights, and we've met some lovely people - although no-one we've really clicked with. Cambridge is nice enough but it's a bit anodyne; it's certainly lost the 'alternative' edge it had pre-millennium.
Gah, fuck knows what the right thing to do is.
Timmy2wheels
What alternatives would you suggest?
What we are looking for is a middle-ground between London and the village of <2k people we've moved to outside Cambridge. Just not feeling village life - especially this village - or Cambridge more generally, despite (or perhaps because of) having grown up nearby.
Both of us have ageing parents nearby so wouldn't want to move too far away. Being closer to the coast and in a university town with all that brings is attractive.