Moving out of London

@Sumo we're moving out of London, going from Zone 2 to to the NW (Cheshire) as 2 kids and both me and partner can work from home. Direct train into Euston is good but long @ 2 hrs but means we can work on the train.

We looked at Oxted (expensive) as well as Liphook.

When it came to the NW we're swapping a 2 bed garden flat in sw9 for a 4 bed house, nursery costs or 2/3rds of London. There are plenty of restaurants and bars to go to still, not like we are going out much atm!

Do you have connections in Cheshire already? What made you chose there?

The Harry Styles effect, I imagine

I grew up there plus some family are around and a couple of friends.

Ipswich was a consideration but its too bloody flat and if I get a motorbike again its much more fun in the NW and places like Horseshoe Pass.

We're heading back to Chester so its big but not too big, well connected with Wales close by, that last part might be a turn off for some 😅

Easy to get to Manchester & Liverpool too. Probably slightly less rain as we're in the shadow of the welsh hills, certainly when compared to Manchester which is an upside as its always bloody raining there

Surprisingly few people judging by how many are surprised by the rain in the north west (and the number that think it rains a lot in London).

Tell me about it. I've had the 'London rain' conversation with thousands of people, mostly when doing LCC stalls at festivals and other events. It's one of the main excuses people have for not cycling and so many try to pretend that London is extremely rainy. It's also a prejudice that people on the Continent have. They all imagine London as extremely foggy and rainy, and it usually takes a while to get them to accept that it's all changed.

Ha, I grew up in Devon and moved to York and it blew my mind that such dry places existed in the UK, was a revelation

I grew up in Newcastle. I was concerned no one else had noticed the big change in UK climate about 18 years ago, then realised my subjective climate change coincided with moving 300 miles south.

. It's also a prejudice that people on the Continent have. They all imagine London as extremely foggy and rainy, and it usually takes a while to get them to accept that it's all changed.

The year I lived in NW France it constantly pissed it down and people were always joking to me that "ahaha you must feel right at home in this english weather."

i couldn't work out the joke

Il pluet des chats et chiens?

French idiom is that it’s coming down in ropes.

il pleut des grenouilles

This was a little counter to the banter between the English and the French regarding the weather that was in a french lesson book my daughter had at school.

I know, it's just funny to do literal translations of English idioms.

@Sumo - I guess Barking is too expensive? I like Barking. It has a proper little town centre, night bus, fast train and slow underground into London. Becontree has a nice feel and some nice bits but no centre, it's spread out in a suburban kind of way with shops kind of scattered about. Dagenham has nice bits and bleak bits. I only know Romford from cycling through a few times, the centre feels pretty bleak and very car-dominated, there are quite a lot of 'nice' well kept suburban streets but I'm guessing they're expensive.

What I did to help decide on areas was take a short trip over, stay in an AirBnB, and visit all the areas I reckoned might be nice. Try the pubs, high streets, whatever, treat it like a little holiday as well as research.

I would rather live in a core city than the very outer suburbs of London

I don't think I've ever been to Barking, maybe cycled through it on the way to Southend, good to hear there's a possibility of a nice town centre. The houses in my budget are definitely more Dagenham than Barking but I could try and find one on the border

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It's on the other side of london from you but I'd just go and hang out there to get a feel for it. The town centre can be a bit bleak but it's not unrelentingly so. I don't mean to be down about it - I really like it - I just mean it's not 'nice' nice. I like that it has a little theatre and a library, and half-pedestrianised town centre (market, town square, 'arboretum'), well-used park right by the town centre (Abbey gardens). There's a bunch of new stuff going up by the river Roding - some of it looks pretty crap but the stuff from about 10 years ago around the old granary is settling in nicely and last time I was there had some creative studios, restaurant, cafe etc. That's all between the river Roding and the train tracks. Most of the housing is on the other side and there aren't that many crossing points. I don't know how snarled up they get in rush hour. There are suburban residential areas where it can feel a bit endless and far from anything except a massive park.

The bit to south and east of your outline is a bit of a no man's land. Do not recommend. Barking Riverside / Creekmouth is new-build hemmed in by light industrial. Lots of families but transport access is pretty crap and you'd feel very isolated. They were meant to extend the DLR but it got scrapped. Also bear in mind about Dagenham or south of the A13 is it's usually downwind of the Beckton sewage works. Visit the Sunday market at least once though.

Don't know if you're old enough to remember the BNP in Barking breaking through, but yeah, there's that. Recent history. I think there's been a conscious push back since then, but more recently it was also strongly brexit (the whole borough, don't know the local breakdown).

it's usually downwind of the Beckton sewage works

Good to know! I blame @HoKe

I living the gallion's reach (the posh side of Beckton dammit)

I seem to have commenced some kind of harebrained scheme to move to Sheffield. This is a good idea, right?

I only just twigged that the red spots are houses in your budget, right?
I actually quite rate Becontree. It's super suburban but decent houses with gardens, parks, smatterings of shops. No real town centre though. The cul-de-sacs are called "banjos".

woss tha doin'?

yeah sheffield's alright. not been for like 15 years mind.

Yeah it's still great. Have loads of mates up there, it's still lovely. Do you know whereabouts you'd be living?

Looking at the West of the city, around Endcliffe Park, that sort of area. Want to strike a balance between being close to the peaks, but not so far out of the city that we're living in suburbia.

yeah the red dots are houses in budget. I don't care much about a town centre as long as there's a couple of shops to buy snacks from in walkable distance. Our search is on ice for a little while as we try and force our building management to sort out an EWS1 form.