Oh something else that helped us that you're probably already doing is watching 'walk through' vids of the areas you're interested in.

Cov was rebuilt in a rush after the war, then the industry died with Thatcher and now it's a concrete hellscape.

Jaywick's near me.

RamSteelwood wrote:

Cramlington is where the cool people in Northumberland live. Not as posh as Morpeth, not as radgie as Blyth, not full of mackems like most of the places grem mentioned

I did think of Cramlington, but I've only ever been to the shitty part of it.

JonB wrote:

Gremill wrote:

There's some lovely small towns within easy travelling distance of the Toon, but there's also a fair amount of parochial, backwards and deprived villages (think Royston Vasey without the charming surrealism) with their fair share of cunts.

Yeah, another consideration is avoiding cunts, especially racist cunts. Don't want to end up in some frothing flag shagging enclave.

Well that's Morpeth out.

Cunts are everywhere unfortunately.

drumbeg wrote:

SpaceGazelle wrote:

Just to make sure you'll look at Halifax properly I'll try and sell it some more. I don't live there but I will when the boy grows up. Great links to Leeds or Manchester. All the nice Yorkshire and Lancashire stuff isn't far away and a direct train to London if you need it. Cheap for a reasonable old stone house. Great views of the surrounding Calder Valley. Friendly and full of Northern charm. Village feel but great pubs and places to eat. Wonderful Victorian market bang in the middle - although not as good as Kirkgate in Leeds. The Peace Hall - google it.

An interesting shout. I live just down the road and worked in Halifax for a few years. It's a bit of a dump I think. The Piece Hall is a nice improvement to the town. Great gig venue in the right weather, but a tourist attraction by day pretty much. Plenty of really run down areas. The parts around the park are nice and the park itself is great. It's the kind of town that doesn't offer either the benefits of a big City or the benefits of a small town. I'd be looking at areas outside of Halifax in the Upper Calder Valley. Luddenden for example is just outside.

I like the fact it's not posh. My Mum lives in Elland but the trouble with the neighbouring places is thar they're a littel to far to walk back from The Victorian.

East Anglia will be in the sea in 20 years.

JonB wrote:

tin_robot wrote:

(Stuff about Ripon, York and Leeds)  Hope it's vaguely helpful.

It is. The wife was looking at Ripon, along with Knaresborough and Harrogate, although the latter seemed too expensive and the traffic is apparently awful there. I don't know if that's your experience. But yeah, Ripon is likely to stay on the list.

Traffic is all relative I guess. Harrogate has a pretty useless ring road which gets badly clogged up at rush hour.  (Mornings are worse when schools + businesses hit it at the same time.). But compared to a lot of cities it's nothing really.  But yes, the main issue with Harrogate is that it's an expensive place to live compared to Knaresborough and Ripon, and I've never really known why.  There's a good cycle route from Knaresborough to Harrogate if you find yourselves set on Harrogate but unable to afford it.

I have a bit of a soft spot for Knaresborough itself, though it's an undeniably odd place.  (It's best summed up in the fact that its primary tourist attraction is Mother Shipton's cave - a not very impressive cave which in turn probably didn't really house Mother Shipton, who in all probability didn't actually write the prophecies ascribed to her.  Meanwhile, on the other side of the river, almost exactly opposite, with very little signposting or fanfare is another cave - St Robert's Cave.  This is the actual, definite historical home of Saint Robert, was the site of frequent pilgrimage from his death in 1218 to the reformation, and one of the few remaining medieval hermitages in the country. No-one seems to really notice or care.  Knaresborough then - a place with much to recommend it, but even the people that live there seemingly haven't noticed.)

Anyway - feel free to message if you want any more detail on the local area.  Equally if you ever find yourself in these parts on a scouting mission let me know - you're welcome to stay, and I can act as (terrible) tour guide...

tin_robot wrote:

Anyway - feel free to message if you want any more detail on the local area.  Equally if you ever find yourself in these parts on a scouting mission let me know - you're welcome to stay, and I can act as (terrible) tour guide...

Well that would be amazing, thanks. We're obviously still a way off doing anything yet, and mostly just kicking ideas around, but I'll let you know if we do decide to take a closer look.

JonB wrote:

Cupatay wrote:

How about Norwich and round that way?

It's hard to take that seriously with your avatar.

Heh, yeah, now that you mention it.

g.man wrote:

Norwich is the most openly racist place I ever visited.

Norwich and Tamworth in the final of the racism cup then.

g.man wrote:

SpaceGazelle wrote:

JonB wrote:

Cupatay wrote:

How about Norwich and round that way?

It's hard to take that seriously with your avatar. But yeah, we did consider it briefly. I'm sure Norwich itself is fine, but it just looks a bit remote from pretty much everything else.

Like Monkey says, it'll be in the sea soon.

Norwich is the most openly racist place I ever visited back when I was working down south, so no great loss there then.

They shall become boat dwelling folk and embrace a world without borders. Or more likely be forced to move to another county and get annoyed with migration over there. Maybe they can beat themselves up.

Jokes on them

Gremill wrote:

afgavinstan wrote:

My pitch for Glasgow and it's suburbs is that here, on your doorstep you'll have probably the most vibrant and diverse cultural scene, amazing architecture, amazing food/nightlife etc but then also the fact that, you can literally drive for about an hour north and you're in prime Visit Scotland tourism movie scene postcards, real LOTR stuff. It's crazy how small Scotland is sometimes.

This. I didn't mention Glasgow because it felt too northern for Jon, but I'm planning on being back there in the next 5 years or so. My favourite UK city.

Grem knows.

Glesga >>>>>>>>> Edinburgh and just about everywhere else 'north'.