Moving in the UK

[bill1827]

Can't speak to Carlisle but that's a huge over reaction to Shrewsbury.

It's built round a river and the river has flooded periodically for the whole time that the town has existed. Most of the area is elevated above the flood level so only a pretty small area of the town is directly affected by floods. As long as you avoid those areas, which is easily done, the floods won't significantly affect you. It has a population of about 80,000, I suspect that only a few hundred would be directly affected by the floods and they had the option of exercising due diligence when they mover into the area.

There are many towns along the Severn which get flooded occasionally, Ironbridge, Bridgnorth, Bewdley, Worcester, Upton on Severn have all suffered significant flooding in recent years.

[jade]

Yes I haven't been to Oswestry but we have friends in North Wales who have it as one of their semi-local shopping towns and say it is nice.  Shrewsbury does look good but I did wonder about flooding for that particular (very pretty) house when I saw the map!

That's good to know @LightTripper I have read good things about it there and it does seem reasonable. I have a bit of a fixation about flooding (as you can probably tell lol!) so though very picturesque we probably won't buy too close to the sea or a river.

I am going to compile a spreadsheet at some point of places and narrow things down. I think if we're renting first, choosing an area as accessible to all the possibilities will be a start and then maybe do some trips.

[jade]

Carlisle also floods badly, as well as Shrewsbury.  I wouldn't buy a house in either town even if the house itself was above the risk of flooding, because of the distress and disruption caused by flooding to the community you would be living in, the problems for transport and business that it causes, the cost to the local authority and the effect that has on services, and eventually the abandonment of parts of the settlement as unviable. 

Mind you, I don't think the train line to where I live will survive the next forty years either.  Finding safety at that level is going to be very difficult.  This might be the starting point, though -

https://check-long-term-flood-risk.service.gov.uk/map

Thanks @former player and for the link.

I'm aware I likely won't be around in forty years either but we're probably going to be just avoiding flood risk places generally.. it's fairly rare but it is upsetting to hear about people that lose their homes etc ( which could happen to anyone of course, but just lowering the risk).

[jade]

Can't speak to Carlisle but that's a huge over reaction to Shrewsbury.

It's built round a river and the river has flooded periodically for the whole time that the town has existed. Most of the area is elevated above the flood level so only a pretty small area of the town is directly affected by floods. As long as you avoid those areas, which is easily done, the floods won't significantly affect you. It has a population of about 80,000, I suspect that only a few hundred would be directly affected by the floods and they had the option of exercising due diligence when they mover into the area.

There are many towns along the Severn which get flooded occasionally, Ironbridge, Bridgnorth, Bewdley, Worcester, Upton on Severn have all suffered significant flooding in recent years.

Thanks for the info about areas @bill1827 -- I'll bear those in mind.

[jade]

This screen shot looks interesting from 2019.. a quick way to see average house prices etc.

[cerat0n1a]

Oswestry is a nice market town, lots of independent shops, good facilities, very cheap houses. There's a few rough bits round the town centre. Definitely no risk of flooding in the town itself - the view from the old racecourse takes in a good chunk of mid-Wales and the West Midlands. Some of the places to the east e.g. Ellesmere are quite low lying though. There's a noticeable price drop as you cross the Welsh border. A lot of English people don't want to move even a mile into Wales - you'd think free prescriptions would be quite an incentive for some.

[former player]

Oswestry is a nice market town, lots of independent shops, good facilities, very cheap houses. There's a few rough bits round the town centre. Definitely no risk of flooding in the town itself - the view from the old racecourse takes in a good chunk of mid-Wales and the West Midlands. Some of the places to the east e.g. Ellesmere are quite low lying though. There's a noticeable price drop as you cross the Welsh border. A lot of English people don't want to move even a mile into Wales - you'd think free prescriptions would be quite an incentive for some.

Some of us remember "Come home to a real fire- buy a cottage in Wales".  The cultural (and language) issues are real, although not so much on the borders, I guess.

Although if Scotland ever becomes independent and joins the EU I might be tempted to move up there and self-identify as Scots after 3 months.

[PhilB]

Oswestry is a nice market town, lots of independent shops, good facilities, very cheap houses. There's a few rough bits round the town centre. Definitely no risk of flooding in the town itself - the view from the old racecourse takes in a good chunk of mid-Wales and the West Midlands. Some of the places to the east e.g. Ellesmere are quite low lying though. There's a noticeable price drop as you cross the Welsh border. A lot of English people don't want to move even a mile into Wales - you'd think free prescriptions would be quite an incentive for some.

Some of us remember "Come home to a real fire- buy a cottage in Wales".  The cultural (and language) issues are real, although not so much on the borders, I guess.

Although if Scotland ever becomes independent and joins the EU I might be tempted to move up there and self-identify as Scots after 3 months.

Exactly the slogan I was thinking of.  That, plus too many experiences of people in shops changing from speaking in English to Welsh when I walked in, doesn't exactly put Wales at the top of my list.  Maybe things have got better since then.

[jade]

Hi @cerat0n1a @PhilB and @former player thanks for the info. Yes, free prescriptions and EU membership would be a big incentive for us too!

We seem to have made some progress. We hadn't really been looking South due to prices but came across some articles about Plymouth (and surrounding villages) and Devon generally being a good place to retire, good property prices, nice locations and thinking this now might be the way to go for us. Train from Plymouth to Paddington is 3.5 hrs which isn't bad too.

[cerat0n1a]

I thought it best to revive this topic rather than repeating a similar question, as there's a lot of useful info here already -- if you don't mind @cerat0n1a? Also apologies if I missed an update elsewhere, but I'd be interested to find out if you did end up moving and if so, how that went?

I don't remember whether I did do an update or not. We rented in York for a while, and ended up moving to the northern part of the Yorkshire Dales National Park. Prices rose quite significantly during the time we were renting, so although it removed a lot of the moving stress, and gave us time to carefully consider where to move to, it ended up being quite a costly decision.

I think we're still somewhat in the honeymoon period, but we absolutely love it here - still think 'wow' when I look out of the window, drive to the shops, go for a walk or run. Currently in the middle of major building work - the builders are excellent and making really rapid progress. Our stone farmhouse had a room which was accessible only from the garden, so that is being connected to the rest of the house, and four smaller rooms are being knocked through into one to create a big open-plan kitchen. There's a stone barn, a garage, a couple of outbuildings and an acre of land, which is taking a good part of my time. I took delivery of a load of bare-root native trees and shrubs this week and have been busy planting those.

The village is fairly touristy, which means we have a selection of pubs/restaurants and cafes within a very short walk. There is a shop, good access to doctor etc. There are a few holiday cottages, second homes and airbnbs, but a relatively low proportion compared to many other villages. Everyone has been very friendly and welcoming. Tourism and sheep farming are the main industries, but our immediate neighbours include a GP, an accountant, software engineers, a graphic designer and a woman with a decorative glassmaking business and there's a good number of people working from home during the day. We're not the only mixed-race couple, surprisingly.

Funny to look at my original criteria, very few of which ended up being met.

Proximity to national park(s) or an AONB - hills to run/walk in, forests, dark skies. Not too touristy though and not necessarily actually in the National Park.
Tick for all this, apart from the "not too touristy" bit - we're in one of the honeypot areas and weekend daytimes can get pretty busy in the small area around the car park. But still very quiet at almost all other times. Once you get out in the hills, away from the "three peaks", it's basically empty. We walked for a couple of hours along the River Swale last Sunday, in the sun, on a route that had featured in a BBC TV programme the week before, and didn't see a single other person.

Reasonably close to a mainline train route, decent road connections

Big fat no for this. 30-40 minutes drive to the settle-to-carlisle line or the east coast mainline. Similar distance to the A1.

Within walking distance of GP, supermarket, probably also pub/ restaurants, a bookshop.
Not too far from A&E/ hospital, an arts centre/ music venue, theatre & art galleries a plus.
Ideally somewhere with a running club and a place with traditional music sessions.

Have to go into Richmond or Leyburn for many of these things, and A&E is further still. Probably 10 art galleries within a few miles though, and a similar number of fancy places to eat. So a car is definitely necessary, although I often go for 2+ weeks without going anywhere by car.
 

[cerat0n1a]

The cultural (and language) issues are real, although not so much on the borders, I guess.

From Oswestry itself, you enter Wales by driving North, South or West - and a direct line on the map to the east also passes through Wales. The supermarkets and banks have Welsh language signs, and you do occasionally hear Welsh spoken in town. But the area just over the border is not really any different.

[cerat0n1a]

We seem to have made some progress. We hadn't really been looking South due to prices but came across some articles about Plymouth (and surrounding villages) and Devon generally being a good place to retire, good property prices, nice locations and thinking this now might be the way to go for us. Train from Plymouth to Paddington is 3.5 hrs which isn't bad too.

I lived in Plymouth in the mid 1990s and liked it very much. It's a pretty nice city. I guess Former Player might be able to say more. It does have some pretty rough housing estates, both the ex-council ones and the ex-military ones (the latter often very cheap due to poor maintenance in the past). It suffers from transport links - the train line can often be closed in winter by flooding around the coast, and the M5 and A303 can be completely gridlocked with Cornwall bound traffic from London in summer. Much of the surrounding area is lovely. My friends seem to have mostly ended up in villages on Dartmoor, the Bere peninsula, or over in Cornwall. South Hams can be quite expensive - places like Salcombe are notoriously filled with multi-million pound houses.

Given your self-description, Totnes might be interesting, about 20 miles from Plymouth. I like to mock it as the place to go if you find living in Glastonbury too mainstream - remember seeing three different people advertising didgeridoo lessons in the post office window. But it was the first 'transition town' I think, and has a lot of green stuff going on, a lot of cultural activity and lots of interesting courses at Dartington.

[former player]

I mostly go through Plymouth rather than stopping there, but theatre, cinema and the dry ski slope are reasons to stop, plus of course the coast, Dartmoor, and lots of nice heritagy places.

You can quite clearly see in the housing the effects of its being a major naval port and dockyard: Georgian buildings from Napoleonic times, then re-armament before the first and second World Wars creating a tier of Edwardian housing and a tier of 30s housing, then Hitler had a good go at taking some of it down.

This flat caught my eye (needs redecorating!) because I follow on Instagram a chap renovating the big house nearby https://www.instagram.com/manwithahammer -

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/131583275#/?channel=RES_BUY

If you wanted to live outside the city you could check out the villages on the train line to Gunnislake, or maybe out to Callington -

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/131352596#/?channel=RES_BUY
https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/131352596#/?channel=RES_BUY

[jade]

I thought it best to revive this topic rather than repeating a similar question, as there's a lot of useful info here already -- if you don't mind @cerat0n1a? Also apologies if I missed an update elsewhere, but I'd be interested to find out if you did end up moving and if so, how that went?

I don't remember whether I did do an update or not. We rented in York for a while, and ended up moving to the northern part of the Yorkshire Dales National Park. Prices rose quite significantly during the time we were renting, so although it removed a lot of the moving stress, and gave us time to carefully consider where to move to, it ended up being quite a costly decision.

I think we're still somewhat in the honeymoon period, but we absolutely love it here - still think 'wow' when I look out of the window, drive to the shops, go for a walk or run. Currently in the middle of major building work - the builders are excellent and making really rapid progress. Our stone farmhouse had a room which was accessible only from the garden, so that is being connected to the rest of the house, and four smaller rooms are being knocked through into one to create a big open-plan kitchen. There's a stone barn, a garage, a couple of outbuildings and an acre of land, which is taking a good part of my time. I took delivery of a load of bare-root native trees and shrubs this week and have been busy planting those.

The village is fairly touristy, which means we have a selection of pubs/restaurants and cafes within a very short walk. There is a shop, good access to doctor etc. There are a few holiday cottages, second homes and airbnbs, but a relatively low proportion compared to many other villages. Everyone has been very friendly and welcoming. Tourism and sheep farming are the main industries, but our immediate neighbours include a GP, an accountant, software engineers, a graphic designer and a woman with a decorative glassmaking business and there's a good number of people working from home during the day. We're not the only mixed-race couple, surprisingly.

Funny to look at my original criteria, very few of which ended up being met.

Proximity to national park(s) or an AONB - hills to run/walk in, forests, dark skies. Not too touristy though and not necessarily actually in the National Park.
Tick for all this, apart from the "not too touristy" bit - we're in one of the honeypot areas and weekend daytimes can get pretty busy in the small area around the car park. But still very quiet at almost all other times. Once you get out in the hills, away from the "three peaks", it's basically empty. We walked for a couple of hours along the River Swale last Sunday, in the sun, on a route that had featured in a BBC TV programme the week before, and didn't see a single other person.

Reasonably close to a mainline train route, decent road connections

Big fat no for this. 30-40 minutes drive to the settle-to-carlisle line or the east coast mainline. Similar distance to the A1.

Within walking distance of GP, supermarket, probably also pub/ restaurants, a bookshop.
Not too far from A&E/ hospital, an arts centre/ music venue, theatre & art galleries a plus.
Ideally somewhere with a running club and a place with traditional music sessions.

Have to go into Richmond or Leyburn for many of these things, and A&E is further still. Probably 10 art galleries within a few miles though, and a similar number of fancy places to eat. So a car is definitely necessary, although I often go for 2+ weeks without going anywhere by car.

Thanks for the update.. it's great to hear the process and also just you're in such a good place now.

That's a shame for you about the house prices rising at your same time. Something to consider.

It's great to hear how happy you are. That's what you want isn't it? And what all this saving money on mmm is all about, after all! You sound busy, I'm sure it'll be great to get the property how you want it.

It sounds like you have a nice range of people and also amenities. Where we live now is very touristy nearby at times too especially bank holidays so we make sure we are hermits and stay in the garden then! I have read about a few places in Devon that even consider people from neighbouring villages as outsiders so we're bearing that in mind too. I think criteria can help but things have a way of working on in their own way. you do found like you've found a great place!

[PhilB]

Totnes was one of the first places I thought of too, but Rightmove had nothing in your price range so I'm guessing it may be too expensive.  I've only really seen Plymouth from the river and it didn't make a great impression - though that may just be me being tired after a long paddle.

[former player]

Totnes was one of the first places I thought of too, but Rightmove had nothing in your price range so I'm guessing it may be too expensive.  I've only really seen Plymouth from the river and it didn't make a great impression - though that may just be me being tired after a long paddle.

Yes, from the river you would have got the full force of heavy industry in the dockyards and the surrounding council housing.  Should have looked the other way.

[jade]

We seem to have made some progress. We hadn't really been looking South due to prices but came across some articles about Plymouth (and surrounding villages) and Devon generally being a good place to retire, good property prices, nice locations and thinking this now might be the way to go for us. Train from Plymouth to Paddington is 3.5 hrs which isn't bad too.

I lived in Plymouth in the mid 1990s and liked it very much. It's a pretty nice city. I guess Former Player might be able to say more. It does have some pretty rough housing estates, both the ex-council ones and the ex-military ones (the latter often very cheap due to poor maintenance in the past). It suffers from transport links - the train line can often be closed in winter by flooding around the coast, and the M5 and A303 can be completely gridlocked with Cornwall bound traffic from London in summer. Much of the surrounding area is lovely. My friends seem to have mostly ended up in villages on Dartmoor, the Bere peninsula, or over in Cornwall. South Hams can be quite expensive - places like Salcombe are notoriously filled with multi-million pound houses.

Given your self-description, Totnes might be interesting, about 20 miles from Plymouth. I like to mock it as the place to go if you find living in Glastonbury too mainstream - remember seeing three different people advertising didgeridoo lessons in the post office window. But it was the first 'transition town' I think, and has a lot of green stuff going on, a lot of cultural activity and lots of interesting courses at Dartington.

Thanks @cerat0n1a .. it's good to get a sense of the area. Hopefully on our budget we can find a nice village in it's own right away from too much traffic. Not too worried about transport links.

I've been to Totnes and liked it though as a friend says it might be too "strokey beardy" for me.. and definitely for Mr Jade! I think Devon has a slightly alternative vibe generally so I think that'll be ok.

[jade]

I mostly go through Plymouth rather than stopping there, but theatre, cinema and the dry ski slope are reasons to stop, plus of course the coast, Dartmoor, and lots of nice heritagy places.

You can quite clearly see in the housing the effects of its being a major naval port and dockyard: Georgian buildings from Napoleonic times, then re-armament before the first and second World Wars creating a tier of Edwardian housing and a tier of 30s housing, then Hitler had a good go at taking some of it down.

This flat caught my eye (needs redecorating!) because I follow on Instagram a chap renovating the big house nearby https://www.instagram.com/manwithahammer -

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/131583275#/?channel=RES_BUY

If you wanted to live outside the city you could check out the villages on the train line to Gunnislake, or maybe out to Callington -

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/131352596#/?channel=RES_BUY
https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/131352596#/?channel=RES_BUY

Thanks @former player .. that's a nice flat. I'll make a note of those villages.

[jade]

Totnes was one of the first places I thought of too, but Rightmove had nothing in your price range so I'm guessing it may be too expensive.  I've only really seen Plymouth from the river and it didn't make a great impression - though that may just be me being tired after a long paddle.

Yeh I think it can be expensive there. Ha! If all goes to plan we'll rent nearby in a few years and get the lay of the land. I think we're both thinking village rather than city though.

[PhilB]

If you wanted to stay on the Western side of Devon, Tiverton is very nice.

[jade]

If you wanted to stay on the Western side of Devon, Tiverton is very nice.

I had been wondering about Tiverton, thanks @PhilB I'll bear it in mind then.