Which location would you choose? (living in the UK)

Hi, I'll introduce myself first. My name is Jonathan and I currently live in Australia. I love this side as it is a great place to see the country and plan tours ect. About half of the places I found to go to in England I found on this site. I have travelled to the UK twice (2008 & 2010). Loved every minute of it traveling to places such as London, Coventry, York, Leeds, Bamburgh, Durham, Liverpool, Manchester, Chester, Tewkesbury, Cardiff, Caerphilly, Bristol, Plymouth, Lands End, Falmouth, Charlestown, Portsmouth, Winchester, Rye, Dover, Canterbury ect ect. The UK is just a wonderful place, full of so much history and culture (love football and other sports aswell.

 Anyway, next year or the year after my brother and I are considering studying and working in England for 6 months to a year. Given that there are only a certain amount of places we can study our particular courses or work we are at moment trying to decide on a few places and would like to know what people who live in the country actually think would be the better option.

Right now we are thinking of two places apart from the obvious London area (which is probably far too buisy for us). They are Bristol or York. My brother has lived in Edinburgh for 6 months so we have a taste of what living in the UK is like.

 Out of York and Bristol we were wondering which would be the best (and probably cheaper place to live).

We have taken a few points into our option.

 1. We both love History and could spend just hours walking around York (now one my most favourite places in the world). I personally find York better because whilst it is a large enough place and has a bit of life, you could stay there without having to travel out to a bunch of other towns to have something more to do. This is the problem we find with Bristol as it is lacking a bit of that london old historical charm (apart from its lovely church and SS Great Britain). Yes there are places to travel to around the place like Gloucester, Bath, South Wales, Cornwall, Devon, Wells, Lacock and so on, its a bit exspensive to have to travel around to these places all the time. York is also colder and also a little bit more isolated up in the north as we also love the Welsh boarders which are not far from Britsol.

 2. On the other hand though Bristol has more of the night life and entertainment so to speak with its much better sporting clubs (over York), and other entertaining things that you normally go to like bands ect. The other thing is though that In York you can travel down to Leeds and Machester.

So out of those two places it would be a great help to find any reason why one or the other would be a better place to live taking into account transport, jobs, safety (crime), entertainment, history, the universities ect.

Also if you could recemend any other places that would be a good spot to call home it would be a great help.

Regards,

Jonathan

Thanx for the reply mate. I have looked through some of the other posts on the site about the best places to live but I thought I would give it a shot anyway. I'm actually trying to see if anyone had a reason as to why they wouldn't live in either of these locations as right now these are defenently the two places we are most likely to look the most into to. I know i aswered my own question a bit but they are just my thoughts and although I have researched the country alot and having been there, I still don't live there. I have heard that Bristol does have some problems, but I also have a friend here who comes from england who for sme reason said he wouldn't live in york so really just investigating into maybe what would be the reason for that.

 Anyway thanx for the help. Right now I'm in the process of scrapbooking pictures from every town (well not every town but anything bgger than a village and mainly using picturesofengland and google earth) in England to what they have in terms of times of history ie. Roman, medieval, tudor ect ect. I'm enjoying that atm.

Regards,

Jonathan

Hi Jonathan. Welcome to POE from Anna and Ron....and just to prove Michael wrong (lancashirelove) here is a response from another member. We are a caring bunch thats for sure and really do try to be helpful. However, it seems you have your own opinions already (as have others of course) but you might like to consider Oxford which has both history and nightlife! Oxford's history goes way back to the 8/9th Century that I know of, so how come you misssed us?

And of course POE is a great resource for 'taking a peep' at what we have here in beautiful England. Continue to enjoy POE and join in here in the forum whenever you can, where you will see that others will give you their opinion in due course!

Hi there Jonathan

York is packed with history and of course you are within easy reach of Edinburgh, Leeds, Harrogate, the Yorkshire Dales and the Yorkshire Moors, as well as some of the beautiful places on the East Coast, such as Whitby, Robin Hood's Bay, Scarborough etc.

From York you can also get a direct train straight down to London in just over 2 hours - well worth considering.

I am afraid I do not know enough about Bristol to give you much guidance.

Oxford, of course, is near the Cotswolds - another lovely part of the country.  However, I would think very expensive there is it Ron?

Thanks for all hte help people, much appreciated. Tbh Ron I have been to oxford and although it is full of great history, architexture, a fan of both c. s lewis and tolkein (added bonus) and close to lots of other places and ofcourse London, I just don't find the same connection with the place as I do York. Anyway two reasons I wouldn't consider there is getting a place at the uni's although my brother would be capable of it) and as stated above the price of living there. It would be better living in oxford history wise though than Bristol.

and Jaunty with those travel options which I'm aware of from York, they are defently good things to take into consideration. I think if we were to really choose our location it would come down to where we can travel to from the place but also what you can do in the place if we ever get short of cash for a while.

anyway once again thanx for help, will try and find someone who knows something about Bristol, maybe I should start another post.

Jonathan, I have lived in Oxford and Bristol and like them both very much. I am currently working at the Harbourside in Bristol and my office overlooks the docks. As I drive into work in the morning, I pass under the Clifton Suspension Bridge and then down through Hotwells and pass the SS Great Britain. Every day I can enjoy Brunels great work. There is a lot of history here too, aviation in particular, and the Airfield in Filton is where Concorde took its maiden flight.

The road and rail infrastructure around Bristol is excellent, London by train is 1hr 45min, Birmingham the same, and sitting on the interchange of the M4/M5, road links are great also. The University of Western England (UWE) has an excellent reputation, my daughter Amy studird Marketing and Business Studies there and was very happy.

Let me know if you need to know any specifics. Good luck