I moved to Norfolk (Great Dunham) 8 miles east of Swaffham about 9 months ago as my wife is a Norfolk lass and wanted to move back this way and property prices mean that we can get 4 bed house for the price of our 2 bed flat back in Surrey.
To be honest, I like the area, it’s true that the mountain biking is never going to be gnarly, but Thetford, Bacton Woods etc have some charm and are great when the weather is good, there are a surprising number of MTB’ers living here and if you ride a road bike as well, there is some great riding through lovely countryside and up along the coast.
For me, I used to live near Guildford and had a 128 mile round trip to work on the M25 in to Croydon every day, I now have a much nicer drive into Norwich each day (which is a great city), loads of country pubs to choose from, some great places to eat and loads of good places to take my daughter without having to queue in traffic everywhere.
Bit true about the locals though, my father in law makes it clear i will always be an interloper and most people in Norfolk would like it to be “The Peoples Republic of Norfolk” if they had a choice.