I’m looking to move to south wales, mainly to be closer to biking areas ie BPW, cwmcarn etc.

I’m thinking cardiff way, but i dont want to live in cardiff. more out side in a village some where.But as I dont have any family or friends that live in south wales finding these villages/towns are a bit difficult.

The reason I say cardiff is because i’m a self employed carpenter/joiner, so more house’s and business’s equal more work.

Looking to rent a house either a 1 or two bed. I own 1 Bed flat just out side of oxford. Which i will be renting out.

Any help or thoughts would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance

Cheaper places are somewhere like risca or abercarn right in doorstep of cwmcarn and not far to Cardiff.

Are you expecting your customers to be high end…or low end?

If high end……penarth/vale of Glamorgan/ pentyrch/ creigau perhaps Radyr.

Low end…..anywhere north of Taffs Well…….although once you get into Brecon Beacons national park it starts getting high end again.

Tongwynlais and Taffs well spring to mind. Handy for Cardiff and the M4, A470. There’s loads really, Cardiff’s population is about 330,000 but has a catchment of over 1,000,000 mostly old mining towns and villages. The further you go from Cardiff the cheaper but stranger it gets 😯

The work round here is high end, but what ever pays the bills.
probably closer to cardiff would be best.

thanks for the information so far.

Some true words above, BUT…

I know the Valleys get a bit of a rap for being at the low end of the social scale, but I know people who live in a good number of the Valleys’ towns and they are very happy. You can get a decent house at a much lower price than you would almost anywhere else in the country, AND you have relatively easy access to Cardiff.

Couple that with what the others – and especially Gwaelod – said.

You want to move to South Wales? And nobody’s forcing you to? 😯

Seriously though, I’d imagine you’ll be taking a drop in your “day rate” (even if you do work on price mostly) compared to what you’re earning in Oxford-ish. I dabbled a while with doing flooring for a “high end” shop in Cardiff, but commuting from Bristol (they were desperate for somebody to come and do some of their work). Obvs, I realised I would take a hit on bridge tolls and fuel, but I think I did around 4 or 5 jobs over there before working out it just wasn’t worth it for the welsh money.

Abergavenny/Crickhowell and the surrounding villages are quite nice

Stay away from Blaenau Gwent,apparently we’re all gonna die early 🙁
http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/life-expectancy-men-women-blaenau-6237181

Darcy I am not angry just disappointed 😆

Nothing wrong with the Valleys, wouldn’t go further up than Crumlin, Oakdale or Bedwas. Yes there are the trail centers but so much natural stuff.

I live at the bottom of the Swansea Valley. Up the road to the Beacons, down the road to Gower and the sea, west to Brechfa and east to Afan etc. House prices ok and easy access to M4 etc.

Taffs Well is a good shout – I work there, it’s pretty quiet.

Oddly, whilst selling prices vary hugely in Cardiff and surrounding areas, rental prices are generally the same.

North Cardiff suburbs (my yard) are nice – Llanishen, Thornhill, Rhiwbina – the closer you get to the City the worse value – Heath and Birchgrove cost more and aren’t as nice – the price you pay for being 10 mins closer to work I guess.

Tongwinglis is lovely, good riding too – and don’t discount Caerphilly its only 10 minds from North Cardiff over a fun mountain road and much cheaper than Cardiff.

TheArtistFormerlyKnownAsSTR – Member
Abergavenny/Crickhowell and the surrounding villages are quite nice

Agreed. Very nice area and not too far from Cardiff.

Swansea area is probably better as Nipper suggests, closer to more riding and the wealthier clients in West of Cardiff, Mumbles and Gower.
Brecon Beacons are about 50 min from Cardiff, more when everyone wants to be in Cardiff. If we want trades fast, we normally need to get them from the valleys rather than the Beacons.

edit: we live in the Beacons, my work is here but the wife works from St Mellons half the week. You don’t want to live in St Mellons.

You can’t really go wrong with any of the north cardiff areas. Great local riding, good road links to the trail centres with all the benefits of being near the city. Swansea is good if you’re into caravans, glue sniffing and dog fighting 😈

You could always look at Chepstow or a little further up the Wye valley towards Monmouth. The area is stunning, riding’s good, trail centres aren’t far (including FoD) plus your smack bang between Cardiff and Bristol with easy access to both M4 and M5. Plus the bike shop’s good too! 🙂 What’s not to like??

Very high demand for 1-2 bed houses to rent near most of Cardiff as the multiple uni’s and colleges mean all the places are converted into student digs. Not helped by the massive boom in building flats either. 1 bed flats rent for £500 and up so bear that in mind. The villages mentioned above (Creigiau, Radyr, Tongwynlais) are pretty expensive as everyone has the same idea as you!

Taffs Wells sounds like a fair shout, far enough out to not feel claustraphobic but good road access to everywhere. Plus it has Fagin’s 😀 Penarth will be expensive but is full of expensive houses so work may be good.

TheArtistFormerlyKnownAsSTR
Abergavenny/Crickhowell and the surrounding villages are quite nice

Lots of local competition for the work though, all locals with good reputations too so might be a consideration, otherwise a lovely area!

Agree. The valleys are terrible. No roads out of them. Houses all have corrugated iron roofs. Nobody works in them since they closed the mines. Ummmm? And any other horror story you hear about them is true too …
Don’t go North of Cardiff.
Yes – Learn a foreign language and move to Cardiff

I’m thinking cardiff way, but i dont want to live in cardiff. more out side in a village some where

To be honest, the villages and towns outside Cardiff aren’t that great – at least to me. Due to the history and geography most of them are strips of housing developments of some vintage or other. I don’t find many of them have a nice towny feel.

Best places to live are certain suburbs of Cardiff – somewhere like Roath. Has a more small town feel than most places around here and you can still walk to Cardiff city centre in 20 mins.

Taff’s well for example is a strip, as is Tongwynlais.

Lived in many of these North of Cardiff towns/villages Molgrips?
I personally would hate to live in Cardiff.
Some nice places there. But they are few and far between and they are on the outskirts of the city. Likes of Gwalaed Garth seems nice, but it’s best suited to mushrooms because it’s constantly in shade of the Garth. Dreary place.
Closer to the city centre it gets slummier in my opinion.

Some nice places there. But they are few and far between and they are on the outskirts of the city.

Really? You don’t consider Roath or Canton nice?

Gwaelod y Garth is just a few houses isn’t it? And a pub?

I’d struggle to call Canton nice, although some bits of it are fine.

dragon – Member

I’d struggle to call Canton nice, although some bits of it are fine

Yeah, those bits are called ‘Llandaf’ 😉

As for the poor OP trying to make sense of it all, simply put everyone thinks where they chose to live is the best – after all, it’s where they chose to live.

There are a few places that are out and out hell holes, but they’re few and far between and there’s always a local diamond in the rough who’ll be upset if someone trashes their hometown so I’ll leave it.

As you can tell there’s a huge choice of places – from fully rural to city centre urban and everywhere in between – if you’re not certain of an area – throw it up here and you’ll get an dozen different answers – but it’ll take you about 5 mins of driving around the area to get a feel for it – it’s usually written on the faces of the people who live there.

Personally the nicest place I ever lived in South Wales was Wenvoe, it’s a small rural village that just happens to be close to the city and M4 and has a huge retail park just out of sight – all the appeal of rural living without the need to wade through shit for 2 hours to buy your weekly shop. Silly money though.

Done when I first moved to Cardiff a couple of years back: http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/folk-in-the-cardiff-area-recommend-me-somewhere-to-live

Good to see we’re having the same Roath/Canton vs further out argument two years later 😉

My two cents now that I actually live here, and based on househunting experiences – if you are renting, you will be lucky to find anywhere in Taffs/Ton. In the 3 to 4 months I spent looking at Rightmove I saw the tiniest handful of properties come up to let there. Depends what you want from a house of course, whether you need to somewhere to store umpteen bikes for example, garden, nice school for the kids,etc….

FWIW we moved into a place (rented) in Whitchurch, the owner then put feelers out about selling it and we bought it off her without it ever going on the market. Very happy there, taff trail on the doorstep lets me cycle to work in one direction and 10 minutes up to Tongywynlais gets you to miles of trails (or I could ride through the nature reserve that’s 100 metres round the corner, but I would never dream of ignoring the no cycling signs on the gates, good lord no).

See a lot of the surrounding area on the road bike, and I genuinely can’t think of anywhere I’d totally avoid (obviously some places have good and bad bits, Mooman can tell you what estates to avoid in Caerphilly for example!). Just to throw more names out, places in Nantgarw, Hawthorn, and Church Village also made out shortlisting when we were looking to rent. Or in terms of within Cardiff, Radyr, Pontprennau and Heath all had decent amount of turnover on properties to let when we were looking, but expect to pay towards top dollar for those areas.

Hope that helps…..

Cowbridge is a very popular market town about 15 miles west of cardiff on the A48. Good School, close to the coast, and to the trails.

Canton? Really!
A Small part of Roath is ok if you like built up areas. It’s still not a place I would choose to live though.

It’s in a city, of course it’s a built up area. Most of the rest of the area is either dead expensive or scruffy and/or squeezed by dual carriageways, and almost none of it is a nice small town.

Better a nice small city than a giant council estate with next to no amenities or town centre, imo!

Edit Cowbridge is alright, as is Wenvoe but there’s not much there. I wouldn’t recommend Pontprennau as it’s just a load of houses and Asda. Hawthorn is just a strip of houses by the side of the road as far as I can tell… And I thought Nantgarw was an industrial estate!

Yeah, those bits are called ‘Llandaf’

What the train station? Or do you mean Llandaff 😆

there’s always a local diamond in the rough who’ll be upset if someone trashes their hometown

That’ll be Mooman 😉

Better a nice small city than a giant council estate with next to no amenities or town centre

Roath and Caerphilly are the only two places round here with a Wilkos*, so they can’t be that different really.

*I love Wilkos

West Swansea – close to good riding, fairly affluent area (mumbles, langland and gower) and superb beaches. I used to live in the ‘diff but nmuch prefer Swansea for the Gower.

I am just glad there’s a big mountain between Cardiff and Caerphilly.
It stops the crisp packets, burger wrappers … and Cardiff types from blowing over

Wait.. You are calling Cardiff scruffy, and you live in Caerphilly! 😆

Anyway having just ridden through it, I’ve reminded myself that Risca seems to have a bit more character than most places round there. although it’s a bit of a strip it has something you could call a town centre.

All valley towns are strips doe to them being in Valleys 😆

Xkeys Pontywaun, Cwncarn, Abercarn all run into each other, if you live there you know where the boundaries are 😆