Cambridge

Radius ~20 miles from centre.  Opinions on what are the nice places to live, and the chav hellholes to avoid?

Housing in Cambridge is extremely expensive

If you work in Cambridge and live outside the driving commute is awful (takes my wife 1.5hr to do a 15 mile journey when she needs to go into the office). Cycling or train is much better.

North of Cambridge is flat, West and South have rolling hills.

I live in Ely, 15 miles north, it’s a really lovely cathedral city, great train links, friendly people. The roads, however, are awful, as is the pan flatness.

Home of the carrot cruncher?

Chatteris.

BOOM 🚀👎🤠🍆🖖

hellholes to avoid?

Not many left, everything has been gentrified over the last 20 years.

The roads into the City / out of at rush hour are pretty hellish though as the City sucks in 1000s of workers from around.

Not many left, everything has been gentrified over the last 20 years

Bar Hill?

Cottenham used to be nice when I lived there around 2000. I moved out before the nearby traveller site was set-up though & it all went a bit downhill. Dunno what it’s like these days.

If you are working in Cambridge & planning on cycling in, you could do a lot worse than choose somewhere near the guided busway; St Ives, Swavesey etc….
I work nr Swavesey & quite a few people here commute by bike along the busway from Cambridge.

Godmanchester is quite a nice place, St Ives is OK, there’s a few people here from Papworth Everard that like it, but I’ve only driven through.
Lots of nice villages around – just depends what sort of living you want & how deep your pockets are.

March?

Bedford?

Whats South of Cambs?? Essex !

St Neots?

Wisbech? (Too far norf)

Whats that place near the Hospital on the south side called ??

What cheers_drive says.

Ely is growing but still a fairly nice town. A10 to Cambridge is busy in the morning (but so is everywhere).

If you can bike to work somewhere along the guided bus will be good. Avoid anything on the A14 for the next 2/3 years. The further north you go, the flatter and cheaper it gets. South of Cambridge is pretty but expansive.

Me, I like the flatness and huge skies.

I saw mention of Cottenham and couldn’t resist commenting as we live there these days.  Cottenham is a good place to live, better than it was a decade ago…  Most villages to the north and east of Cambridge seem to have a travellers site, and it’s mostly ok.

Bar Hill isn’t great, and with the A14 works at the moment it isn’t much fun to get to either.  Longstanton has a lot of building work going on there for the next few years as they build Northstowe…

As has been said, North is much cheaper and many places are nice to live; South much more expensive.  West is quite nice, but many of the “new” villages seemed souless, and the older ones were more expensive.  Lots of people I work with live in the giant housing estate that is Cambourne, but we weren’t keen…  East seemed a bit lighter on housing and fairly expensive too.  If you live North, the A10 is the main commute route, and is very very busy at rush hour.  Almost no-one cycle commutes along it…  If you are tempted to live North, living on or near the busway makes cycle commuting much less stressful!

The thing with cycling down the A10 is that the cars are barely moving during the rush hour. The alternative (Twenty Pence Road) is full of driving gods doing 80mph. So given the choice I’d cycle down the A10. (I actually do neither as I have an off road route to Cambridge!)

The busway is probably the best choice if you do not want to live in Cambridge and have to go to the science park. I commuted from Papworth for… years, and it was not fun with the A428/A14 being trashed. St. Ives is a decent place to live, Godmanchester pretty good as well, but you still have the A14 to worry about.

Basically, the Science Park is a choke point. Get in early and leave early if you want to avoid the worst of it.

I quite liked living in bedford but I wouldn’t have liked regular commuting to Cambridge (did cycle it occasionally for meetings etc).

Not many left, everything has been gentrified over the last 20 years.

Haverhill. :)

Actually there has been a lot of money ploughed Haverhill in the past few years – it’s arguable whether this has changed it thought – and there’s a lot of lovely surrounding villages. However the train service is awful – I seem to recall, post Beeching-cuts, Haverhill is the largest town in the country without a station. However it’s an easy drive into Cambs park and ride and a regular bus service.

As richmars says cycling from Ely on the A10 is better than Twentypence road, I know several people who do it. The train is a good option, especially if you have a folding bike. There are some nice villages around Newmarket (Newmarket itself is full of angry short people in expensive cars). Burwell might be worth looking at, closer to the hills and can cycle off road to Cambridge

Not many left, everything has been gentrified over the last 20 years.

I was really thinking of the City itself rather than the villages. All the no go areas (when I was a child) will now cost you £350k upwards for a cardboard box without a view……..

Histon is nice.

I have friends in Cambourne but they don’t rave about it.

Guided busway cycle path is great if you can find somewhere on it – you will wonder what all the fuss about traffic jams is about as you cruise into Cambridge (unless there’s a monster 30mph headwind). And with the new cyclepath out towards Burwell that might be a good option as well now.

I sometimes drive to work along the A14 – it’s never really that bad if you go in after 10am. It is really the ugliest road in the entire country though, and forget about going anywhere on the A14 on Friday evening. I would hate to have no way to get to work other than driving on it.

Also, don’t forget there is Cambridge North rail station if coming in from the north (not surprisingly!)

And yes, Cambridge North station is good if you want to live further south. A friend lived in Old Harlow and he used to commute in the train that way.

If you’ve got children then it might be worth noting that some schools are better than others.

What constitutes a chav hellhole ?

Arbury, possibly Kings Hedges.

Failing that, Harlow.

Yup, Harlow qualifies well and truly as a chav hellhole.

St. Ives is a nice town, not too big; always near to fields. |Closer to the city Grantchester is lovely, though has no shops and is very spendy.

Avoid Huntingdon, Bar Hill and the Arbury area of Cambridge. Aforementioned Ely isn’t bad.

All depends on budget. :)

ETA: born on Mill Rd Cambridge and grew up in St. Ives, so feel free to be specific with your questions. :)

Arbury, possibly Kings Hedges.

Failing that, Harlow.

I have heard that the Carlton Arms has gone upmarket…

Arbury, possibly Kings Hedges.

Failing that, Harlow.

Yup, Harlow qualifies well and truly as a chav hellhole.

Arbury and Kings Hedges used to be, but becoming gentrified by SW Engineers / chemists….

Harlow is a the grade A reference Shit hole, by which all others are rated ;-)

Have you seen the price of some of the hutches/houses down in the new development by Addenbrookes? It’s amazing that even the 10k new homes that are being built between the A1303 and Grantchester won’t bring the prices of houses in Cambridge down.

Have you seen the price of some of the hutches/houses down in the new development by Addenbrookes?

yep, most town houses around the £1m mark. But then so are town houses in town….

Unlike London, house prices in Cambridge could actually be fair value over the long-term, due to the economic success story there. But my god are they pricey. Hermann Hauser transformed that city by opening the first science park.

3 bed semi on Cheney Way going for a bargain £400,000.  ;)

I have issues with the science park and the idea of a single place for all innovation. Yes, it brings it into one place, but in a city with such limited transport options in (and housing so expensive), it’s a nightmare. Being on the Science Park is expensive and is, in my opinion, a vanity exercise.

If they bring in congestion charging or parking limitations for companies there (bear in mind parking is already a nightmare) then it will become both a nightmare and expensive to work there.

Hermann Hauser transformed that city by opening the first science park.

Nought to do with HH, he was Acorn, then ARM and now Amadeus VC.

Trinity college opened and owns the Science Park.

St Johns college opened and own St Johns Innovation Centre

HM the Queen owns Cambridge Business Park (opp Science Park).

He also drives a Tesla (wrong thread I know).

@angledust;

Where are you planning to work, are you living alone or with a family? Are you buying or renting. How would you want to get to work?

Forget about mountain biking locally, it’s just not that good.

Do you plan to use the city centre on a weekend? If so forget it in summer, language schools and tourism dominate the centre on a weekend and make it a pain to get into and out of. Over the 13 or so years I’ve lived in the area of a weekend there used to be 3-5 coaches parked in the lay-by on Barton road, last time I was in the area I counted 21 coaches!

Overall though it’s a lovely city in many ways, good pubs, great annual beer festival, historic colleges, city centre greens spaces. Travel links are ok, roads can be crap at peak times as mentioned above, but just avoid car travel at these times.

wherever you’re thinking of, try the prospective commute at rush hour to get an idea of what it’ll be like; I once managed to get back from Worcester to St Ives ahead of Mrs R who got in her car at the same time in the centre of Cambridge……its one of those places where there are relatively few roads in / out for the number of people trying to do so….better to think in terms of time than distance

Came across this chart which gives stats on benefit claimants by ward..

Cambridge Housing Benefit by ward by Ben Freeman[/url], on Flickr

https://www.cambridge.gov.uk/media/1263/mapping_poverty_findings_2017v.pdf

What happened in Trumpington?  Must be to do with the new developments.

What happened in Trumpington?

Massive new development with a council agreed % of social housing.

And some good stats on housing / costs (buying & renting) in here:

https://www.cambridge.gov.uk/media/3908/strategic-housing-key-facts-2018-03.pdf