Bristol is a great city to live and ride in. It’s quite an attractive city (Suspension Bridge, Harbour etc.) with lots of great restaurants and bars. Unlike many of the UK’s other larger cities it seems quite compact and you can be out in the countryside in less than half an hour from most areas. Lots of things like festivals going on, and its got well-developed ‘alternative’ and ‘green’ scenes as well. Theatre buffs and film fans (especially fans of independent films) are well catered for.
For road riding there’s some great routes going south to the Mendips. west over the Bridge into Wales and Forest of Dean and north around South Gloucestershire and the bottom of the Cotswolds, and west around Wiltshire and Bath. For mountain biking there’s trails across the Suspension Bridge in Ashton Court and Leigh Woods, and the mountain bike meccas of the Mendips, Quantocks, Forest of Dean and South Wales trail centres are an easy car ride away. There’s also loads of bike paths (its the HQ of Sustrans).
Depending where you live its relatively easy to commute to Swindon – I know lots of people who do (which has the additional benefit of not having to live in Swindon).
What are the negatives?
Traffic can be horrendous and parking in many places is awful. Public transport isn’t great and is expensive. House prices can be very expensive in the more sought after areas. Bike theft seems to be endemic. The city centre can be a bit grim with drunks at the weekend (there again which centre doesn’t suffer from this). Secondary education in state schools has been very poor overall, though many of the underperforming schools seem to have become academies in the last couple of years, and there is also a disproportionate number of public schools.