Im in a pretty lucky position to have a choice of where to live somewhere roughly between Worcester, Gloucester and Cheltenham due to a promotion at work. Originally the plan was to move to Cheltenham and take over the running of the office from there where its currently based, however due to the main director living in Worcester and the retiring one in Cheltenham it makes sense to move the office and locate it somewhere that is more affordable for ourselves and closer to the continuing director.

So im thinking Malvern would be a good starting point as we have two kids under 2 so the priority is a nice place to live with half decent schools (anything will be better than Oldham which we will happily be waving goodbye to), it has plenty of stuff going on in the area and obviously there is riding on the doorstep (which i have rode before but not sure how limited it is).

So just looking for some information really, any negatives or places to avoid, anywhere else in that rough area which you would recommend and hopefully the heads up from someone local who could introduce me to the riding and cheeky trails which will offer something to make up for losing saddleworth and the peaks riding on the doorstep

you get a whole load of scruffy buggers on bikes blocking up the roads every year one weekend in mid summer 😉

*Stoner to the forum please, Stoner to the forum. Thank you*

10/10 for Malvern

Malvern is a great place to live,,,, I was in the same situation last year and had the best time living there. Rode almost everyday and never got bored or really did the same route that offtern, there are over 100miles of trails on the hills and theres heaps near by too.
The local mtb club who meet sundays and week nights, are really friendly and can show you round some of the best lesser know bits..

As far as to where to live, the higher up towards the hill the better!!!Its a nicer area in terms of houses and people and it makes for an easy walk into a nice end of town with everything you could need and enough pubs and eat out places to keep any hungry cyclist happy
Good schools and leisure centre, park etc for the kids….

Anyone who says its not that good for riding don’t know it very well,the chap on my old street in the Giant kit has ridden there all his life and he don’t look very bored while flying along,,,,, 😉

Also FOD is less than an hr away as ia cannock if you fancy some trail centre rippin,

We used to live in Welland, on the outskirts of Malvern, from 2002-2006. Great little primary school there (at least it was then). Friendly people. Some good pubs within staggering distance. Malvern has all the usual amenities.

I used to commute to Brum, it’s about a 20 minute / 5mile ride to Gt Malvern station from Welland (got me into cycling!), which would be an option for Cheltenham as well, obviously.

Onto the trails on the Malverns within 10 minutes 😀 plus some bridleways round and about for when it’s been dry.

xterramac +1.

Bloody expensive though.

Anyone who says its not that good for riding don’t know it very well,the chap on my old street in the Giant kit has ridden there all his life and he don’t look very bored while flying along,,,,,

😆

Saw him out the other weekend on a training ride. Fingers crossed for him at the Olympics eh!

Malvern is quite sleepy, and a bit “middle England” which will either appeal greatly or put you off massively, depending on what kind of person you are. There are a couple of rough(er) parts, but on the whole it’s quite a well off place.

The Hills are errrrmmm… Well there’s good reason a number of the UK’s top Mountain Bikers live in, or around Malvern, and ride the Malverns regularly. They’re very steep and technical. There are more varied trails within easy reach if you lived in Cheltenham, but you’ll probably be fitter if you live in Malvern. Just hope you like climbing! On the other hand, if you lived in Worcester (as I do), you’ll be travelling anywhere to get your MTB fix anyway, as despite the fact Worcestershire has some great MTBing venues, none of them are actually that close to Worcester itself. I get over the Malverns a bit, or go down the Wyre Forest predominantly (which is only 25-30 mins from either Worcester or Malvern), the trails there are highly underrated.

Biggest downside to Malvern though is it’s often full of tourists, and you need to ride the trails at the right times (ie. evenings or very early in the morning) otherwise you’ll barely move for walkers.

And some of the houses on the hill never get any sun so consequently are damp/populated by vampires. Or something.

Personally, I’d choose ‘Nam.

Malvern in summary:

Good:
Technical XC at it’s best, if you know where to look
Awesome views
Proper soul riding
Has ‘something’ about it
The riders are lovely, there is always a good deal about and the clubs (MCS and velosevale) have become much more welcoming of late.

Bad:
Weekends are very busy, especially at the North End of the hills where the majority of legal riding is.

There is a a good deal of hatred for mountain bikers from a small minority of locals/walkers who leave branches across trails, refuse to move/block trails rather than let MTBkers past and feel free to comment on ‘ugly bikes and how Elgar would be turning in his grave’

The conservators are a bunch of over-powered_______ who’d rather see us ride along (and chew up) unsurfaced bridleways than let us use gravelled hardpack on the area by Gullet Quarry

It’s a great place to live. The thing that I’ve noticed here is the relatively high proportion of people I meet who have actively chosen to live here. I’d suggest looking into all your options, there’s some lovely villages with really good schools around too.

Oh yeah, in light of littlegirlbunny post, don’t read the letters page of the gazette!

You’ll need to be self sufficient in terms of power generation to fit around those parts.

I believe you can heat your home by burning fossilised pixie’s hearts though

so many pixies, no one notices a few missing.

Pretty much +1 ^ except I dont think it’s that expensive for such a good area.

I live just next to Welland. Drain where were did you live?

Welland isnt going to win any prizes for prettiest village in the county, but it’s functional. Primary school is v good (Jr started last year, doing v well) and coaches do pick ups from the village to the local secondaries.

Very good access for Chelt & Glos & Worcs via M50/M5 or A38.

I ride on the hills 4-6 times a week and get no hassle and meet some very nice people along the way. The art is in timing and picking your trails and being so chin-achingly pleasant that the bilious bastards that might write to the Gazette dont have an inch to work with 😉

Good property section in the Gazette (published every friday) is worth subscribing to.

If you want a hand with house finding, let me know – Im currently helping some friends relocate out this way and since I “work from home”, am a surveyor etc, I’m a bit more flexible to help out.

Top tip though, dont get swayed by the views – think of the sun through the seasons!

Went to Malvern last year with my Misses.

Did a bit of walking looked a lovely place and people were friendly but it was very very very quiet on Saturday evening.

Im a fairly boring old before my time kinda guy but even I thought it felt dead.

We went out looking for food around 7:45 and the pub/hotel over from the theatre was closing only seemed to be one other pub. Ended up in a very small indian was perfectly nice but asked for a beer and they said they could nt get a lisence if you wanted alcohol you needed to buy it from waitrose over the road ! (which was now closed !)

I’m from a similar sized Midlands town Lichfield (30,000 people) but Malvern almost felt like a little village at night not a proper town. Maybe I was in the wrong area. In comparison it makes Lichfield seems like a big party town.

PS im not a local so probably wrong.

We went out looking for food around 7:45 and the pub/hotel over from the theatre was closing only seemed to be one other pub. Ended up in a very small indian was perfectly nice but asked for a beer and they said they could nt get a lisence if you wanted alcohol you needed to buy it from waitrose over the road ! (which was now closed !)

more a case of bad luck than anything else. There’s quite a few licensed restaurants, but ZamZam’s isnt unfortunately. But it is the best curry for a few miles around so you didnt do too badly 🙂

There are some more lively pubs but like most small places they wont necessarily jump out at you in the middle of town, Malvern isnt that kind of place, its a bit more dispersed.

There are some more lively pubs but like most small places they wont necessarily jump out at you in the middle of town, Malvern isnt that kind of place, its a bit more dispersed.

I think thats my point makes it seem alot quieter than most similar towns of 30,000.

There must be at least 15 pubs in the centre of Lichfield never mind restaurants (also 30,000).

Think im sold, you get grumpy walkers everywhere and just learn to live with it, try riding kinder on a sat afternoon in summer ;-).

House prices seem very reasonable for such a nice place, yeah its a lot more than where we are at the moment but its a hole and i dont want to bring kids up there!

Its going to be hard taking on a big mortgage with two wee nippers as its not cost effective for teh wife to return to work, however the plan is for her to do some childminding, prob just two kids if poss to bring in an income as oppose to spending all her wage on childminding, which cant be done anyway.

Re tourists, she also likes the idea of having a B&B with just 1 or 2 rooms so this would be perfect, it all depends how much we can buy house wise and if we can get something big enough in the right area to afford us to do such a venture. It would be a win win as the house would earn an income and allow Mrs B to raise the kids, plus give us extra space for friends and family to visit.

I just need to work out how i could get a **** mortgage/see if its even possible to get a bigger mortgage to allow us to do it.

I can handle sleepy towns/villages. I dream of a quiet local pub as oppose to a robinsons hole where you wipe your feet on the way out of if you are brave enough to actually enter in the first place.

I think the only thing im going to miss is my allotment which is 50yards down the road at present and i suspect they are hard to come by in the Malvern area, if anyone can confirm, get me on a waiting list that would be ace

there are 200 allotments owned by the council in the town, but TBH you’ll manage to get a place with a big enough garden. We’re not all rammed in cheek-b’-jowl here like them northerners…. 😉

Thats plan 1 – What a dream, a garden with an allotment in it, how i dream!

I reckon ill fit in fine with all the tractor fans!

Ayup, Stoner – we used to live at the end of Giffard Drive, the small estate on the south side of Marlbank. Really liked everything about living there and only moved because of work (ironic as now I’m based from home!).

Re being “chin-achingly pleasant” 😀 great phrase. Absolutely, I used (and still use) the same tactic, being effusively polite in the face of the grumpy brigade – takes the wind out of their sails every time 😈

Ah, the Conservators – I seem to recall they commissioned a study on erosion of the hills with a view to using it to limit/prevent biking – but it backfired because it showed the footfall volume of walkers was doing way more damage…

I often did night rides on the hills so I didn’t need to worry about stacking into a bunch of walkers / horses / dogs around a corner. Some breathtaking views on a crisp sunny day though.

Ledbury?

I liked the place when I lived there a few years ago; I’d happily live there again. A few more downsides for balance, the things that we most notice when going back to visit:

– Pubs are more expensive than up here in Staffordshire, although there are a lot of them.
– Everybody drives at 40mph everywhere. This, combined with the utterly useless Worcester bypass means that getting from the M5 to Malvern can take aaaages, especially during rush hour or if there’s something on at the showground.
– People crash cars into shop windows a lot. No idea why, but it just seems to happen more in Malvern than anywhere else…
– Choice of supermarkets; mix it with the billions of proles in a packed and chaotic Morrisons or pay the premium and go to Waitrose. I used the Tesco in Worcester but that involves fighting the traffic.
– The hills are very, erm, hilly; excellent for mountain biking but not so good for people who only ride occasionally.
– If you get to appear in it the Malvern Gazette will probably get your name wrong (hello, I’m Paul, apparently)

Grew up in Malvern. Overall a great place. In my day there was a bit of a hillbilly influence with the lads from Hereford, Ledbury etc coming over on a Saturday night for a pint and a fight. No idea if it is still the same (this was the 80s), but probably no different to any other rural market town in truth. The hills are truly awesome, hundreds of miles of paths/tracks/bridleways to get to know and overall its a beautiful part of the world and one that I would happily move back to.

People crash cars into shop windows a lot. No idea why, but it just seems to happen more in Malvern than anywhere else…

Old people and automatic cars. Everytime I see a news report, before it gets to the “Doris, 86, was taken to hospital with minor injuries” I always guess right that it’s an oldie “The car just shot forward unexpectedly” No it didnt you clumsy old dodderer! You pressed the accelerator with your numb foot instead of the brake pedal, started moving forward, freaked and missed the brake pedal again as you stamped on the accelerator harder and flung your car into the butcher’s window.

But it’s OK, they dont cause nearly as many accidents as 17-23 year old men so they can stay on the roads… 🙄

TBH I dont mind the conservators too much. The one who looks after the common down by us is interesting and approachable.

Unfortunately Ian Rowat has retired – he was excellent. Not met the new boss yet.

The only really annoying issue is the cycle/horse ban on the short length of path out of black hills car park. it’s only there because the path was metalled with Disability Access funds. Irritatingly though it’s the only section of path that you would need as a BW to make a legal end to end circumnavigation of the hills from North Hill to Camp. So I ignore it and ride when you’re not in conflict.

Some good drinking buddies live on Giffard drive. Plume of Feathers is my local.

As mentioned on here before, head high – the chavs don’t do altitude, unless you head out into the country.

We do have the Nags here too, always nice to stop off for a pint of something-or-other after a blast on the hills. 😀

TBH I haven’t had alot of aggro with walkers on the hills (famous last words) worth mentioning, and if it does happen just be courteous in replying to them – confuses the **** out of them. 😆

Malvern is ace. I live on the edge of Worcester so the Malverns are our night ride area of choice. I agree with others that the hills are too busy with walkers/families at weekends which has not been helped by a few articles in the mags. The hills are quite beautiful and to me, have a magical feel about them. Watching the sun set from Midsummer hill is quite goppingly beautiful.

I grew up here and was dragged up the hills all the time by my folks. Does anyone remember ‘cardboard boxing’ I.e. sledging down the long grass on the hills.

If you partial to road riding, the locality is great for that too.

There’s loads of brilliant riding at the Wyre, Cannock Chase, Cotswolds (I must explore) a bit at Bredon hills, FOD. Plus we less than 2 hrs from mid Wales. Mountain Mayhem is just over the hill too.

Hope that helps!