Living in Guildford city centre is an utter pain in the arse!
I’ve lived most of my life in Liphook, Haslemere, Petersfield and for 18 months in Guildford, in an effort to make my wife’s commute into London easier. It was shorter and cheaper for her to get to work but everything else was terrible. We lived right in the town centre (College Road) so that she could walk to the station but my drive to Bordon (24 miles away) and back sometimes took almost two hours. It was noisy at night, the cars, houses and gardens in our road were habitually vandalised. Getting in and out of town during the day at the weekends was almost impossible and parking was a nightmare, even having paid for a resident’s permit. We have now moved back to Haslemere, a much nicer place all-in-all and much better riding, in all directions, right out of the front door. The riding out of Guildford isn’t very good in my limited experience. I used to put my bike in the car and drive down to Haslemere to go riding! Trains from Haslemere to Guildford only take 15-20 minutes.
Having said all that, if you’ve got the money to enjoy the shops, pubs, restaurants etc and didn’t need to drive in or out of town at the weekends it would be a great place to live. I do know a few people that live in Merrow and love it.