I LEFT LONDON FOR BATH – IT’S NO CHEAPER, BUT MY HEART RATE’S GONE DOWN

After my degree, I couldn’t wait to move to London. When a room popped up in a shared house in south-east London with some of my school friends, it felt like serendipity. I couldn’t wait to join the fun — of which there was a lot.

Over the next ten years, London bore witness to some of the most significant moments of my adult life. My first promotion, a lot of first dates, a marriage, a first baby, as well as the launching of myself as a journalist and the place where I first discovered a love of exercise. Oh, and my first pandemic.

I experienced a lot of happiness there. But after our son was born, something shifted; the fast-paced nature of the city, the noise and its “always on” quality was at odds with my frazzled postnatal nervous system, which was desperate for peace. The distances to my friends’ houses seemed much further with a baby in tow. Both my husband and I – originally from Surrey and Kent – soon felt ready to move elsewhere.

When drawing up a list of favoured places in the UK, Bath, where I went to university, scored highly. I’d loved living here as a student; it had all the benefits of being in a city but was small enough so as not to be overwhelming. Then there was gorgeous countryside; the cultural richness brought by living in or near a city; the beauty; the great state schools; and the (mostly) very liberal people.

So we took a leap of faith with our combined finances, and put an offer in on a house in a lovely village on the outskirts of the city. A few weeks after our son turned one, we were flying down the M4 en route to our new home. And I’m pleased to say that 2.5 years on, I have never once regretted that decision.

The thing we value most about being here is our proximity to nature and wildlife; before, I was aware of shifts in season but they didn’t really affect me much. Now, though, I love watching them moving through the plants and trees; the shifts and changes in colour. It’s an invitation to slow down – which has brought a big improvement to our mental health. This isn’t just a feeling but a concrete fact rooted in data: a couple of weeks after we moved, I looked at my Fitbit and was surprised to see that my resting heart rate had reduced by between 5 and 10bpm consistently, which, coming up for three years later, has remained true.

Living in and around Bath for us as a family with (our now two) small children has allowed my partner and I to morph into the parents we want to be. For his part, a fully remote job was a huge contributor to our ability to up sticks, especially given that as a freelancer, I can work from anywhere. But down time here with our kids really feels more like relaxing, with access to green space that is so easy we often take it for granted.

We made lots of friends very quickly – thanks, again, to the kids, but as our net has broadened I’ve found so many creatives living here and in Bristol who, like us, appreciate living somewhere so beautiful and a little less chaotic than London. There is a strong sense of community and for a city with just under 100k people residing in it; the degrees of separation between individuals are almost always pretty low.

There are loads of good food spots, with places opening up all the time, a bustling roster at the Theatre Royal and its adjacent Ustinov Studio and (which we only just got round to sampling), a beautiful art gallery with great exhibitions at the Holburne, scores of pubs or specialist bars, and great shops. I assume in response to the influx of Londoners post-pandemic, there is a strong selection of mid-range and designer shops, as well as lots of beauty boutiques and great hairdressers — and everything is walkable in the centre.

Of course, it isn’t a city without its downsides, one of which is the affordability of housing. We have so much more space than we did in London – but I’d be lying if I said it was cheap. The cost savings we were anticipating when buying outside of London never really materialised to any noteworthy degree.

Also, while the train links are good in and out of London (to Paddington every half an hour in 1hr 30m) the cost is astronomical, which makes travelling back something we do very selectively for work mostly. Another drawback is that — because it is such a pretty place to be — it is often overrun with tourists in the summer, as well as stag and hen dos. It is a city that favours public transport and walking; parking costs are high, and the traffic can get quite busy, but bus links are great, and for us at least, getting to town is a gorgeous walk down the cana

There is a lack of ethnic diversity in comparison with where we lived in London, which was my main reservation about leaving. There’s no two ways about it; the ONS survey in 2021 showed that 92.2 per cent of people in Bath and north-east Somerset identified their ethnic group within the “white” category, although this number is falling as other ethnic groups increase. We wanted our kids to grow up around a diverse group of people.

My hope is that as more and more people discover how gorgeous this city and its surroundings are and how liberal and welcoming it is (in general), this will continue to shift. In terms of gender and sexual diversity, we went to our first Bath Pride this summer, and it was a pretty amazing event. The large population of students from the two local universities also helps the city feel young, and the median age, at 39, is just slightly lower than England as a whole (40) and the South West (44).

It does rain quite a lot in Bath because of its proximity to the coasts. But this also means the beach isn’t too far away — we tried Weston-super-Mare last year and loved it. It also — and hear me out — feels far less offensive that it rains so much when you see how lush the countryside is; you start to see how much the land needs the rain and hope it comes. I’ve enjoyed finding excuses to invest in chic rain gear, too.

London is gorgeous, energetic, fun and technicolour, and I love visiting when we do, but for now, my heart is strongly in favour of Bath, and so am I.

2025-11-12T10:51:48Z