Get a job with shorter hours and closer to home then get out there and enjoy life…
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So I don’t currently live in London, and it’s something that’s never appealed to me - I’m currently doing 1hr each way. I like working there, but I always exhale deeply when I get out of the Blackwall Tunnel every evening. That feeling of escaping the city every day really keeps job stress away regardless of how demanding a project is. There’s something to be said for putting physical distance between yourself and place of work
The plan in a few years is to start my own Software-as-a-Service business, based in Ipswich (or wherever else pleasant with lots of adventures on my doorstep I can find and afford) and as you say start enjoying life.
For context, I’m 23 so need a few more years working behind me before going out on my own and my new job is generous enough for home ownership to now be on my radar but not generous enough for that search to be directed at London.
I have a friend out in Ipswich, I think I’ll go and crash at his for a few days and give the commute a test run. I don’t think it’ll be too representative of bleak mid winters or the incessant nature of it but it may give me an accurate reflection of the time I might expect it to take. I feel like 90 minutes is my personal upper limit. 2 hrs I don’t think I fancy!
defo do this, I was going to suggest get some cheap digs or an Airbnb to test the commute, remember it’s summer now and private school are off and soon the rest of them, so the traffic is normally lighter.
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There’s something to be said for putting physical distance between yourself and place of work
absolutely agree! I love living away from work and actually on the most part, enjoy my commute. I find riding gives me so much time to de-stress… Public transport will never cross my mind until I’m too old to withstand the cold 
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I have a friend out in Ipswich, I think I’ll go and crash at his for a few days and give the commute a test run. I don’t think it’ll be too representative of bleak mid winters or the incessant nature of it but it may give me an accurate reflection of the time I might expect it to take. I feel like 90 minutes is my personal upper limit. 2 hrs I don’t think I fancy!
Very good idea! I do love Suffolk, I’ve been holidaying there at my grans holiday home near aldeburgh since I was a baby and am off there next week! (unfortunately in the car) The roads are beautiful for riding.
Goodluck with what ever you decide, 23 is a great age to be considering home ownership.
Ipswich is my neck of the woods (10 miles away) Defo get in touch if you do move.
Train all day. A12 at rush hour is M25 like for most of it. Past the M25 you are in London so lots of roundabouts, traffic lights, fellow commuters.
Ipswich has a 60 minutes to Liverpool St train - so it’s not all that far. You’ll get a seat very easily.
If I were doing it, I’d get a push bike from Liverpool St for the short run in London…
For me an hour is the absolute maximum. Like others have said - either move closer to work or find another job closer to home. I’d shoot myself if I had to commute for 4 hours a day, it’s time lost that you can’t be with your family or do something that you like.
You either work to live or live to work so the choice is yours.
Definitely will hit you up if I go for it, be nice to get a feel for local area. I’d seen the hour trains - and I’d be able to get the quick one home but a slower one in (but that’s the way you’d want it in fairness). I’m actually hedging forecast price growth with this move on that line improving or an improvement being announced in the mid term.
Thank you all for the input, I’ll crash at my friends some time in the next few weeks and will try the train and bike a few times and see how I fare with both. Will post an update in due course
4 hours on a train is doable. You can sit down, watch movies, read a book etc. You can make it part of your relaxation for the day. On a bike… No way I would consider that,
I spent 6 months commuting London to Milton Keynes by bike and that was enough. Last few month I would AirBNB it every second night to keep sane.
Hi slow-ride,
I live in Gravesend, so not too far from you, and ride in every day. I come on the A2 at Nell’s Cafe.
At one point I worked in Marlow, Buckinghamshire and rode there every day. It took about 2 hours either going around the M25 or across/through London and out that way. After 9 months I was done. It drains you so much. I would really advise against it.
Have you considered moving a bit closer in, even to somewhere like Gravesend? It’s about 10 miles off the distance you are currently riding, you have the option of the high speed train either from Gravesend or nipping to Ebbsfleet, plus the slow train.
Have you considered Stevenage in hertfordshire? Pretty cheap and train to old street in 40 minutes with 1 change at finsbury park.
I couldn’t and wouldn’t travel that far for work and certainly not on a bike. It would be great exhausting and costly too!
I would like to move further out, but furthest I’m going to go is a few miles north of Shenfield, which would mean around 25 miles each way.
I’m commuting from Hempstead Valley to Covent Garden everyday and that’s bad enough.
Kudos to you if you can hack a longer commute everyday, it’d kill me 
I think you’re probably right, there is no doubt a way that time could be maximized for optimum relaxation or ‘domestic transactions’ as TimR said earlier. I’d probably spend the whole time watching videos of other people riding motorbikes though lol
Not considering moving closer - what I was trying to get at in my initial post is that I’ve traveled from Medway for quite some time now rain, shine, snow and the commute has never once bothered me. So I was actually posing the question how far does anyone go before it really starts to grate. It would appear to differ slightly person to person but 1hr does seem to be most people’s upper limit with 90 minutes being a no go.
I have, but with 250k as my limit I think I just miss 3 bed semi-/end of terrace houses with large gardens. Although it’s a good suggestion and makes sense in a lot of ways. There and Luton have done quite well in the past few years looking at numbers. I’m also keen that if I am going to have to get the train, it be from great distance.
Roughly in that neck of the woods, a friend from work lives in Leighton Buzzard, and her commute only takes half an hour or something nuts! But when I’ve gone out to visit her from Medway by bike it takes 1hr15- 90 minutes at best. In terms of value for money in proximity to London (such a poisonous but necessary metric) I’m being forced to conclude that Medway offers a fantastic value proposition… maybe I’m in search for ‘otherness’ and some form of fresh start (having lived here my whole life)
I find it also depends on where in London you are headed. Okay so the A2 can be very rough at times, but my current commute into the City is so much better than before, when I was commuting to South Kensington. I’ve never commuted to Convent Garden but I can imagine those last few miles are excruciating.
Interesting thought, can your time on the train be counted as working hours if you are working?
Definitely. I do it.
Same here, but different employers, different rules. Unless it is something that is now under a European working regulation and I don’t know the answer to that.
Yes absolutely, I’ve worked for firms that didn’t care what you did as long as you were delivering and firms that demanded facetime and did everything short of taking a register at the start of the day like at school.