I grew up in Harpenden, my dad commuted to South Quay until the IRA blew up the building he worked in. That was 30 years ago when the Thameslink service wasn’t as good. Luckily the company moved to Balham after that so it was more direct, although fewer choice of trains.
I think you’d be surprised how long a lot of people’s commutes are/were
Indeed - This thread prompted me to remember a colleague, sadly no longer with us, who worked in the same office as me in Farringdon. His daily commute was from somewhere near Bournemouth. In his younger days, he lived and worked in London. At some point he decided to move away but kept his city job. I think he spent over 20 years doing that commute, in days when working from home was much, much less common that it is today.
My first out of graduation had a long (72 minutes door-to-door) commute that made me mad and my health was massively deteriorated as a result, and I left the job after one year. I was working for 4 days a week. The reason was that, on the journey home, I had to rely on an express bus route with only 1 vehicle in the final part connecting the rail station back home once the peak hour had passed - the headway was 30 minutes. And in the beginning, I had to catch another frequent bus to the rail station, but it was in the city centre with occasional congestion, and it was already full to the extent that it skipped the final few stops before entering the tunnel (it topped the list of complaint numbers for a decade as it could never satisfy the huge demand despite running every 3-4 minutes) which I used to board, making me extremely difficult to time my arrival to connect to the final half-hourly express bus home.
The other routes home were much worse - they had a dozen of stops after the motorway before reaching my home, making the journey at least 10 minutes longer, and their frequencies were also very bad as well, 2 different routes each at 15-30 minutes headway without coordination.
I only returned to the job afterwards when I moved to the city centre and no longer do such commute, and I changed to 5-day working.
There aren't many heated lidos that are open all year, and most of those are in and around London, as they are expensive to run.
If you pick somewhere with a good triathlon club, you might find that they have access to facilities that aren't generally open to the public, perhaps at schools and universities. This could be an unheated lido, like Jesus Green in Cambridge, where the club can arrange sessions with a lifeguard, or using indoor pools. For example, Bath Amphibians use the training pool at Bath University. With a club, you may then be able to share transport to distant events.
I'm mainly looking for unheated lidos in the summer, possibly in the winter as well depending on my training (although I used a heated one - Guildford Lido - which was "heated" to 12°C in the last winter as I wasn't acclimated to single-digit temperatures)
And for sharing transport to events, my experience in an orienteering club is that I have never successfully arranged one and I had to hire cars on three occasions.
My first attempt was on Boxing Day. No one in my club lived close to me or went to the event at Moors Valley using the A338 from Bournemouth / Lansdowne / Boscombe. Their routes didn't touch the A338 at all.
My second attempt was an evening race in Alderholt, west of Fordingbridge. There were people who were willing to carry me, but unfortunately I was working full time and they went for an early start, so it was before my office hours ended and I couldn't join them.
My third attempt was a multi-race event further out. Unfortunately no one was in my club was doing my combination of races so I couldn't share a car as well.
Pontypridd in South Wales.
The rail network is receiving significant investment and there will soon be very frequent tram-trains to Cardiff where there are job opportunities, particularly if you're prepared to learn Welsh and work in the public sector. Transport for Wales head office is in the town.
The Welsh National Lido is there and there are through trains to Barry Island with its beach.
Cardiff Airport is also easily accessible by train and bus link. Cardiff hasn't got the widest range of flights but Bristol Airport is under two hours away by train and bus.
Plenty of houses to buy at around £120k.
Thanks for your suggestion, will take a look afterwards.
Can’t help feeling that this thread would have gone a lot better if the question was something like
How do people who live in London afford to run a car?
I really had no idea that a car is actually affordable before I saw how small the numbers (especially the home prices and the insurance figures, which I could never got when I browsed for ads on property / car sites) given.