Commute into London?

paulwf

Part of it will depend on individual circumstances, e.g. if you have a lovely partner who will have dinner ready and waiting for you that will make a huge difference.

The problem I had with a 1 1/2 hour each way commute is in the winter the trains would regularly be significantly delayed which made it a very long commute. And once a year snow or storms is likely to take down the service altogether.

It's not too bad if you are organised and get your stuff ready the night before, and as you say there is a lot of technology that makes the journey enjoyable. My top tip would be to get a folding bike to significantly reduce walking time.

As you are getting paid more could you work a 4 day week? Also try and spread your holidays out, in February when you haven't seen any daylight for 2 months due to the commute you may be glad of a long weekend off

olias

Angel89 wrote: »

Yea, but 1.5hours honestly isnt that much at all to travel to work,
im sure lots of people do 2.5+ hours.


For me its 1 3mins train, change and get a 45mins train, change to underground and 5mins on that, then leave underground station and walk 10mins or get bus.

Then same journey back in evening.


The travel cost (peak hours) is equal to just over 2hours salary for me. :(

Just thanked you when I meant to quote you. Sorry, but I think you are talking BS. To say that lots of people would regularly commute 2.5 hours each way to work is ridiculous. Anyone that considers that acceptable needs to get a life IMO. Are you living to work or working to live?

Olias

Mrs_Ryan

I used to commute to work (not London i might add, but just one neighbouring county to another) I worked 3-9, I used to leave the house at 12 and get to work at 2.30, then on the way back would get home at 11.
I had no choice though - no work where I live.

Jupiler

Some people take to commuting (and tolerate the time it takes out of their lives), some don't - and the lucky ones like Olias have a sufficiently well paid job on their doorstep to meet their needs. How it affects you, and whether you can adjust to it I suspect you'll only find out when you try it I'm afraid.

So far, my working life has consisted of (from leaving school until now):
2 yrs @ 1h10m each way (cycle/train/walk) Kent - London
16 yrs @ 1h35m each way (walk/train/tube/walk) Kent - London
8 yrs @ 0h10m each way (cycle or car, each about the same) S.Yorkshire
3 yrs @ 0h40m each way (car) North Kent - South East Kent
But, due to redundancy and luckily finding a new job, I'm now about to start:
??yrs @ 2h00m each way (walk/train/train/walk) Kent - London
(I could cut this to approx 1h10m each way by driving and will do so for some shifts, but in my case there is significantly-discounted travel by public transport as an incentive not to).

I live about halfway along one of the main commuter lines from London to the Kent Coast, about 50 miles from London, and there are many others on these trains who travel much further.

In fact, at one of the places I worked in London (when I had the 1h35m each way journeys) I had colleagues who travelled in daily from Southampton, Swindon, Bristol, Ipswich and Milton Keynes.

So, I'm not particularly looking forward to 4hrs of travelling each working day to earn a living, but my options are very limited at the moment, so do it I will.

The core part of the journey in future is a 1h15m train ride, which, if my past experience is anything to go by, will be taken up with a mixture of dozing and reading newspapers/books (and of that, some of the book-reading will be factual/learning reading in subjects that interest me).

Good luck to you, whatever you decide to do.

Hermia

Jupiler wrote: »

Some people take to commuting (and tolerate the time it takes out of their lives), some don't - and the lucky ones like Olias have a sufficiently well paid job on their doorstep to meet their needs. How it affects you, and whether you can adjust to it I suspect you'll only find out when you try it I'm afraid.

I think that is very true. I thought I would be fine with commuting, but alas I wasn't.

I think it does entirely depend on your situation. I had just moved house and didn't have many friends in the area I'd moved to and had no partner. I was getting home at 7.30, by the time I'd cooked dinner etc it was 8.30 and then I had to be in bed by 10.30 so that I could get up early the next day. I was just getting home too late to be able to go to any local social events and my work colleagues weren't a sociable bunch. I had this vision of me never being able to make friends or meet a chap (especially as I often worked Saturday as well). I'm sure it would be different if you had a partner. A guy I worked with at the time had a wife who'd have the dinner waiting for him when he got home so he had no chores to worry about in the evening and he could spend a few quality hours with his missus.

Angel89_2

olias wrote: »

Just thanked you when I meant to quote you. Sorry, but I think you are talking BS. To say that lots of people would regularly commute 2.5 hours each way to work is ridiculous. Anyone that considers that acceptable needs to get a life IMO. Are you living to work or working to live?

Olias

:rotfl::rotfl:

1day you will have to grow up kid and start supporting yourself in the real world,
not living off mummy and daddy as a safety net.

And then you will find out that its very very common for people to travel over 1hour each way to work, since unless you work in your local macdonalds or down your local highstreet, the majority of proper jobs will be in big city areas which you have to travel to.

The old cliche phrase of 'living to work' doesn't actually mean much in reality,
since if you dont work you wont earn any money and so wont be able to buy any food or place to live and so would starve to death eventually...,
so every single person is only 'living because they are working'. :cool::T:money:

While it is a nice image that you portray about 'doing the bare minimum amount of time in work, and then having loads of spare cash after all the bills that you can use all your free time to go around spending it in while singing songs and dancing in meadows'...,
sadly the world just doesn't work like that. :rotfl::rolleyes:



I dunno where you used to live, but im guessing by the way you view travelling time, that you are from some small little village somewhere in middle or north england,
where people are used to just living in 1 little area and walking to the otherside of the village square seems like alot! :rolleyes:

But here in london with the huge amount of easily accessible transport links every few dozen meters, travelling for 1hour+ to get somewhere is just a normal everyday routine for most people. :A

Hermia

Angel89 wrote: »

Yea, but 1.5hours honestly isnt that much at all to travel to work,
im sure lots of people do 2.5+ hours.

I'm not sure that is true actually. Yes, lots of people do have long journeys, but when I have asked friends or relatives or colleagues about journey times most people seem to have a journey of less than an hour. I know when I used to commute people would be shocked at how long it took. I'm sure there are areas/industries where it is more common, but I think if you looked at the average journey time for the whole of the UK the people going on these long commutes would be in the minority.

KILL_BILL

i have read that some people commute daily from places like southampton, plymouth, bristol, manchester and birmingham to london on a daily basis

as people have mentioned if you are travellig more than 1 hour or so on the train then in effect you have little time to do anything else

also if a train breaks down it cause disruption to the other trains and also train strikes and cancellation of trains at the last minute without any warning is a favorite of the train companies.

olias

Angel89 wrote: »

:rotfl::rotfl:

1day you will have to grow up kid and start supporting yourself in the real world,
not living off mummy and daddy as a safety net.

And then you will find out that its very very common for people to travel over 1hour each way to work, since unless you work in your local macdonalds or down your local highstreet, the majority of proper jobs will be in big city areas which you have to travel to.

The old cliche phrase of 'living to work' doesn't actually mean much in reality,
since if you dont work you wont earn any money and so wont be able to buy any food or place to live and so would starve to death eventually...,
so every single person is only 'living because they are working'. :cool::T:money:

While it is a nice image that you portray about 'doing the bare minimum amount of time in work, and then having loads of spare cash after all the bills that you can use all your free time to go around spending it in while singing songs and dancing in meadows'...,
sadly the world just doesn't work like that. :rotfl::rolleyes:



I dunno where you used to live, but im guessing by the way you view travelling time, that you are from some small little village somewhere in middle or north england,
where people are used to just living in 1 little area and walking to the otherside of the village square seems like alot! :rolleyes:

But here in london with the huge amount of easily accessible transport links every few dozen meters, travelling for 1hour+ to get somewhere is just a normal everyday routine for most people. :A

Well just to set the record straight. I am 42 years old. I have supported myself since I was 18 and have never had a penny from my parents because they could not afford it. I have lived and worked in the south of England for 10 years (Guildford, since you ask!) but was not interested in the rat race.

Why bother earning £100K a year and impressing everyone with your career progression and your job title if you work 6 days a week for 12 hours with commute and are so knackered on the seventh, you just slump in the chair with the papers? That is the lifestyle of a lot of my friends and neighbours from the South. And yes, I do now live in a small village in the North of England and am very happy thankyou. No stress, no traffic. I have a new car, a new house, I travel the world, and have everything I need

Olias

lili2008

2.5 hours each way is ridiculous, afaic. But 1.5 is in the realms of realistic. I wouldn't like it though, for the lost time but also because transport costs in and out of London can be prohibitively high. It's one of the (many) reasons why I live in central London rather than the commuter belt.

I just got a new job I can walk to, at a pinch. It'll take half an hour at a good pace, but anything is better than the nerve-jangling stress of taking the tube, which I did for many years. Even 40 minutes on the tube is something I'd rather avoid. It's taken many years of careful planning and luck to achieve.