WeisserTee

Hi RCG, you asked about where to live if your husband is transferred to the UK and working in Slough. It really depends on your budget, commute options, and taste.

First, how close is the Slough office to the train station? Slough is one of the main stations on the London Paddington to Reading/Oxford line, which means train service is frequent. If you're both planning to spend a lot of time in London, if your budget allows, and if he can get to his office easily from the train station, then you might want to consider living in London itself. The trip from Paddington to Slough can take as little as 15 minutes.

If you're more interested in a small town lifestyle, but you still have a healthy budget and he can reach the office easily from the station, then Marlow is a pleasant option. It's a pretty town right on the Thames with a good selection of shops and restaurants. It holds an annual regatta that we preferred to the more famous Henley regatta. The commute to Slough is pretty easy -- get on the train in Marlow and then change in either Bourne End or Maidenhead for a train to Slough. The trip is around 35 minutes, as I recall. Marlow is a not recommended if he'll be driving to work, however. The two-lane roads in and out of Marlow at rush hour are a nightmare. Cookham is a picturesque village on the train line between Marlow and Maidenhead, but I doubt there's much available in the way of rental property.

Windsor, as mentioned on the "Never return" thread is also an option. It's a very short train trip from Windsor's central train station (the one by the castle) to Slough. There is also another train station (Windsor & Eton Riverside) that goes to London (just an FYI). As you can imagine, housing prices in Windsor aren't cheap.

Maidenhead is also a possibility, but I don't recommend it. It's expensive (it's a major hub on the planned Crossrail network) and the town doesn't have the amenities or appeal of places like Windsor or Marlow.

If your husband is willing to take on a longer commute (I wouldn't recommend it, but...), there are loads more options, ranging from villages like Shiplake to the city of Oxford. I reverse commuted for a while from Maidenhead to Abingdon (two mile walk to the Maidenhead train station, then train to Didcot Parkway then bus to the office park near Abingdon). The trains were crowded but I almost always got a seat. It wasn't bad, but I did it for only about a month. Not sure I would have wanted to do that long term.

If he would be driving to work, keep in mind that he will face the usual amount of rush hour traffic congestion (and sometimes more than the usual). It can get quite bottled-up there -- Slough is close to Heathrow, which adds to the usual London commuter belt traffic.

Good luck with your future plans!

janisj

WeisserT: just an FYI. I don't see any thread started by raincitygirl about moving to England. (She posts a fair bit but it doesn't indicate she has ever started a thread of her own)

Could you possibly mean someone else? If so, it would be better to post this on the applicable thread where the question was posted. Calling out Fodorites by name in a thread isn't the most efficient way to contact them.

WeisserTee

Janisj, NO, I do NOT mean somebody else. Why do you think I don't know what I'm doing? RCG asked specifically about this on another thread.

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raincitygirl on Aug 8

"Is Slough horrible? I ask because after my recent trip to England I asked DH if he could get a transfer to England for a year or two, and it MIGHT be possible, but the office is in Slough!Is there anywhere nearby that is nice?"
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On that other thread, I posted that to avoid hijacking that thread's topic, I would post a response to her through a new thread on the Europe forum.

raincitygirl

Thank you WeisserTee, I just saw this now. That is a lot of good information and very kind of you to post it.
DH is waiting for me to watch a movie with him so I will continue my reply to you later.

raincitygirl

Thanks again WeisserTee, we just looked at Slough and surrounds on Google Earth.
I will research Marlow and Windsor. DH's parents lived in Beaconsfield for a number of years and I liked it there and some of the surrounding places.

This was just an off-the-cuff question really, as it is something we are just talking about hypothetically so far; the other option is to wait until he retires (still a number of years to go) and then just go for long holidays, frequently.

flanneruk

FWIW, it's an hour by train from my house in the middle of the Cotswolds to Slough: by English standards, too short even to rank as a proper commute

A "Slough" address for a business doesn't mean the town's charmless centre: indeed practically no international business operates there. The Thames Valley for 20 miles around is stuffed with global businesses, though, mainly because of the terrific links with the rest of the world and with central London: and most Slough addresses or SL postcodes mean charming offices in lovely countryside - or at least OK offices in tolerable office parks with nice countryside visible.

All our clients with offices there think it's a great place to work. Some woosier foreign staff moan about the commuting time: many struggle to understand how expensive property is - and their bosses moan about what bloody moaners they've been saddled with by overseas HR hacks. It's no accident that the smartest workers are so often South Asian-origin Britons, born and brought up in the area and used to rolling up their sleeves and getting on with the job.

WeisserTee

Well, that's an interesting perspective. Our neighbours in Maidenhead certainly moaned about commutes of an hour. They even moaned about 30 minute commutes. They were gobsmacked that my husband used to commute from Philadelphia to New York City every day or that while we were living in MH, he commuted to Brussels on Mondays and home again on Fridays every week.

As for foreigners being bloody moaners, I can only pass on my experience in Abingdon. I first interviewed for the job in March. They decided to hire British -- fair enough. But the home-grown worker tried to delegate all the hard assignments and also tried to boss everyone around. I then interviewed for the job a second time in June. Again, they decided to hire British. But this time, the person showed up late, often still hung over, and simply didn't have the needed skills. They called me again in late August, but by then I had already accepted a job in Switzerland and was only available for a month's contract work. They said fine. Halfway through the month, they apologised profusely for not hiring me the first time around because the work I'd done so far was outstanding. They were nice people, I enjoyed the work and would have stayed on with them. But I'm glad they didn't -- as it turned out, the job in Switzerland has been one of the best jobs of my life and pays about three times what I could have hoped to earn in the UK, even though our cost of living is roughly the same.

Dukey1

Well, now you know where NOT to live in case one of your neighbors is constantly borrrrrrrring for Britain.

raincitygirl

flanneruk, thank you for that information, also very helpful. I will get my husband to check where exactly the office is.
My husband is definitely not a moaner and is in the roll up your sleeves and get on with it camp, but sure finds a lot of the other type at his office here in VAncouver.
When we lived in Sydney he had a long car commute (mostly due to the very congested roads there, not so much the actual distance) and the property prices there were definitely very high for what you got for your money so used to that.

WeisserTee, your husband certainly had some big commutes! My father in law was always on a plane to somewhere else when he worked in London, I think he was away more than he was home.
Your job story is interesting, sounds like you landed a great job in Switzerland, do you enjoy living there?

WeisserTee

Yes, we love it. The five years we've been here have gone by in a flash! And Basel is a great place to live -- from our apartment, we can get to Germany or France in 20 minutes. In fact, this morning, I was in Germany to pick something up for a friend, then walked across the pedestrian bridge to France to get some French magazines and a bottle of Brittany cider for DH, then walked back over the bridge and took a shortcut to get back into Switzerland. If I had caught an afternoon train to Italy, I could have been in four countries in one day -- and the train ride would have taken me past Alpine mountains, villages and lakes. Not bad