Simon and Clare are both in their 30s and five years ago they took the plunge, and moved from a flat in St Albans to a four bedroom house just outside Houghton Regis. They've never looked back!

We were looking for an older style property with a bit of space and we could never afford that in the St Albans district.

One of our sets of parents (Simon’s) lived out in this direction so we knew the area, and as such it was good place to start looking, but we considered everywhere within a 10-15 mile radius north of St Albans. We didn’t bother looking southwards because that was even more expensive.

We now have a four bedroom detached property which only cost us 10K more than a two bedroom terrace in St Albans would have cost us. Admittedly we bought it bought it five years ago - but that’s not that long ago.

And even though we have lots of fields around us and our neighbours are further away than they would be in a town, we feel much more part of a community than we ever did in St Albans.

Our next door neighbour is not around much but we’ve still managed to go round a few times for drinks and he’s been round to us and we’ve also been to another neighbour for Christmas.

In St Albans we only spoke to our neighbours occasionally, let alone go round, and they were two yards rather than 30 yards away.

We never feel like we want to move back, even though we both work there. Maybe if only one of us did it might change things but as both of us do it’s OK because we travel together. In a way we’d like not to work in St Albans but commuting is not really a problem.

We drive up over the downs each morning, we go past Whipsnade Zoo and see the animals. On our commute we see buffalo, wallabies, and penguins - we’ve even seen a cheetah - AND we have a seat!

Downside
The commuting is the only real downside to moving away because, even though it’s a relatively easy route, it takes the best part of two hours out of our day. But it’s not really that bad, and at least we’re not sitting on a train. And at the weekend you’re completely separate from work.

We definitely don’t feel trapped or cut off out here. The area is good for getting into London because we’re still on the Thameslink line. In fact, we are only ten minutes from two stations and about 15/20 minutes from a major international airport.

But at the same time we accept that, because of this, we might have to move further out again in ten years time if we want to keep our space.

In the next decade we’re going to have the Luton / Dunstable bypass running close by and about 40,000 new houses in this valley!

But that’s what you get for living near an airport that can get you all over Europe and being near the motorway. And with the new Eurostar terminal at Kings Cross, we’ll only have a ten minute drive to Harlington before we can get all the way to Paris.

But if you choose to live in the South East near to London and all the services and infrastructure that goes with it you are going to be battling with other people with more money than you to buy those places.

And if you live in this area you have got to expect that the capacity for Luton Airport is going to double.

Anybody who’s expecting this country’s infrastructure to decrease or stay the same has a brain missing! Major airports and transport systems are going to get bigger. It’s just the price that you pay for working 25 - 30 minutes from central London and the best city in the world.

Move
So eventually it’s going to be a similar story out here as it is now in St Albans, where house prices have been pushed up as people move out to the area from London.

Therefore, although we’ll have made money on the property, eventually we’ll have to move to upgrade or get the space we want. We’ve got fields around us at the moment and we don’t really want to be surrounded by houses.

But we also accept that that’s life! And we would rather move further away than go back into a major town because we’d be back in a one-bedroom flat.

And our aim is to eventually work from home anyway, which means it won’t matter where we are. And that will probably be the same for more and more people as time goes on.

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