Any Dopers living in Cambridge? Advice appreciated.

In My Humble Opinion
1

Fellow Dopers, I would really appreciate some advice here. After a job interview I had last week, it looks like I could get a job offer from a biotech firm located in Hinxton, a village south of Cambridge. The one in UK, just to make it clear :slight_smile:

Well, commuting from Newcastle is out of the question, that’s for sure, so my wife and I will have to move there. And I kept an eye out when I was in Cambridge, but it looks like accommodation is very expensive compared with Oop North, so I’ll have to choose with care, and here is where I’d appreciate some advice. The company I interviewed for offers a free shuttle from Cambridge to their location, stopping at a few other villages on the way, but they all appear bloody expensive.

My wife also has an additional work related restriction. At the moment she works for a large supermarket chain, and she can try to ask for a transfer to another branch. With the job market in the state it is, she’d rather avoid resigning and start searching again. The restriction is that all their branches in the area are in Cambridge proper, so she needs to live there or somewhere with good connections to the city centre. Oh, and I’m told that Cambridge is quite anti-car, so going by car could be a problem.

We think we could stretch our budget to about 700 quid for accommodation, and that’s already a significant hole in our wages, so anything cheaper would be better. In the worst case, I could drive to work, and that could expand our range, provided Mrs Aruns can still travel to Cambridge in a reasonable time.

So, um, what do you suggest? Are there areas or towns or villages I should look at, or that I should avoid? We’re both very visibly foreigner, so we’d rather avoid places with lots of chavs itchin’ to teach lessons to furinners comin’ and stealin’ our jobs - which we did, after all! :slight_smile:

2

Cambridge resident here. As you’ve already spotted, there’s no getting around the fact that it’s a lot more expensive than Newcastle. If £700/month is your limit, you’re going to be pushed to find anything in Cambridge proper. And commuting into Cambridge by car is worth avoiding - there’s a park-and-ride service but you have to get there and the buses stick in the traffic like everything else.

Would it be possible for your wife to get to work by train? There’s a good service from several stations south and south-west of the city, but depending where in Cambridge she’d be working it might not be convenient to get there from the station. There’s also a railway station (Whittlesford Parkway) about a mile from Hinxton, if you don’t want to drive or be restricted to the company bus.

If the train is a possibility, the obvious place to look is along the line south from Cambridge (Shelford-Sawston-Duxford-Chesterford). This is all commuter territory, so you wouldn’t be moving to Ruralshire or Chavtown, but for the same reason anything close to a station is likely to be pricey. Alternatively I’d suggest Royston - it’s a decent-sized town so you wouldn’t have to worry about being the only strange faces in the village, it’s on the main Cambridge-London line and it’s almost as close to Hinxton as Cambridge itself (but there’s probably no bus so you’d have to drive).

3

Ely is only a 3 quid trip “walk up” fare to Cambridge. I don’t know how special fares/cards work so you may be able to knock that cost down. Housing could be less expensive and Ely has great infrastructure for life (i.e. a large Tesco, decent dry cleaners, parks for the children).

4

I’m afraid it’s a bit too far from my working place to be convenient, and the house prices don’t seem too different from other places around Cambridge.

5

I had to give it a try. I like living out here.