Best commuter town/village serving Dublin

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Re: best commuter town

might as well get my say in. Just moved to the bettystown Laytown area 6 weeks ago and love it. Walk to the train, walk to the beach and walk through the countryside! Drogheda's a ten minute drive and dublin anywhere between 30 and 40 minutes - unbelievable. Can't believe we were slightly anxious about moving "so Far" from Dublin. Like as if Dublin has much going for it these days. Would never go back!
 
Re: best commuter town

Has anyone considered Gorey? I'm told it is a commuter town for Dublin now - how long is the commute? How bad is the N11 in the morning?
 
Re: best commuter town

Where do I live?

I live in a great little village about 1.5 hours commute to Dublin on weekdays (either by bus or car), 20 minutes on weekends. Four good pubs, 2 really good restaurants, several ok restaurants and takeways one of which is a great pizzaria. Nowhere is more than 15 minutes walk to the centre of the village where there is a nice old church, primary and secondary schools, library, health centre, good local butchers, fruit and veg, bakers, florists. GAA, soccer and athletics clubs have good facilities and there is good creche and childcare. Neither LIDL nor ALDI are in the village (which is good) but both are only 10 minutes away as is a good tesco and a major shopping centre. A train station may open in the next 3-5 years making the commute somewhat easier. House prices are high and new homes scarce and after nearly 8 happy years in the area my catchphrase has become "a lotto win might see me move house but wouldn't see me leave the village".
 
Re: best commuter town

please tell me what is great about a commute of 1 & 1/2 hours!
 
Re: best commuter town

icantbelieve said:
Where do I live?

I live in a great little village about 1.5 hours commute to Dublin on weekdays (either by bus or car), 20 minutes on weekends. Four good pubs, 2 really good restaurants, several ok restaurants and takeways one of which is a great pizzaria. Nowhere is more than 15 minutes walk to the centre of the village where there is a nice old church, primary and secondary schools, library, health centre, good local butchers, fruit and veg, bakers, florists. GAA, soccer and athletics clubs have good facilities and there is good creche and childcare. Neither LIDL nor ALDI are in the village (which is good) but both are only 10 minutes away as is a good tesco and a major shopping centre. A train station may open in the next 3-5 years making the commute somewhat easier. House prices are high and new homes scarce and after nearly 8 happy years in the area my catchphrase has become "a lotto win might see me move house but wouldn't see me leave the village".
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Give us a clue...is it North, South or West of Dublin?
 
Re: best commuter town

My advice would be not to commute..............I commute every day to city centre from Kildare......bloody nightmare. If you want to move to the country get a job down there too.
Life is too short to be spending 4 hours a day in the car.........
 
Re: best commuter town

It's not Lucan, for a start Lucan's too built up to be a village and like Castleknock has areas defined as Lucan that can't even drive to the old village in 15 minutes let alone walk it. Plus at anytime of the week its a nightmare to get into/out of, Lucan or Malahide of around 15 years ago is what my village is like today, although there is always the possibility of it becoming like today's Lucan or Malahide given the track record in this country of ruining good villages.

In answer to what is so great about a 1.5 hour commute, nothing, but then find me a decent village that has such good amenities that is less. Don't even try to pass off a 30-40 minute commute by train as being superior. This 30-40 minutes usually involves leaving the house at the same time I do just to get parking near the station and then at least a 20 minute walk to your place of work (often in the rain) not to forget the nightmare of trying to get on the train in the first place at rush hour. This 1.5 hours is the longest, when schools are off it can be 35 minutes whereas as a normal day would be about 60-70 minutes.

P.S. Any smugness detected in my original post is unintended, I'm simply delighted with where I live, as are my neighbours. The majority of whom are blow-in Dubs like me who have left what were once great areas but are now too built up, too expensive and only a shadow of the areas that justified the high prices in the first place.
 
Re: best commuter town

Twenty minutes drive to Dublin city centre (leaving aside the traffic) would have to be within a radius of - at the very most - 12 miles/20 km or so (even that's pushing it).
 
Re: best commuter town

And your point is?
12 miles in 20 minutes is only 36 miles per hour in a car when I'd say I average 50 mph for more than half of the journey into town. Paradoxically by far the worst part of the drive on a weekday morning goes by in a blur on the weekend or after 8pm.
 
Re: best commuter town

its kill village?? maybe - still should not take that long in a car.
 
Please keep to the substantive questions asked in December 04 by SarahH

What is best commuter town/village serving Dublin?

 Thanks,
aj

off topic discussion has been relegated to Los.
 
I think Balbriggan is a great communter town. I wouldn't live anywhere else, I'm there all my life but the folks are "dubs", southside dubs, and I'm still considered a blow in! Love it tho.
 
Being mad about the sea I would say Skerries, Bray or Greystones are all fab. All have v. manageable commutes to the city (all between 1 hr or 40 mins depending on whether getting the trains that only stop at a couple of stations). The advantage of Bray and Greystones is that you have both the sea and the mountains (you are on the doorsteps of the Wicklow mountains).
I'm not a fan of Balbriggan at all- find it grubby and depressing!

There's lots of new housing going up in Greystones that isn't too madly expensive. There are also plans for new housing in Bray close to the station and the river in Bray (dont' know when it's going up).

Skerries has about a hundred thousand clubs (film club, sailing, all kinds of sports etc etc) to choose from and a fantastic beach for all seasons.

Good luck!
 
Best Value and Potential is Balbriggan, The level of investment planned for the town is huge, Liffey Valley size shopping centre, funding already granted for new schools, New Port and a good train service (40 minutes to Connolly). The M1 is great and means you don't have to negotiate the Mad Cow if your going to city centre but you do have to deal with the Port Tunnel disaster however that is nearly over (Fingers crossed!!!). Its only 20 miles of Motorway from Dublin which is slightly nearer than Naas and has the added bonus of being by the seaside and 15 minutes from the Airport.
The house prices are also cheaper than Naas and you still get to stay in Co. Dublin!!! which is very important for a Hill16 man like myself.
 
OK...

Ive read this forum, i know ill be roasted, but i have the urge to splurge my thoughts out now.... forgive me father, for i know not what i do....

I am born and bred balbriggan, all this development has destroyed the town, its an absolute hole, how can people live in the new houses there?

There are no gardens, no driveways, no parks, just piles of fired up houses, square miles of urban sprawl in what was countryside. A fancy medieval sounding name, does not a great estate make.

I grew up running around forests, climbing trees, fishing in streams, hiking out with mates to camp overnight, enjoy picnics, etc. These leprous developers have taken good clean countryside, concreted it over and basically obliterated it with an ugly flood of horrible housing projects.

You walk into the new estates, no-one there knows anything about the town they now call home, whats its history? wheres the ladies stairs, whats the martello tower? wheres cromwells harbour? where did the smugglers bring stuff ashore? what was tanners water? whys it called the canal? wheres the sailors grave? where is the wishing well? where were the famous concker trees and why were they ripped down last year? The list goes on and on and on....

Commuters now eat breakfast and tea and sleep there and when the weekend comes they all haul a$$ out of there and into the strategically placed shopping centres where more of their money is sucked from their pockets.

There is a major problem, the local community and the "newcomers" are not integrating in my opinion, who can blame people for wanting a better life and im sure a lot of these folks who are my new found neighbours think its a great place, not as bad as living in the city etc, but if you only knew what was here before, YOU would feel the same... the town is an unplanned blight on the face of the earth...

Dont believe me? just take a walk through the heart of the town, the estates that were built 20-30 years ago, look how THEY were planned out, parks, front and back gardens that you CAN swing a cat, 2 dogs and a couple of kids in and not put one of them through the car window, semi detached bliss.

For Chrissake what is it with this absolute obsession with terraced housing? Im sorry if i sound like a tourrets syndrome sufferer but its plainly bordering on insanity... no alleyways? your meant to wheel everything in the front and out the back door?? Wheelbarrows, bicycles, kids tractors all travelling up and down your nice clean hall?

Walk the dog, enjoy the fresh air you say?? enjoy the beach? time was you could walk the whole way from balbriggan to gormanston and not see a soul, now you cant get a stretch of beach to yourself unless its a wednesday at 11am. This new port is going to suck aswell. Enjoy the smog, ive never seen so many cars in one village nay town, its all been thrown up too fast with zero and i mean ZERO thought by these leeches that call themselves developers... all they've developed is a major major problem for the future generations that will have to grow up in the equivelant of human battery farms. They should be hauled into court and tried for some of the proposals theyve resided over and the farcicle buildings theyve hobbled together.

Dont get me wrong, i am open and welcoming to people arriving in my town, I hope you and your families live a long and happy life there, i hope its all youve dreamed of, but i for one will not live in some of those estates, they are too small, if i seem a little harsh, its not me that feels done by, its you i feel for, for being done over by developers. to those that bitch on about balbriggan its not the town, nor the people but the planners and builders whove destroyed it.

Ive gotten in trouble with friends over this point of view, we all have to live somewhere, a lot of the houses are very nice but they're all too close together with nowhere for kids to safely play, unless you give them high vis jackets so they can play on the roads. For what your getting, i think they are way over priced. If you are buying in the town try to buy in the older estates, avoid new ones unless they are well planned out with plenty of green area. Enjoy the town, it IS lovely. Walk across the canal, go down clonard street, see the remains of the cottages burned out by the black and tans, research the towns history, use the library, see www.balbriggan.net plan properly, dont just buy the first house an estate agent throws your way.

I grew up there and wouldnt trade the place for anywhere else to grow up, the locals are the nicest people i know or have known, take time to get to know them, not just your neighbours each side, hell some of them grew up in the town too. Its the estate planning and lack of amenities and of course those totally responisble for same that I have my gripes with. Dont feel like your away from home, make it your home, take care of and look out for neighbours and friends, otherwise we'll all live a lonely miserable experience jammed up, individual strangers, for the rest of our dull grey lives.
 
Interesting to hear the views of a local from Maxjam who has experienced the massive wave of development that has hit Balbriggan. The reality is that all places have changed radically in the last few years and with its close proximity to Dublin, Balbriggan was not going to escape this change. Your comments about some of the new estates I would agree with but the reality is Land is expensive...therefore more Houses are put on smaller amounts of land and gardens are smaller too! Balbriggan is going to get bigger and bigger (15,000 people now and 25,000 in a few year time I believe!) New Deepwater Port, Shopping Centres, Industrial Estates are turning a rural town into a small city. Thats just life! Change is a certainty and not necessarily a bad thing as long as the recreational facilities are put in place that will benefit both "natives" and "settlers". The interaction between the "natives" and the "settlers" in building a community will be a challenge and will take time...People need to get settled in an area, sort their houses and tiny gardens first before they have the time to participate fully in the community but as one of the new settlers I look forward to getting involved and helping Balbriggans grossly underachieving GAA club to success (Once I finally finish off decorating my house and landscaping the garden!!!)
 
Stamullen, Co. Meath. Best of both worlds. Stamullen is a beautiful rural village, on the borders of counties Meath and Dublin.

20 mins from Dublin Airport. Only minutes from Gormanstown beach and train station.
 
landscaping the garden!!!)
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shouldnt take too long! :eek:

Thanks for your reply, like i said, its not the "settlers" that are the issue, its the lack of things for the settlers to do, it makes the town look horrible and it can make any new movers lives depressing when they realise that there aint much to do at night bar sit in the local and watch footy.

Have you tried Funtasia, 15 minutes north by car?

Get involved in soccer and GAA.

For the significant others in our lives I know of a womens soccer team crying out for players if you knwo anyone whos interested, theres camogie and GAA which are pretty huge down here but again, theyre mostly local lads and girls playing, the new natives need to get involved.

Im sorry if any of my comments seem shot from the hip, but its how a lot of locals feel, they havent planned the whole thing properly, its sad because it could be so much better too. Im not trying to insult, at the end of the day, I may be buying same houses when myself and partner get settled (next 6 months or so and prices are soaring again), who knows, i could be your next door neighbour, out mowing my front lawn with a scissors ... im joking about the lawns.... no seriously.... ;)
 
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