…it looks like we’re all set on the living front! We signed a lease on an apartment today, and do the walk through tomorrow, after which we can start moving stuff in! Now we just need to sort out Sub-Evil Boy’s school situation…
The address of our new abode is
185 George Williams Way
Colchester
Essex
CO1 2JR
United Kingdom
If you’re really keen, you can check us out on a map. (I tried doing the embedded map thing from Google Maps, but it gave me lots of grief so I wandered away.)
The town centre is the rectangle just to our west (to the left) bordered by (in yellow) Queen, High, Head, and Southway. Most of that area is all or largely pedestrianized (i.e., no car traffic), with lots of shops, the library, etc., etc. The big Odeon cinema, for example, is on the west end of the centre (not far from where the picture above was taken), which should be something like 20 to 30 minutes walk from our house.
The school that Sub-Evil is likely to attend is St. Helena, which is off the NW corner of that area (more map fun), but that isn’t yet settled.
The University is about 2.5 miles away (more maps!) by car, but I’m not really sure what the walk will be. Hopefully no more than 45 minutes, in which case I may walk most of the time. We’ve also talked about biking, but the roads near our apartment are narrow and very crowded, which doesn’t make me super happy. I’ll probably walk it for a while just to get a sense for the route options, and then start to make decisions about cycling vs. walking vs. (on really soggy days) the bus.
The apartment is quite recent (Google’s satellite imagery still shows it all as waste ground) and so doesn’t have a lot of character. (The architecture seems to be this weird Disney-esque idea of what an American once thought British houses looked like based on a couple of old movies.) It’s big for the price, though, has a really nice kitchen, and its location means that being car-less shouldn’t be a big deal.
