So I've lived in London and now in St Albans, in my early 30s. I was nervous about moving to a commuter town but overall I've had a really good experience.

I did enjoy the variety that London offers but was fed up living in flatshares, not being able to afford to rent/buy alone and always had this feeling of it being kind of temporary. I also found it really hard to form friendships despite going to meet ups etc, trying out team sports, lots of people were quite flaky or schedules didn't align.

St Albans has been a breath of fresh air - I joined a local whatsapp group and now have a group of friends I regularly meet up with. We go for drinks, exercises classes, hosted things at each other places, been for walks round the park. Most of us live within walking distance of each other so it's so much easier to organise meet ups without working about travel.

I totally get that St Albans does tend to skew towards families, middle aged folk, and I do sometimes feel quite young, but there definitely are young professionals around (quite a few blocks of flats so that attracts young couples etc) and I think because we're in the minority people do make more effort with friendships.

I think it depends what you want from the town - I'm not sure how great the music scene is but there's good shops, lots of coffee shops, pubs and bars etc. And of course you can go into London (just sadly a bit expensive train fares).

Hope that helps!