In reply to 65:
> A major decision may be whether you want to live in Scotland or England.
Yeah, don't underestimate this one. The education system is completely different, the tax system is different, the NHS system is different, altogether there are some pretty sizable differences between living in Scotland and living in England if you have a young family.
I'm biased but I would definitely say that it's a shame you have to be so far South. In general geographical terms, I'd say:
Nearer Dunbar:
- The climbing in Southern Scotland is mostly a bit underwhelming. There are a few nice crags but a huge number of those crags you can see on the crag map are only climbed at because of their proximity to the big cities.
- There are excellent places to go climbing for the weekend in the closest parts of the Highlands of Scotland (Southern Cairngorms, Loch Lomond, Glencoe, 2.5 to 3 hours drive). And if you up that to 3.5 to 4 hours there are several more excellent highlands areas you can hit.
Nearer Newcastle:
- Lots of people really rave about the Northumberland sandstone crags. Personally I'm not a big fan but there are a lot of them just North of Newcastle and there are lots of quality (if short) routes. And there's endless bouldering if you are thatway inclined.
- The Lake district isn't too far away from somewhere just North of Newcastle and easily a destination for weekends climbing (2 hours drive away). There are loads and loads of quality crags and routes in the Lake District and it's probably the closest genuinely good area of climbing in the UK to where you want to be.
- Again if you are just North of Newcastle, it's 1.5 to 2 hours to lots of Yorkshire gritstone crags if you want to get some grit action in (I don't know much about these crags though so I'll leave a quality assessment to someone else).
Something completely different:
- Could your living destination go a bit West to somewhere near Carlisle? That way you would have Northumberland Sandstone, and the Lake district both pretty close by and you would be close enough to North Wales to go there on the weekend (and North Wales is an absolutely outstanding climbing destination).
Disclaimer: I'm a trad climber so all these suggestions relate to trad climbing, not sport climbing, I'll leave sport suggestions to someone more suited to them.