Andy Millne

Hi Ellie, welcome to the site. Bedlington seems to hit your requirements in terms of green spaces and commuting. In terms of demographics it's a fairly even split from what I can tell between families, young professionals and elderly. For groceries there are now 3 supermarkets (Morrisions, Lidl and an Aldi opening imminently) as well an independent discount retailer at the top of the street. For other shopping there are some specialist independent retailers on front street but you're not going to get the same mix of national chains you get on other high streets. There's a well established music shop, cobblers, butcher, home furnishings, travel agent, cake shops, plenty of hair dressers, nail shops and dog groomers etc but you will likely need to travel elsewhere for clothes and white goods etc. There's a few coffee shops and I'm currently setting up a coworking space on Front Street. There are community groups that host events at the Community Centre and Salvation Army covering lots of topics like crafting, history, running, fitness. I have lived in Bedlington most of my life apart from a few years overseas. It has its problems the same as anywhere and generally there can be a feeling of apathy and that the town is overlooked in many respects but if you can see past that there are definitely things happening if you get involved.

I've moved all the images from the comment into separate gallery entries.

Thanks @Malcolm Robinson

Yes, those are clearly spammers. There are a number of things we do behind the scenes to prevent spammers being able to register but occasionally some get through. There's nothing to worry about however, all new members have their content and actions moderated until they are shown to be genuine members. If any spam content is posted it can also be reported. There are some automated actions so that if a number of people report the same content it is automatically hidden to be dealt with by a moderator.

Look for the image tools menu when you move your mouse over the image gallery is due some user experience improvements to get rid of the annoying popup amongst other things.

We did recently upgrade the software behind the website and a new "achievements" feature was temporarily enabled for testing. If you receive a notification that someone has replied to a topic/mentioned you there will be a direct link to that post in the notification. If you're seeing problems with this I'll need more info on what it is you are seeing, what is happening and what you would expect.

Fixed the timeline