only ever visited for the day a couple of times, but it's all a bit old money / twee / tory with a few council estates that they would rather not think about
thatcham is neither quite one thing or another - smallish town / large village that's had a lot of commuterland housing built, north side is quite a trek to the railway station
bus services in both finish early evening and on Sundays it's just the Reading - Thatcham - Newbury route daytimes, and traffic tends to be bloody awful.
if you're still going to need to get to london for work, national rail enquiries website has got a season ticket price calculator thing, and it may cost more than you'd think.
and bear in mind there will be days in winter when there's snow and all the trains stop, and weekends when there's engineering work on the line.
not sure i could face living in either, to be honest, and thought newbury was pretty damn expensive.
depends really what you want out of it all. different places suit different people.
i'm the wokingham side of reading which is meh, but a bit closer to london...
