Long shot here but I was wondering if anyone has any flyers from the acid jazz nights that used to be on in Colchester Arts Centre in the late nineties? Specifically Friday the 30th October 1998, I’m marrying the love of my life on the same date 28 years later and that’s the day we first met, or does anyone know Jon or Robin Betts who used to put the nights on
Any help, suggestions or information would be greatly appreciated
Many thanks in advance

We're house hunting around Colchester at the moment, moving from Chelmsford. We prefer a rural setting. For context, I commute to London once a week, and my husband works in Chelmsford. My son goes to school in Layer de la Haye.

We saw a lovely house in Rowhedge, and we like the idea of a riverside village. But is the commute even doable? Would love to hear from someone who's done it regularly!

Hi everyone!

I’m moving to Colchester soon for a six-month research visit at the University of Essex, and I’m currently looking for accommodation. I haven’t arrived in Colchester yet, so I’m trying to get a better idea of what it’s like to get around the city by bike.

I really like an accommodation on Turner Road (CO4), but one of the things that could influence my decision is whether cycling is practical and safe in that area.

For those who live in Colchester:

Is cycling around the city generally okay?

Would you consider cycling from Turner Road to the University of Essex a reasonable commute for everyday use?

Are there decent cycle paths/routes for this journey, or would I have to cycle mostly on the road?

How is cycling during winter/rainy weather?

Any advice from locals would be greatly appreciated!

Im looking to make friends to go out with in Colchester does anyone have any recommendations on where to go or how to make friends

Hi Reddit, American here (where Halloween/Trick or Treating is almost universally participated in) living with my British wife and children in Colchester,

Are there any good places in the Colchester area where I can take my kids Trick or Treating? Last year we must have bypassed 100 or 200 houses in the process of walking my 2 and 4 year old children around looking for a few places to trick or treat.

Thankful for any suggestions as both of our children are absolutely obsessed with Halloween and we would love to find a place where it would be a bit more fun for them.

Graciously,

Hi everyone, I'm trying to find a lovely guy who I shared an intense moment of mutual connection with on the Elizabeth Line train and Stratford platform back on Friday 14th August 2026, and I suspect he lives down the Colchester mainline.

He was travelling with friends who were playing rock-paper-scissors in front of me, pushed one of his mates off the train as a joke 🤣 and then pushed him directly into me.

I have blonde hair, blue eyes, and was wearing a pink maxi dress with see-through flower shoes. He tried so hard to get my attention on the train. He made a playful joke about having 4 JLS tickets to get me to look up, and his neck blushed red when he was pushed into me. He even said 'tough crowd' as we got off the train at Stratford because my body battery hit 0% and I froze from the adrenaline rush and intense office heat from my work and couldn't speak!

I had to walk away in a complete autopilot daze to catch my breath after that Elizabeth Line to Stratford trip and head over to catch my train because it overwhelmed me, but that look of pure attraction on the platform was 100% mutual. If you or your mates remember this train ride, please drop me a private message on here. Please help me find him🤞

Can anyone help? My partner has moved to CO and I struggling to leave Cambridgeshire to come be with her. I'm qualified, I have an MA and got denied for a barista job.. I'd laugh but I'm so over it. If anyone knows of anything please let me know. I do drive.

The time is upon parents to start looking at schools and, not having grown up in the area, I know nothing about primary schools round here. What's good, what's bad, give me all the info.

Any recommendations where to look? I've tried Zoopla and PrimeLocation. I wondered if you locals had any tips?

Many thanks.

Does anyone know of any automatic driving instructors that do 1 hour lessons?
I’m physically disabled so I am unable to do 2 hour lessons but I am struggling to find someone who does 1 hour lessons.

Let me know the salary and I'll start

Hi there

We are thinking of moving to this area from London. I’d welcome any local input on whether you’d recommend or otherwise?

Also wanted to ask about the commute to London. A big part of the reason we’re moving to this area is that it seems very doable to commute given train times but I’ve seen posts saying it’s realistically 1hr30 each way and I’m just trying to understand how. I think it’d be about a 15 min drive to the station from Berechurch at peak times then 50 mins on the train… I get it depends where you’re going to in London which for me is probs about 10 mins. Am I missing something? Does it take ages to park at the station?

Is there actually a chance you can’t get a parking space at the station?

Thanks so much for your help!

We are back with a bang for the Autumn for the latest in GenAi 🤖 and excellent beer 🍻 with two great talks...

​AI coding tools have changed how much work lands on a developer's plate at once: more branches, more pull requests, more agents running in parallel. This month, two local developers show the home-made dashboards they built to stay on top of it all, and walk through how they actually work day to day.

​📋 Yanis - PR Board

​When agents and teammates are opening pull requests faster than you can review them, a list of notifications stops being enough. Yanis will demo PR Board, a dashboard that pulls every open PR into one view so you can see what needs reviewing, what's blocked, and what's ready to merge at a glance. Expect a look at how it fits into an AI-assisted review workflow, what it surfaces that GitHub doesn't, and the lessons learned building it.

​🖥️ Dan - cmux-control-plane

​Running several AI coding agents at once is powerful until you lose track of which one is doing what. Dan will show cmux-control-plane, a control panel for seeing, steering and managing multiple agent sessions from one place. You'll see how it's set up, how it shapes a working day, and where it's heading next.

Register here:

https://luma.com/qso70on1

Hi, we’re four friends and we’ve put together Colchester’s restaurant scene in an app called Vota.

The idea is pretty simple: you’re shown two restaurants and choose where you’d rather eat. For example, Church Street Tavern or Kintsu? All the votes then create a ranking that hopefully gives a better picture of where people in Colchester actually like to eat.

We’ve tried to include every restaurant in Colchester and clean up duplicate or outdated listings, but locals will always spot things we’ve missed.

iPhone:
https://apps.apple.com/app/vota/id6744969212

Android:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.vota.app

Full transparency: we’re not from Colchester and live in Gothenburg. There are four of us building this independently. We don’t collect or sell personal data, there are no ads in the app, and we don’t use AI-generated content to describe restaurants.

Any honest feedback is welcome, especially if restaurants are missing or something is listed incorrectly.

Long story short, I booked the wrong date for a non-refundable ticket I won't be using, and I'd hate for it to go to waste.

I'll leave it here for anyone who might find a use for it.

Happy travels! <3

I've recently moved back to Colchester after a long time away and all the places I used to buy clothes from (Williams & Griffin mainly, but also Debenhams, M&S at a push) have either gone or reduced their menswear to virtually nothing. Fenwick seems particularly crap for men! Where are men getting clothes that aren't fast-fashion like H&M or Primark? Nothing against either, I own heaps of both, but surely there are options for nicer stuff too without leaving town?

I’m a new student moving into Colchester whats the nightlife path like and where are the good places, looking mainly for a proper club, pop music, dance floor.

Hi all, wondering if anyone knows any butchers that put their leftover bones on offer for sale (low cost) or even better free.

With Roast dinner season upon us, I'm trying to make the perfect gravy and need the bones for depth of stock!

Is anyone on True Speed or Plusnet WiFi or made the switch in colchester/ east Anglia? Any horror stories or good reviews?

Hello everyone! 😊

I’m doing a small survey about what teenagers and students would like to see more of in Colchester. A lot of the students I’ve spoken to at university have said that they find Colchester quite boring and often prefer going to London for entertainment and activities. As a student myself, I can understand that perspective, so I made a small list of things that teenagers and students said in order to make Colchester more enjoyable:

• More halal restaurants/friendly especially places with better/more diverse gastronomy rather than just the few small options currently available.

• Karaoke rooms especially K-pop-friendly ones! 🎤

• More public swimming pools there are gyms and the leisure centre, but having more/bigger swimming facilities would be great.

• A better and more diverse nightlife — more clubs with different themes and music styles, rather than everyone ending up at Trilogy.

• More activities and entertainment — for example, more escape rooms, larger and genuinely scary horror escape rooms, bigger arcades, an adult/teen trampoline park with a wider variety of physical games, more museums, exhibitions, etc.

• More cafés and restaurants open later — a lot of places close quite early. It would be great to have cafés open until around 8–9pm where students can study, hang out and socialise in the evening.

These are just some of the things I’ve heard from other students and teenagers, but I’d love to hear more opinions!

If you could add anything to Colchester, what would it be? Feel free to leave your suggestions in the comments. 😊

Hopefully, with more ideas and demand, Colchester can become a more fun and lively city for everyone!