Distance looks simple on a map. In practice, it depends on roads, public transport, work patterns and which side of Gwent you call home. Ten miles around Newport can feel manageable. Ten miles across rural Monmouthshire may involve slower roads and fewer direct routes.
That is why the best search radius is not the largest one available. It is the distance you would willingly travel for a first meeting and, crucially, travel again if things went well.
- In Newport: begin with the city and nearby communities rather than allowing the search to drift automatically towards Cardiff or Bristol.
- In the valleys: think in travel time, not straight-line mileage. Two places can look close while involving an awkward change or a long drive.
- In Monmouthshire: Abergavenny, Monmouth and Chepstow each pull in different directions. A broad county-wide radius can quickly include people whose normal routines rarely overlap.
A useful local match is someone you could meet without turning the date into a day trip.
Start fairly tight. If the results are limited, widen the area in small steps rather than jumping straight to fifty miles. A smaller list of genuinely practical possibilities is worth more than hundreds of profiles scattered along the M4.