A move to the country?

[samela]

Hi All,

My dream, along with many others I'm sure, is to move out of busy, stinky London and live in the country.  I live in a tiny 2 bed flat, have 2 kids (3 if you include my hubby!) and a mad Jack Russel.  My in-laws have a lovely farm house in France and my daughter just blossoms there. She loves the open space, the relaxed pace of it all and as a result spends every school holiday there.  I too love it tremendously as does my hubby. We hate coming home, and can feel the stress creeping back getting in the car to come home!  I've been looking at houses on the net about 2 1/2 hours from London but was wondering if living in the country is as lovely as cold, smelly France? (the farm house is in the north and next to the stinkiest farm ever!)  We are quiet people, don't go out much and will certainly not miss London life, I hate it.  I long for the quiet.  So my questions are, Has anyone on here done it? did it work out or end in disaster? what do country dwellers really think of city folk?  should i forget the dream or gasp it with both hands?  We are in our early thirties and I worry that It will be something I regret if I don't give it a try.

Sam x

[samela]

[flossy]

   Hi samela,

   Can understand your need for more space and ' to live the dream ',   the country

   is a wonderful place to live in - there is no doubt.     Will say , if you don't want  ' smelly '

   you'd better think again,   it's full of dairy and pig farms usually.   Quiet like the quick wiff of

   pigs - preferably when passing in the car .  Now cow dung is sweet in comparison, especialy

   when fresh , they do get noisy when needing to be milked [ who wouldn't ]  and you can even hear

   them munching on kale all night.     I'm sorry if this sounds flippant, but I am seriously wondering

   where your ideal home would be  ?

   floss x

[Palustris]

We did it 14 years ago. Rounds and swingabouts. Good and bad. Certainly quieter in terms of people and traffic. Pigs smell sweet next to hundreds of tons of chicken bedding.
Downside, 10 miles to nearest shops, so making a list is essential.
Easier to answer specific questions than to generalise.
Would we move back? No.
Would we sell the garden for houses and move to a smaller place in the country? Fast as greased lighning.

[betula]

Hi Samela,

I moved to the country.

In short,life is very different.

Long trip to the supermarket.Local shops tend to be expensive.

Will you miss your friends?You have young children so you should be able to make friends via the school

No takeaways...still miss my Friday night Chinese :)

Locals will be a mix,some do not like incomers....others are fine with it.........
Some think only they and their relatives have a right to live in the area :)

Banking has to be planned,so does travel,A trip to hospital?Time consuming.

Lots of good things about country life,A wonderful environment and yes,sometimes very smelly.

I have never lived in London,you do not seem very happy with it so what have you to lose?

Maybe make a list of the pros and cons.

I think country life is wonderful for children.

Hope things work out well for you. :)

[blisters]

Maybe a sort of half measure would suit you better, at least to begin with.
I live in a village on the edge of Stoke on Trent.  We have fields behind our house and around the perimeter of the village, and are probably classed as semi-rural.  Our nearest supermarket is 5 mins by car and nearest town about 10 mins by car.  The opposite way is countryside leading to the Staffordshire Moorland and Peak District. 
You don't necessarily need to go the whole hog to get a complete change of livestyle, and maybe this way would be less of a culture shock.

[ACE]

You will love it the kids will be able to watch the rabbits eating your growing veg, the deer eating your shrubs, the badger digging up your lawn and the fox eating your chickens.

But the friendly meetups with your banjo playing neighbour and his  wife/sister/mother/aunt will make up for your loss of garden.

You will also benefit from your kids leaving home at an early age and going back to town. (well you would not want them breeding with the neighbours) .

Home cooking whether you like it or not. As you will not be able to feed your family on your husbands wages which will be minimum pay, unless he commutes and spends a 3 or 4 grand a year on fares.

Plenty of time for you to take a lover, as the old man will be off at sparrowfart and might get home before 9.00pm

Go for it, but loose your london accent as nobody trusts a crafty cockney also 2.1/2 hours from London is still London.

[Trevor_D]

As long as you don't go in all rosy-eyed & innocent.

I've always lived in the outer London suburbs, but my in-laws and my brother-in-law both moved to the country in retirement. As the others have said, the logistics of life - 10 miles to the shops, buses twice a day, doctors won't always come up your hill in a snow-storm - are very different.

Personally, if I were your age and were able to, I wouldn't be on here asking - I'd be doing it!

But I didn't.... And you're on here asking, so are you even 75% sure?

Follow blisters' advice, perhaps? But if you want it that much, you probably will regret it if you don't try it. Just be prepared to be amazed if it works, not bitter if it doesn't....

[cornykev]

Ace's advise is very good, after all, he has the experience with the rednecks next door and he seems to travel a lot to London for work and every time I go on holiday and someone is asked where do you come from, they always come from London even though they would live a radious of up to 50 miles away.  ???      ;D ;D ;D

[mike77]

have lived in wiltshire all my life surrounded by farming industry and i wouldn't change it for the world i cant compare it to city living as i obviously haven't done it and wouldn't for love nor money ;D
my experience's of a bumpkin life as follows:
1. it doesn't stink to high heaven as much as you may think and even on the odd day that it does it will no doubt be better than breathing in car fumes all day.

2. i have a choice of shops within 25 mins walk or 5 mins by car/regular buses.....hell even lidl's managed to find us :o

3. locals in my opinion tend only not to like people that come in and buy up properties and then use them only for a couple of weekends a year as holiday homes which in turn forces local people out of the market.....however i know several people who have made their homes here who wanted to get away from the hustle and bustle of the city such as yourself and have never heard anyone slating them for wanting a better quality of life for themselves

4. catching rabbits eating your veg is better than catching chavs burning down your shed ;D

5. last but not least i dont have six fingers nor wonky eyes nor do i play the banjo and i dont fornicate with family members ;D ;D ;D ;D (i've seen the morris dancing pictures ace!!!!)

better to regret thing's you have done than to regret the thing's you haven't.

whatever you decide good luck with it!

[ACE]

I'm a dab hand on the banjo, well I do work in the back of beyond.  find the little brown bit in the middle taken when we were in the middle of redesigning the garden.

Only joking earlier you are only here once make the most of it.

http://maps.live.com/default.aspx?v=2&FORM=LMLTCP&cp=50.654195~-1.447663&style=a&lvl=15&tilt=-90&dir=0&alt=-1000&phx=0&phy=0&phscl=1&encType=1

[flossy]

  mike 77,

  You have got it in a  ' nut shell ''  I lived in Devon for 17 yrs and left for all the right
  reasons, family !   more grandchildren than we could accommadate  --  so we moved to
  be nearer them.     We were nearing sixty with too many friends leaving this life and us,
  not ready !      It has been rewarding beyond our expectations,  yes we missed a lot -- at
  first, the buzzards flying overhead, the seagulls coming home at night, places we took our famillies
  -- that we rarely visited on our own,  now we have great trips into the countryside or get a 20min
  train to London.

  Horses for courses --   I would say ' live your dream '  at an age that you can addapt to a new
  environment,  change it again if you need too --  life is too short to worry about ' smells '
  and ' noises ' .   Relax and go forward,  your kids will survive whatever you do !

  kind wishes, floss x

[flossy]

   Sorry Ace , don't understand ?    ::)

    What's that about the brown bit ?     ;D

[mike77]

bloody hell ace! thats some sort of size garden :o :o

and don't worry twas all taken in jest!! always look forward to reading your post's as they always raise a smile ;D

[mike77]

if you zoom in on the centre of the pic flossy you can see ace's garden! if you look really closely you can see him in his rocking chair on the porch with a bottle of bourbon ;D ;D

[hellohelenhere]

The countryside can be quite isolating, especially if you come new to an area and don't have connections there. Even if you're not wildly sociable, it could get to you after a while. It can also reduce your kids' opportunities for a social life, especially if you live outside of a village and they can't get anywhere at all without a lift from you.

Also, depending on where you go and how old your kids are, they (even more than you) could have the experience of being 'outsiders' and it is often non-negotiable, i.e. even after years in the area you can still be treated as 'not one of us'.
I had this experience when we moved from Manchester to Mid Wales when I was 7. I never, ever became a real local! I know lots of other people who had the same experience, though of course it's probly worse if you move to Wales or Scotland, where they're not reliably friendly towards the English. People can be very friendly to holiday makers, but move there, and it's quite different... same in Cornwall.

On the other hand, I adored living in the country and I missed it badly during my 15 years in London! There are plenty of pros to a small community, especially with young children. The disadvantages get worse as they get older. I was *desperate* to get out of Mid Wales by the time I was a teenager. We were 2 miles from a village, 7 miles from a town, very limited public transport and none at all within 2 miles. As a teenager, you go stir-crazy...

Friends of mine with two small children moved to Brittany, and loved it initially. But my friend said she'd been watching the local youths, hanging around behind the local supermarket getting drunk, with NOwhere else to go, and suddenly realised it was a stifling place to be a teenager, and now thinks of moving back to London.

Myself and my husband have just done the halfway-option. We've moved to Reading, and strangely enough, compared with Lewisham, it *feels* like the countryside! We pay the same rent for a 2-bed, 2-sitting room house with garden, as we did for 1-bed flat in Nunhead. We can get into London super-fast when we want to (though, rather expensively - by train) and yet we're a ten-minute walk from the Thames pathway and there's proper countryside close by. And now I have my back garden allotment, I have a whole outdoors life that I didn't have in London. We're actually better off for shops than we were in London, where it was a bus journey to Peckham High Street or the local giant Sainsburys, or some very crummy local corner shops.

However, everyone reading this thread must be sworn to secrecy! If the word gets out, everyone will move to Reading! So, shush! And let's keep up the pretense that it's ugly, characterless, yawningly provincial, and best seen as a blur from a high speed train.

I'm sooooooooo glad to be out of London.

[saddad]

Most of life is best seen as a blur... the train ride is optional!!  ;D

[hellohelenhere]

My ex-partner (scarred by his upbringing as an outsider in Cornwall, coincidentally) only liked the countryside when 'it's going past the window quickly'. :D

[terrier]

Samela, if you want to move into the countryside, come to North Wales, it's full of southerners who wanted to get out of London! I was born and brought up in an inner city and hated every minute of it. By the age of twenty, I'd had enough and moved out. Never once regretted my choice, but it doesn't work for everyone, I know plenty of people who have tried it and hated the life. Bear in mind, if you move out of London and you regret it, will you be able to afford to move back?

[Larkshall]

As a countryman for most of my 79 years, I will give you a few pointers to getting on well with the locals.

Do be respectful to all.
Do, when you meet someone along the way, look them straight in the face and greet them.
Do be friendly.
Do offer your help if someone has a problem.

Don't talk about people behind their back, you may be talking to a relation.
Don't put people down.
Don't try to show how well off you are.
Don't try to be superior.

I am a retired decorator, one of my best customers was a very unassuming chap, he was the local millionaire. Another was a retired Gent living in the next village, he was formerly the Managing Director and chief shareholder in a large printers and stationers in the nearby town. Things are not always what they seem.

[ACE]

Do be respectful to all.
Do, when you meet someone along the way, look them straight in the face and greet them.
Do be friendly.
Do offer your help if someone has a problem.

Don't talk about people behind their back, you may be talking to a relation.
Don't put people down.
Don't try to show how well off you are.
Don't try to be superior.

Don't forget to touch your forelock and grovel to the squire ;D