What’s it like to live in Kent?

What is Medway area, Rochester like?

Respectfully I think you're asking the impossible - with regard to Kent or any other area within an hour's commute into central London.

• incredibly rurally, near the sea, cheap housing and no possible housing development .

Have you lived in the type of rural location you describe? If you haven't - the culture shock between a city and the rural is massive.

I would recommend you do a lot of research and visits - preferably in February with awful weather just to see what it's like.

For example - you say it doesn't matter which train station for your DP - 'just central'. The 'wrong' station can add 15 mins each way to a commute which I know doesn't sound a lot, but on top of a 30 min drive to / from station it all adds up. Say you live in Lyminge (a village I know) that's a good 20-25 min drive to Folkestone (god knows what the car parking is like). 40 mins to Stratford sounds good but if your DP is working near Liverpool st -that 15-20 mins on the tube. A total of 1.5 hrs if everything runs spot on time, and no walking time between car park / station / station /workplace.

Having said that I love Kent - grew up there. Also love Oxfordshire as I live here now.

Just think reaaallly carefully before you move

Not sure OP, but Kent was a done deal at the time without thinking out of the box. Maybe towards Bristol (I’ve only recently discovered Bristol and love it), or Worcestershire, outskirts of Birmingham maybe. Maybe we’ll go to one of those when we retire!

I love living in Kent and it felt a safe move when moving out of London. But I think it’s really really busy. You can’t walk far without meeting anyone, and the roads are busy. It feels like a really crammed corner of the uk. If we had our time again we would have moved a lot further away from London.

East Anglia I would say has more of that but you are further from London.

You can't go wrong with Kent.

Don't get me wrong I love Kent still, but rural Wales it is not. The reasons I won't return to my home town is it's just too busy and the infrastructure can't cope, too many new builds with not enough roads.

I've lived in Wales, Norfolk, Oxfordshire and Cambridgeshire and all of these are more rural and just feel calmer. If your looking to retire to a small village and never leave it you might be okay, but if you ever want to leave the village it's stressful

Honestly anywhere in Kent that's easily commutable to London is going to get built up because its in high demand. Surprisingly lots of londonders want to move out of London to reduce their mortgage and still be within 1/1 and a half hours.

Lots of Kent is earmarked for development, I grew up in a smallish rural town that has pretty much doubled in size in the last 5 years, with no new roads or amenities. Kent is taking a massive amount of the new builds right now, and has some of the highest rates in the country. Lots of Kents roads are very very busy, the traffic is a bloody nightmare. Yes there are the odd lovely rural villages but I'm not sure the house prices are really going to be a great improvement on London because again surprisingly a lot of londoners want what you want

Weekends get very busy by the coast with people travelling in from London, PIL cannot drive out of their house because its so busy at weekends. Whilst you maybe able to find a rural village you will still need to drive to towns etc to get your shopping and for amenities and a lot of the villages have small roads that get very blocked up

I think it's a bit unrealistic to expect to move to a quiet rural location, an hour from London with much cheaper house prices.

I'm on the coast too there are loads of lovely places to walk. You discover them when you start exploring the area.
I love it here, sandy and pebble beaches,countryside and canal paths all on your doorstep

I live in a Kent village, and love it. We have the countryside on our doorstep, plus it’s 45 minutes to the coast. There’s larger shopping centres nearby plus Lakeside and Bluewater. London is easy to get to, plus the continent in normal times. Over lockdown, we’ve been to a different part of the Kent coast every few weeks to go for a walk.

To add to the list , Gouldhurst, Tenterden, , Biddenden, East Farleigh, Bearsted, Loose, kings Hill, Cranbrook, Staplehurst, Horsemondon, ,

i dont think youre going to find anywhere that close to london where you can walk for hours without seeing another soul, but I think there are parts of north essex and suffolk that would fit your other requirements

Come to Essex! Leigh on sea is lovely. 40 minutes on the train to fenchurch street.

Whereabouts does he need to get to in London?

I moved away from Kent as it got more and more busy. The 9 mile journey into the nearest town took up to 1.5 hours - just nose to tail traffic. And the "village" where I lived has recently had a further 1000 houses built in it. The population is fast heading towards 10,000 - that's not a village! And it floods regularly.

Having said that, I commuted into London on the train and that was convenient, although if the trains weren't running for any reason, there was no viable alternative.

Do I miss it? No.

Completely agree with beautiful villages listed in post above, would add lamberhurst to the list too. About an hour to the coast and a 50 min train into London from Paddock wood (roughly 15 mins drive). I would love to live there but property is too expensive for me to justify.

You're essentially looking for somewhere in the Weald I think - around Tenterden/Cranbrook/Goudhurst. It's a bit of a drive to the coast but not far.

The commute is a pain, because your husband will have to drive to Headcorn, Marden or Staplehurst and then have about an hour to London Bridge/Charing Cross.

I love living here, but it is the South East, and if you go into a town there are people and cars. You do sound a bit unrealistic on that point.

However, I have no issues finding quiet places to walk and the countryside is beautiful, you just have to get to know where to go as a local. Or look at an OS map for footpaths.

I grew up in a quiet Kent country town. As a teenager it wasn't great. If you have children, you may want to bear this in mind, I've purposely chosen to live in a Kent coastal up and coming town so that my children can walk to places under their own steam, and not be so isolated.

OP, most towns in Kent have lots of new buildings planned/threatened, with an extra 10,000 houses in the pipeline www.kentonline.co.uk/kent-business/county-news/thousands-of-new-homes-coming-your-way-244679/

There is a certain amount of disquiet about people moving from London, but it's been going on for decades so shouldn't put you off.

As others have stated Kent is quite large and varies from basically London, through villages & small towns to the coast. Most places are near a train station, but coming from London be prepared to have to drive to get around, buses are woeful - expensive and rare (compared to London).
I strongly advise you start spending some time in any targetted areas, not just when it looks nice in the summer, but on a typical grey and damp November.
The other big difference is in demographics, London is 60% white with people from all over the world. Kent is 94% white. In my experience, the level of casual racism, sexism and homophobia is also higher, in some areas its like going back to the 70s.

I was born and grew up on the Kent Coast. Then moved to outskirts of Tunbridge Wells when I was 13.
Mum still lives there and loves it
But yes, new houses are being built in more rural areas all the time. There is a new estate being built near my mum as we speak.
You mentioned Yorkshire. I live there now and there are new builds being built all over. It happens.