When people say they live “rural”, what do you envision?

I seriously doubt that's actually true.

It depends. Living rurally can mean lots of subtly different things:

• house in the middle of nowhere,
• farm in the middle of nowhere,
• in a small hamlet/village (with perhaps 1 shop or PO), but far away from any other hamlet/village,
• in small town, but far away from any other town/village/hamlet,
• on an island, especially a small one.

I used to live rurally. Right on the edge of the woods, no shops or anything within walking distance. Im so glad I moved to a village

What’s your definition?

Mud mainly tbh. Dependance on a motor car, no pavements.

My childhood home. Note it cost my boomer parents £100k when they bought it….

I grew up ‘rural’. Thatched farmhouse built in 1545, listed grade 2. 3 acres, 2 orchards, 2 ponds, no gas, no central heating, cess pit, oil tank and a bunch of outbuildings. It was a 25 min drive to the nearest shop - if you needed milk, you had to get in the car and drive for 25 mins. My school was an hour away. It was a miserable existence as a kid and at 18, I went to London for Uni and still there 35 years later. My kids are born and bred in SE London and I’d not subject them to rural living as teens. It’s so isolating.

Rural = knowing more than you ever wanted to about the workings of a non-mains drainage system.

anything else (fruit trees, no pavements, fresh milk dispensers, haybaling and owls at twilight, Young Farmers shenanigans, etc) is a bonus.

I like all these descriptions and love seeing some photos on here. I'd love to retire in an idyllic rural cottage somewhere.

What really irks me on MN is the number of threads where people say they 'live rurally' and then go on to complain about how they can't/don't drive, have eleventy billion kids and have to be up at 4am to get 3 buses to school and work, etc. Oh yes and in those scenarios the DH is always useless or could easily do the school run in his car but chooses not to for various selfish reasons.

Same as above, thatched cottage village with 25 houses and a pub, the next village along has the village hall and the green and we all have to drive 5 miles to get to any shop, saying that once we are past those 5 miles we only have another 10 miles until we hit a few major motorways so we are rural but kind of in thr middle of being very well connected by car and rail.

A person who doesn't understand the difference between an adjective and an adverb.

But I'd think they mean "inconveniently far from shops".

I seriously doubt anyone on Mumsnet (and this thread is backing up this prejudice) has the vaguest clue what 'rural' actually looks or feels like.

So interesting. And totally agree with the standing naked on your front porch test!

So, those of you who enjoy living like this: what do you think of people like me who panic at the thought of living more than a 10 minute walk away from a tube station ? Do I not know what I’m missing out on? I see the beautiful views but I actually would get palpitations at the thought of being so far from an A&E, relying on a septic tank, dying a lonely death if something incapacitated me, being isolated for weather-related reasons etc. Don’t you need people around you?

Growing up my godmother moved to a house 1.5 miles from the nearest village on the North Yorkshire moors- so that!

snowed in in winter, breathtaking in Summer- everything miles away

I went back to the village 15+ years ago and DD2 fell (was being a sod) in a stream soaking the cast on her broken wrist - 1hr and 20 mins to hospital in the dark to get it fixed - then back again

I love rural life as a holiday but not for me full time

This is interesting! I say I grew up rurally, but that was in a village of about 700 people (more like 1000 now) with a shop, pub, school and village hall. Not especially remote, so I wonder if I'm over selling it? Nearest town 5 miles away: about 4 buses a day. Nearest A&E at least 25 minutes away. My secondary school catchment was about a 10 mile radius though (grammar school) and even the comps were about a 5 mile radius.

I do remember uni friends coming to visit and being shocked that there were just fields around the village itself: miles of farmland between settlements.

I think rural can mean anything from a lone farmhouse to a small but somewhat cutoff village.

Either that or living in a village surrounded by fields or forest. That IS rural… what you’re thinking of is isolated. Rural means ‘in, relating to, or characteristic of the countryside rather than the town’ therefore a village in the countryside is rural.

I would describe my last house in the U.K. as being in a rural area.
It was a small village, surrounded on all sides by arable farmland (sugar beet crop mostly!), a huge poultry farm on the back end and a pig farm where the main road enters the village. We had a village primary school, a small shop and a post office, one road in and out, and we were about 10 miles from the nearest big town.
We had enough essential amenities to manage, but were also close enough to town for it not to feel like a huge mission to get there…..and the constant smell of sugar beet processing and pig shit just added to the rural ambience 🫠🫠😂😂🤷🏻‍♀️

I’d say a good 50% of problems posted on here end up being because “we live rurally”. I see it every day.

I’m really curious to know what sort of work people who live in some of these truly rural areas do for a living? (And whether I can do the same?!)

Farm track, septic tank, oil heating or LPG, snow tyres, one or two neighbours, a few miles to nearest shop or pub, big supermarkets at least 25 mins drive, McDonalds/cinema an hour away. Shit/non-existent phone reception.

I’m not rural any more, but I used to be.

There was a thread about this really recently. Some people thought rural meant the same as remote, but it doesn't. The fact that the dictionary definition is basically just 'in the countryside' didn't seem to persuade them, for some reason. So, village or even a small town can be rural, even if it's not absolutely miles away from a city.

My mum says i live "out in the sticks". When we first lived here i thought we were rural but the nearest town 1.5 miles away is getting closer with the new houses that keep being built. We are now 20 minutes walk from McDonalds and a pub. Would be quicker but the road is a nightmare to cross.

I once saw this online.

If you stand naked on the front porch and the neighbours can't see you, it's rural. If you stand naked on the front porch and the neighbours call the cops, it's suburban. If you stand naked on the front porch and the neighbours ignore you, it's urban.

Hamlet of 25 dwellings consisting of houses, cottages and farms along one road surrounded by farmland, nearest pub, church and bus stop a mile away, 15 min drive to town with supermarket and amenities.