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

I live rurally, we are in a farmhouse with no close neighbours.
We are down a track and are not visible from country lane.
The nearest village is a couple of miles away.

I do not consider living in a village as rural living.

Where I grew up.

Thatched house at the end of a half mile single track drive. Late for school sometimes if the cows were crossing the drive from one field to another. Garden of fields and woodland with a River at the bottom.

No neighbors, at least ten minutes drive to closest village

Rural to me is barely able to see a neighbour and a 15 minute drive to the nearest village shop. Where your postcode is basically useless because it covers so many square miles that you need a grid reference or what 3 words to actually find your address.

no streetlights and pavements and busses every 2 hours is my village and I wouldn’t call it rural.

For me it's about lack of public transport and shops. The school buses stop in our village but the nearest proper bus stop is two miles away (buses once an hour but only until 6pm). The nearest shop of any kind (and the nearest pub) is five miles away. We have neighbours in a traditional small farming village - four proper farms and three streets of mid sized and smallish detached and semi detached houses, with fields and forests around until the similar sized village where the bus stop is.

So not half an hour's drive to a shop, but also not a big village with a shop/ pub/ school.

I’m semi-rural. Barn owl in the tree out back, deer in the garden etc. On the west side of the Malvern Hills - hills behind, Herefordshire laid out for miles in front, unbroken view to Wales and miles and miles of countryside as far as the eye can see. Village shop/cafe and one pub… but over the hills is the town and the conurbation. Best of both worlds.

Still I’d live to be rural rural with no neighbours and no noise other than wildlife.

I live in a village of 300 old people, but with a small shop and Post Office and a pub. 8 miles to the nearest town. One bus every two hours during the week, stops at 5. Do I count as rural?

Yep, Quantock Hills for me too!

Nearest house about 500m away – near enough to hear me if I break a leg in the fields* far enough way to not disturb or be disturbed.

*have never tested this theory.

I feel like I 'live in a rural area' even though I actually live in a small town with several pubs, 2 shops, cafe, hairdressers, school etc.
But I can be on a mountain by foot in 2 miles and then wonder for 10 without seeing another person. The nearest motorway is 1.5 hrs. Very small city half an hour away but 2 hours from here to the next.
When I go south, I see lots of lovely rural properties but they seem to be much closer to modern civilisation. For example you can't even get a taxi in my town, no way a deliveroo or anything like that.
Obviously many people around here live proper rural including our parents and inlaws etc, so everyone around here tends to do quite a bit of driving.

I think I imagine roads with no street lighting or markings, but with ridiculous speed limits.
No access to shops or they close early, few neighbours, nothing much to do/see…
Needing to drive everywhere- no conveniences such as fast delivery services for groceries (where I am can get pretty much most things delivered within half an hour), getting stuck at home in bad weather, no traffic noise, lots of wildlife I guess?
Everybody dresses the same…
Would be perfect to have a dog?

One thing that had surprised me is the description of villages I have seen on Mumsnet. I'm in Ireland and live a mile from our nearest village. We have a primary school, pub and church but our shop and post office closed in recent years.
I remember a thread on here where people said they lived in a village but went on to describe having a supermarket, hairdresser and lots of other things. That sound more like my local town.

I live rurally. Where I live these are things that make it rural . . .

No pavements, my noisy neighbours are sheep (ATM, but sometimes cattle and occasionally campers), no lights visible as I look down the valley so it’s pitch black at night. A pub 2 fields away, another half a mile in the other direction! No shops within several miles, more than a 10 minute drive to a town. I know the postie by name and she leaves parcels even when we’re not home. No mobile signal in the house.

I usually say 'quite rural' or 'rural-ish'. I live in a village with population around 800. We have primary school, pub, co-op, good community stuff on that we organise ourselves. Lots of wellies & farm/forestry vehicles in the shop car park. But no secondary school in the village (and realistically no choice of secondary - bus goes to one only). 40 minutes to minor injuries unit, 50 mins to A&E. Swimming pool 20 mins. Train station 35 mins. One bus to city every 2 hrs on weekday daytimes.

Some people think that is loads of facilities, others think that is back of beyond!

This is my rural.

In a village , these days maybe no shop but maybe a shop within 2 to 5 miles , same with gps and like nurses etc , maybe um again 2 to 5 area , may or maybe not a bank or post office ,possibly no bus service or nearby bus route ,plus no school junior or senior in a 5 to 10 mile radius, most villages have phone and Internet. Some villages have no gas but have electric, that's where we live

Rural to me is fields, orchards, livestock, a two to three mile walk to the village shop, doctors, etc, probably a cesspit and perhaps no gas supply. Exactly as my grandparents lived. It was marvellous for them, they were the landowners and had plenty of money and wide horizons.

For the farm workers and others living so rurally, it was much narrower. Coal and log fires, not so romantic when there can only be one, ice inside the windows, a bit of damp, two or three buses a day and much cycling. Possibly an annual visit to the County Town ten miles away, wives gleaning and fruit picking to make a few extra Bob.

Here's my view:

I'm not in the UK and to me it is someone living on a farm, which is what it would mean here.

We're outskirts of a small town large garden and green belt behind. I wouldn't call it rural but pretty nice, best of both worlds really can walk into town or out into countryside.

We’re ‘rural’, just 1 neighbour, surrounded by livery stables and woods, 15 minutes walk to the hamlet, no amenities at all, the last pub in the hamlet closed a few weeks back, 5 miles to a fair sized town where the kids went to school, with lots of shops / pubs / restaurants and a railway station for my 45 minute commute into London. I love it.

I describe our home as rural.

Nearest tarmacked road is a mile away, as is the nearest village. Village has a pub, a school with 30 pupils, a shop. Buses to nearest small market town (5 miles) every hour from 8am-5pm weekdays only. Nearest train station 15 miles. Nearest hospital 25 miles.

Deer, owls, foxes, hawks. A lot of sheep. Pasture to the back, woodland to the front.

Tractors cutting hay at 1 in the morning. No shop. 3 miles to the nearest pub, 4 miles to the closest primary school.

Love it 😊

That's funny, because my nearest McDonalds is 10 minutes away because I'm also quite close to a major motorway and services, despite being rural. In fact I get to that before I get to any decent supermarket.

But yea, still rural.

No McDonalds for an hour in any direction . It's been a wonderful area to bring my children up in. Small town, everyone knows everyone but there's shops and churches/chapels, cinema, leisure centre, umm a supermarket, yeah that's about it. And no chain fast food for miles and miles in any direction. Or dual carriageways.

There's rural, there more rural, and then there's very rural.

My house is in a hamlet with maybe 4 others, down a single track lane, a few minutes from a nearby village. The nearby village has a pub, that's it.
15 minutes drive to a town which has a supermarket.

So yea, I'd say I'm rural, but then I'm not Scottish Highlands rural (like that house on one of the Bond films).