To just say F it and move to Cornwall and homeschool my Dc

Hi OP,

We have this to some degree, although we're not in Cornwall.
We live in a lovely village with a fantastic school and great community.
We're on the edge of a city, so it only takes 15 minutes to get to the city centre and we have excellent transport links, which was really important for us.
Our village is mainly retirees and young families, very safe and we have a lot of people who have moved to live here from bigger cities, especially London.

We feel very lucky and it's amazing for DC. I wouldn't necessarily describe it as slow though. DH and I both have full on jobs and we have DC activities and homework, so we still do the same juggle that parents in big cities will also be doing.

I would say go for it, but think really carefully about what you want. For us it was a great school, good transport links and friendly community. Everything else was a nice to have.

Many businesses shut in the winter, particularly cafes and restaurants, when the tourists have gone home.
Exeter is a long drive away, even from the closest parts of Cornwall.
The weather in Cornwall is grim and damp - even in the summer.
You can't earn much down there.
Property is relatively expensive.
Even in other more accessible parts of the country the same problems arise, Cornwall is just multiplied.
Your children may enjoy parts of their childhoods - assuming that they are not home-schooled and so can make friends - but they may well enjoy it less when they are teenagers and older. Many children can't wait to get away. My husband was brought up in Devon (almost in Cornwall) and hated it, he left to go to college in Scotland to get as far away as possible as quickly as he could.

Was going to ask exactly the same question! It’s all very well us giving you advice about Cornwall but what are we comparing it to? Where are you now?

Well, try living in Notting Hill on a sunny weekend and then you have not only crammed pavements but hordes of people posing, and even changing outfits to pose some more, on your front steps. But it's the price we pay to live somewhere others want to visit and it's, you know, good for the economy, so we deal with it.

Sounds great! Whereabouts do you recommend?

Move to Shropshire! Tiny village schools, affordable housing and lots of lovely villages. As long as you don't regularly need an ambulance, it's great 😂

The Telegraph will be on to them.

Living here, and visiting because it's pretty are two totally different things.

This poster may not be, but it's a well known thing that teens, both schooled and home ed, choose to leave the county quite sharpish, unless they're particularly drawn to watersports or seasonal work. Teen pregnancy is also a local issue down here. On her first visit to me after having one of my children, the HV told me that early parenthood is one of the choices a lot of young girls make as there's nothing much else for them to do.

@Flamingojune I spoke for myself and my own experiences. As you can deduce from the words "I spent a lot of time feeling like I had been buried alive." I'm not pretending to speak for anyone else.

I don't live in those places any more, for the reasons many have given on this thread.

It must be tough living in a place so beautiful that others pay to visit.

There are small village schools all over the UK and most of them feed into big secondary schools taking pupils from a wide area.

I love the coast but I definitely wouldn’t want to live anywhere that attracted tourists.

4 million use the tube per day in london. Very few reported escalator accidents? Perhaps people manage

Do you speak for all teenagers in cornwall?

We're not even really fully rural but I now am a taxi driver for my kids trying to fit in my full time job. I fantasise about living in London so they could get tube/buses!!

If you travel on the underground in summer, you will see frequent visitors standing on the wrong side of the escalator, and sometimes the much more dangerous rube who steps off at the bottom, and stands there, gazing around and blocking the hundreds of others trying to pour off and dissipate.

When a backpacker is in the way, I grab the pack and move it.

No! That's what I'm saying. The pavement is busy, crammed with tourists walking along and suddenly they stop en masse. They don't move to one side or stand in a line, they just stop in a group so suddenly you're likely to literally walk into them.

There's no way around them. You have to squeeze your way through them, trying to get them to move over a bit. It gets very trying when you're just trying to run your errands.

Cities have broad pavements! Tiny little historic fishing villages and medieval towns have very narrow pavements, and the roads they border are barely wide enough for modern cars. You can literally get stuck behind pedestrians as surely as if you were in a traffic jam on the roads. Fine if you’re on holiday and have all the time in the world, but not so good if your trying to pick up your repeat prescription before the chemist shuts.

Late to the thread. I have lived in perranporth for 14 years. I love it (and have come from a big city - met a cornishman and stayed). Perranporth is a beautiful town with lots of lovely people, very family orientated and the school is brilliant (but often full). My kids (pre teen and teen) love the community here and have lots of clubs and activities they do.

In the summer it is a buzzing place, lots of small businesses, pubs, restaurants. One time, just after covid, perran got too full and the police stopped people, this is not a regular thing. Yes, it gets busy on summer days however being local you go to other spots locally where tourists do not. Yes sometimes the summer holidays brings problems however we get the beautiful place for the rest of the year, and a lot of local livelihoods rely on it.

If you like the bustle of a city, probably not for you. If you like nature, outdoors and a strong community then it is a great place to live. The winter weather can be hard, but we don't mind this.

There is a strong home schooling community in cornwall and I know a few people who do this and have really good networks.

It's about researching whether it is the place for you and your family, and whether you can secure housing and jobs.

I'm sure they do. I grew up in and still live near to a very similar sort of place. So much of what has been described here, good and bad, could be describing the place I grew up in.

Which is why I, and other posters, are telling the OP to do her research carefully before moving. It's not going to be the idyllic life she's hoping for if her family are struggling to pay bills because of a lack of work. She (and her partner?) have to figure out if they can find suitable work that will give them the life they're dreaming of. The lovely life she's envisioning for her dc might not play out that way either, depending on location and finances, so it's helpful that posters are describing what life is like for children and teenagers, both the good and bad points.

And also the opportunity to break away and form new relationships. I knew several youngsters who grew up better from joining scouts, cadets, sports and drama groups, holiday jobs, with an empty page and no preset expectations.

To add to my last message, village life sounds idyllic when you have primary school children. It's bloody awful as a teenager when the rural bus services have been pared to the bone. I spent a lot of time feeling like I had been buried alive.

@Typingonkeyboard when you go to a small school you HAVE to get on with people. There were six children in my year. We played with each other, went to school, birthday parties, youth clubs, brownies, etc ALWAYS with those six people. You couldn't afford to fall out with each other, and that is really hard. I think that shapes your personality, and you learn to always keep a lid on resentment, anger, irritation, and never express it. And that's with six people. Home schooling can limit your social interactions even further. Cornwall is already an area that has high levels of second homes, and not many young people growing up in the villages there because young families are priced out of accommodation.

I moved to a larger town with my children, and have not regretted it. They have a really wide social circle, and loads of opportunities for clubs.

Could you walk around them, much like people do in cities? Share the space