Talk to me about real life outside London

[Herewegoagain84]

We’re considering the big move out. I’ve been a Londoner all my life and always considered I would stay, but I’ve got a third child cooking and I think it’s time. I know it sounds mad but I’d love to hear what your life outside London is like - especially with children at the weekend. We have everything so accessible to us here and always plenty to do. Can you talk me through how we might be spending our time and what activities you do / how weekends are spent? If you lived in London previously was it a good decision to move? Thanks!

Wierdly, haricot beans in a tin… I know, I know, substitute it! Also tahini and short grain brown rice… hahah I could think of a few more but I think I may get some hate!!!

I refer you to my comment further up about parmesan cheese.

My family live on a Scottish island. While the big tesco has most things if it doesn't then one of the specialist grocery shops will have pretty much anything you might want. People there are very foody (much more than the Londoners I know with their tiny kitchens and no room to entertain people) and so the shops cater for it.

You can buy Henderson’s Relish on Amazon btw.

With all the Nothing To Do in Not London, we have time to lovingly soak and slow cook our beans from scratch. Tinned haricot beans only exist to keep Londoners running without pause, lest they start questioning the black bogeys.

Howls at the worldly sophisticated Londoner scouring multiple shops for canned haricot beans, without realising you can just rinse the sauce off baked beans, which are probably one of the most widespread food items in the UK, even in Not London.

🤣

I wonder how many people living in London live this London lifestyle that is talked about on here?

Or is it just an MN London lifestyle?

Free national museums (armouries, railway, media, mining), countless smaller museums, so many large parks and gardens, with petting zoos etc, world heritage sites, eg Saltaire including David Hockney galleries, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Barbara Hepworth gallery, loads of smaller galleries Haworth and all the Bronte stuff, which is so popular with Japanese tourists, that the route to Top Withins is signposted in Japanese, endless other little villages of interest with nice independent cafes and delis, massive vibrant street food scene, huge variety of restaurants that regularly feature in the national press etc etc etc, plus all the stunning upland wilderness accessible in under half an hour which is just not accessible in London

So let’s get this straight - you think that the museums and art galleries of West Yorkshire rival those of London - is that right?

Fwiw Bronte country was a major disappointment to me. I thought it was going to be super beautiful according to the sisters’ rapturous descriptions. It was ok. A bit meh. Not beautiful like the Black Mountains or Cumbria or Scotland.

I’m guessing that there are people on this thread who would regard large swathes of Greater London as ‘Not London’.

@BarbaraofSeville

Howls at the worldly sophisticated Londoner scouring multiple shops for canned haricot beans, without realising you can just rinse the sauce off baked beans, which are probably one of the most widespread food items in the UK, even in Not London.

Performance howling eh? This thread just keeps giving.

Of course no-one seriously believes that rinsing baked beans is the same as a using a fresh tin of haricot. Do they?

Map showing London/NotLondon border.

Fresh tin?

READ ME OP!!!! I WAS YOU!

My DH spent years convincing me to move out of London. We have 2 kids at primary. We moved finally and have been in a village for 2.5 years. I love it and wish we'd done it years ago.

I cried (like a baby) the night before we were due to move and made my DH promise we would take the kids to London on the train for day trips often and that they would 'know' London as I'd been there all my life. I was being ridiculous.

The kids are thriving in their village school, I've got involved in village activities. We have sooo much choice on what to do. We spent half term at home rather than going away and spent every day doing something different.

So here is a selection:

Science museum in nearby town but this was an exception and there are closer ones (50 min drive but nothing in the country and I used to spend that long on the underground!)

Bike ride through amazing scenery on trails that we can reach 3 mins cycling down a country lane from our house.

Swimming

Trips on boats down the river

Walks through countryside (again no car required), surrounded by animals and climbing through the forest, playing in streams

Theatre in city 25 mins drive away

Climbing centre indoors

Two other science centres

Local town museum, lunch and browse shops, get haircuts

Local town cafe for yummy breakfast kids love

Go Ape outdoors climbing

Skate parks, off road learning to cycle centre for kids (same location)

Deer farm and kids play place

3 other kids type farms /play places that are a whole day out

Cinema (3 in different towns to choose from, 20 mins, 25 mins and 30 mins away)

Scouts/brownies. The scouts have an amazing time in our countryside doing things I never had the opportunity to do growing up in the city/town! Girls and boys attend from age 6.

Music lessons, karate lessons, football clubs, cricket clubs, pretty much every sport you can think of and all very local (our village or another village within 20 mins)

2 great big soft plays in nearby towns, more if we drive further than 20 mins. (Proper big ones, not like some of those in London that were really small).

Amazing parks in nearly every village, we are still finding them AND they aren't full of people and not a teenager hanging about in sight. The day after we moved, I took the kids to the village park and we were the only ones there and sheep were in the field next to us. All I could hear was sheep. It was bliss, I was convinced.

Bowling

laser quest

Pottery painting shop in local town

There are more things but I think you get the idea op, just loads to do

Really friendly people. (Not an activity but worth a mention!)

And drum roll.... we can still do day trips back to London and post covid will do, 2-3 times a year with a family rail card!!

THERE IS LIFE OUTSIDE OF LONDON!

@Stravaig

Fresh tin?

No Waitrose here

So let’s get this straight - you think that the museums and art galleries of West Yorkshire rival those of London - is that right?

Depends on your criteria, perhaps.

I love London, for a visit. It is without a doubt Very Very Big. The museums and galleries are incredible.

But tiny local museums run by volunteers and crammed with odd artefacts and oddities are also good, just very different. On most days I'd rather visit the latter, to be very honest, than the British Museum.

Different strokes.

Fwiw Bronte country was a major disappointment to me. I thought it was going to be super beautiful according to the sisters’ rapturous descriptions. It was ok. A bit meh. Not beautiful like the Black Mountains or Cumbria or Scotland

Are you dissing Haworth and the bleak moors?

@cakeorwine

Fwiw Bronte country was a major disappointment to me. I thought it was going to be super beautiful according to the sisters’ rapturous descriptions. It was ok. A bit meh. Not beautiful like the Black Mountains or Cumbria or Scotland

Are you dissing Haworth and the bleak moors?

I love moors, me.

cakeorwine yes...that amazing London lifestyle.
A typical weekend for me in London. Lets see.
-Go to Iceland or Aldi for food
-Stare out of window at squirrels
-Order daughter a delivery of KFC because the food from Iceland/Aldi is 'wrong'
-Spend several hours trying to find a correct phone charger.
How I often think I could do this in Northamptonshire and pay less rent

I love London, for a visit. It is without a doubt Very Very Big. The museums and galleries are incredible

Honestly though, once you've seen 1 National Gallery, you've seen it...

The biggest change for me was how much everyone relies on cars here. Public transport is not great and most things outside of the high street and school can't be walked to.

Well according to Google shopping you can get canned haricot beans without sauce, in Morrisons, Asda, Tesco and Sainsbury's, plus Ocado, Biona that you might be able to get in Holland and Barrett etc, plus there's the naice jar versions at eight times the price.

But threads like these always descend into 'London is just better and if you don't agree that's because you don't understand, you unsophisticated peasants'..

@merrymouse

Map showing London/NotLondon border.

In the howling cultural desert that is NotLondon, a land bereft of Waitroses, boil-encrusted locals fight savagely over the last tin of haricot beans, some even offering to sever a plague-ridden leg from their starving whippet in exchange for this most prized of delicacies.

Not for the faint-hearted are the trenches of Morrisons, with their fortresses of stacked baked beans, heaving sides of glistening gammon, and bug-eyed locals sniffing every incomer for signs of explosive tahini or other exotic weaponry.

@Stravaig

Fresh tin?

Ie unflavoured and not baked into a recipe.

@cakeorwine

I love London, for a visit. It is without a doubt Very Very Big. The museums and galleries are incredible

Honestly though, once you've seen 1 National Gallery, you've seen it...

I just find them overwhelming. I guess if you lived there you might divide it up into sections and spend time looking carefully.

We are all peasants, tilling the soil for our superior overlords, in the hope of earning a stale crust.

Our children are removed at an early age for chimney-sweeping duties, never to be seen again.

So weekends are spent getting shitfaced on scrumpy and mead, as childcare is no longer an issue.