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!

We somehow manage to cling to life, although things are precarious because of the herds of violent people from neighbouring villages who throw potatoes at you if you venture outside after dark.

There is no public transport and petrol is rationed so we have to walk or cycle everywhere. Medical and dental services are non existent and we generally resort to buying dodgy medicines online, from India, or grow therapeutic plants to chew on if we become ill. If you pay the local barber a fiver he'll remove your appendix for you, but he's recently put his prices up and you now have to supply your own whisky.

Nobody can read, so there are no books, newspapers or magazines. The people communicate by way of grunts and gesticulations, with or without hurled potatoes.

Council Tax is cheap because we have no local services and the police are too frightened to attend any crimes in the area because of the coarse language they have directed at them by the locals. We generally deal with criminals ourselves by giving them a swift clubbing behind the local off licence on a Friday night.

It's basic, but friendly and I'd certainly recommend it 😃

Do people who live in London honestly think lofe outside of the capital is so vastly different

I found it hugely different after over 20 years in London then moving away. Children's activities were really expensive so that was a bit of a shocker, Public Transport was laughably bad so if you don't drive OP learn asap! 15 years on I still hanker after London life but wouldn't move back, were only half an hour away on the train so hardly remote but don't underestimate what a big move it'll be.

I'm in a town in Scotland not far from Glasgow. We have all of your normal activities: sports, swimming, cinema, bowling, Brownies, pubs, cafes, museums, parks.

I suppose it would help to understand where you're thinking of moving to?

My DC (now grown) used to:
go to rugby practise, cubs and scouts
go to rock music club led by professional musicians, some quite well known
go camping with scouts
go cycling and walking in the woods and hills, make dens, mud slides, climb trees etc
do theatre summer camps at a local professional theatre
have friends round to play/watch movies/sit around the fire and chat
go on sports tours and debating weekends with school (when they were older)
swim a lot at the outdoor pool in our village

DH and I:
go to pop up gigs by well known musicians who do try outs and short acoustic sets free at a local record shop
go to comedy nights of well known comedians at a theatre in a nearby town
walk in the hills
have friends over for lunch or dinner
go to parties or dinner at other people's houses
occasionally we go to local theatre and art shows but tbf we more often go into London for those

I live in London but family is out in the Shires of the Midlands.
The only life style difference I find compared to London is public transport is unbelievably crap and unreliable.
You will need a car.
I don't drive and it's the biggest regret of my life when I am out of London.
Oh and shops sometimes close a bit earlier...like 5.30.
That's it really.

@Herewegoagain84

Haha this is exactly what I mean! Our weekends are so prescriptive in London - it’s not about having an “inward and backward attitude”, I’m genuinely interested, particularly in how people’s lives changed after they moved out of a big city. Thanks for the useful replies saying it’s not all that different / no regrets - I guess that’s what I’m hoping to hear! I’ve heard of a few families who moved out during lockdown and have come back, and wondering what would have put them off (don’t know them personally to ask).

You would have gotten more helpful responses if you told us where you were thinking of moving to and what activities you currently enjoy.

I have lived in London (pre-children) but mostly in my small market town in the Midlands (came back after children)

In my small town there are gyms, a swimming pool, tennis courts, badminton courts, children's sports teams, a roller rink, community arts centre, dance schools, 4 supermarkets, a weekly market, restaurants, takeaways, lots of pubs, community halls for hire, music teachers, a library, etc

Within an hour's travel I have:

• 2 historic towns (medieval and Roman remains, great independent restaurants, cafes and shops)
• North Wales (and a further 20 minutes gets me to the coast)
• numerous National Trust, English Heritage properties
• moors
• hills
• 5 different towns and cities with theatres, galleries and museums (all 30 - 40 minutes away and all easily commutable)

The only downside being somewhere like here is for teens. The bus service is limited to a choice of 2 towns, and not frequent (no evening buses).

I like to watch people from my window and judge them.

Then once a week my neighbours and I walk to our local and judge Outsiders over a pint.

Highlights of the year are the Summer Fair and Christmas Lights Switch On where we all get together and judge each other's culinary efforts.

I always think of this situation in reverse. What on earth is there to do in London?
Its crowded, its dirty, its non pushchair friendly. Everything costs an absolute fortune. And not one single thing is easy to access.
For example. Last weekend, I thought I would go to see a museum. Free I thought. But no, first you have to book it online, or you can't go? WTF. It cost me £12 and 1.5 hours travel to get there by public transport (I live within the M25), but we got there early so had to sit in a coffee shop before our time slot. another, £10. Roamed around the museum which was more an ode to the British empire than the cultures/times it was supposedly showcasing. We then had a meal, £31. Friend wanted to go to a particular shop, so a further 2 hours of travel and walking around over priced shops. Then another 1.5 hours travel back. I was exhausted and felt pretty shafted from doing a so called free activity.

Theatres in London? overpriced and take forever to get to.
Parks? more like monoclonal agar dishes
Shops? better ones in the big places outside London which take less time to get to.
I could go on and on, but then I would sound like Londoners do when they try to justify how great city living is.

@Susu49

I like to watch people from my window and judge them.

Then once a week my neighbours and I walk to our local and judge Outsiders over a pint.

Highlights of the year are the Summer Fair and Christmas Lights Switch On where we all get together and judge each other's culinary efforts.

That actually does sound exactly like the village MIL lives in

Don't do it. Wish we'd never left London. There are plenty of activities here of course but the general feel of our commuter town is 'samey'. Same people, same kids, same old stories (extensions and next Dubai holiday). White middle class boredom. London just feels different and has an energy. Unless you're moving to a beautiful rural part of the country like Yorkshire, I would say avoid commuter towns like the plague.

We love nothing more on a weekend than going out with out pitchforks, rounding up the non-locals and offering them as a sacrifice to our Wicker man. Before going to watch our inbred relatives marry each other. Is this the kind of thing people think happens "outside London".

In reality, we're going to the cinema this weekend, to visit family, we might go swimming on Sunday if we CBA/the pool is actually open and if not we will go out on a bike ride. There will also be some housework and ironing thrown in there.

After cleaning out my homing pigeons, we sit making rugs from old bits of wool. I darn socks, watch the kids light bonfires on refuse tips, then we race the whippets. Father cleans the brass ornaments and then shoots a rabbit for our dinner. It's grim oop North, wor lass.

I've experienced the OP's mindset from the inside. People living in the SE bubble have to convince themselves that they have bought into something special that they couldn't access anywhere else. Otherwise why would they be putting up with insane house prices, overcrowding, immense cost of living etc? People inside the bubble spend a lot of time self-soothing by reinforcing one-another's ideas that life outside the bubble is like the third world. It's a self-perpetuating hive-mind thing.

Particularly, there is the view that if you leave, there will be no opportunities and only an indescribably poor education for your children and they will grow up to be Kerry and Kurtan from This Country. When we decided to move with 3yo DC to the West Country some people basically implied this was abusive.

It's not until you move away that you gradually realise it's all brain-washed bollocks- takes a while for the scales to fall though.

I spend most of my time being envious of flushing inside toilets and electricity..
On a more serious note ( although I've never lived in London ) I would imagine transport would be an eye opener. London has one of the best systems in the world.

Ah yes, the village Summer Show. I'm still torn on whether to enter the Yorkshire Pudding competition. How does one judge a cold YP? But seeing all the cakes crafts and arts is interesting. They even have a children's handwriting competition...

That is one thing you don't get in London...

I think you probably phrased that badly!

I'm intrigued by your sentence Our weekends are so prescriptive in London . What do you mean by that?

More generally, what sort of places are you considering moving to and what are you concerned about?

We live in a large-ish village on the Thames within easy reach of London. We love it. But I couldn't tell you anything about life in a large city outside London, or in a tiny village in the middle of nowhere.

How old are your kids op?

You didn’t ask about moving out of a city though, you asked about what it’s like to live in Not London.

@Legoisthebest

I live in London but family is out in the Shires of the Midlands. The only life style difference I find compared to London is public transport is unbelievably crap and unreliable. You will need a car. I don't drive and it's the biggest regret of my life when I am out of London. Oh and shops sometimes close a bit earlier...like 5.30. That's it really.

Depends where you live. I have never lived in London, don't drive and do not need a car. I live in Nottingham and the bus and train service is great here, a lot of buses run 24/7 and there's a tram system as well.

I think there are some big differences - though obviously non-London big cities will be more similar to London.

For me, the biggie is that it is very possible to live in London and not have a car. It doesn't massively restrict what you can do as a family. I don't know anyone with children outside London who doesn't have a car - usually 2. I'm sure there are some but it's really unusual.

The car thing does make a big difference especially if you have teenager - in London, they can get around on their own, outside London, you will most likely need to ferry them around at least some of the time.

Childcare options, especially school holiday childcare, are more limited outside London. Not saying it doesn't exist but there aren't as many options.

@Herewegoagain84

Haha this is exactly what I mean! Our weekends are so prescriptive in London - it’s not about having an “inward and backward attitude”, I’m genuinely interested, particularly in how people’s lives changed after they moved out of a big city. Thanks for the useful replies saying it’s not all that different / no regrets - I guess that’s what I’m hoping to hear! I’ve heard of a few families who moved out during lockdown and have come back, and wondering what would have put them off (don’t know them personally to ask).

If you're concerned about there not being much to do, you could always move to one of the other big cities in the UK, you may have heard of a few of them, such as Leeds, Manchester, Liverpool, Hull, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Cardiff, Birmingham, Newcastle, Sheffield etc.

Some of them are so big that they even have some of the less attractive features like traffic jams, pollution charging and crime just like London.

Plus things like national museums (at least 4/5 within an hour of here), National Trust, English Heritage, proper wilderness, every cuisine you could imagine, coast, sporting activities, shopping etc etc.

Lives don't need to be prescriptive, you can do as much or as little as you like, no matter where you live.

You’ve asked the question in an odd way but I guess what you mean is how is it different elsewhere? Depends on whether you move to another city, the suburbs or the seaside or country!

I moved out of London 3 years ago and the honest answer is

It’s easier to get around, plus you can drive and park
There is less to do
Less variety, not many interesting pop up shops, or events or exhibitions
Less places to browse and mooch around on a weekend with a coffee
Where I live it’s less friendly compared to where I moved from
Less easy access to shops, variety wise.
Prices in restaurants and pop ups are the same as London surprisingly
More wildlife type places
Nurseries are cheaper and easier to get into as are payable baby classes
You are less likely to come across any trouble down here but obviously depends where you go.

We used to live in London, then moved down to the SouthCoast.

Dcs are currently 11 and 9. We moved when DS1 was 3.

Advantages

• lovely village

-more house for your money -masses of things to do at weekends- sailing, hiking, riding, paragliding, beach combing -good sense of community.

Disadvantages

• local schools are truly dreadful. We stuck with them for a bit but then went private. Older DS has SEN and the lcoal schools simply could not deal with it - no time or resources. So that was a huge expense.

-if your children are not into sailing, riding, paragliding, beachcombing etc then they can be a bit isolated form peers. -small local village- means loads of gossip, local politics and did I mention gossip?

I am glad we moved here. I need to get to London a couple of times a year to take advantage of decent museums etc and to widen the DCs horizens. But there are definite upsides as well as downsides.

Childcare options, especially school holiday childcare, are more limited outside London. Not saying it doesn't exist but there aren't as many options.

You must realise this is absolutely not true. Why on earth would anyone think there were not as many options for holiday clubs outside of the capital city? Believe it or not many many children have working parents and need childcare during school holidays, this is not just reserved to London.