I was born and raised in Pembrokeshire, Wales. I left when I was 18 to go to uni and since then I have lived in London and now Bristol with my husband and two young children (DS6 and DS5).
We need to move from our current terraced house as it’s too small and, unfortunately, we’ve had run ins with our neighbours (drug taking, anti social behaviour- that’s a whole other thread) which has left us feeling uncomfortable in our own home. We enjoy the benefits of city living, with nice restaurants, parks, theatres and activities all within easy reach. But recently I have been thinking about moving home. My parents are in their 70s and may need me in the next few years. I also love living by the coast and watching my children have so much more freedom, exploring the beaches and swimming in the sea.
At the moment, we have zero help and my DH and I are burnt out from tag teaming parenting and work without support for years (not to mention through a pandemic, which I, like many others, found really really tough). If we moved home, my kids would be raised within a family and I could drop by my parents’, aunties’, cousins’ houses. I work from home, so could move with my job, and my husband also wfh twice a week and says he is happy to travel 1.5 hours each way three days a week (I’m not sure about this).
Am I looking at Pembrokeshire with rose tinted glasses? It is far from almost everywhere else in the UK (people from Cornwall may empathise with this). Most of my childhood friends have moved away. Property is expensive (although we could probably get a semi detached or even detached, as opposed to another terrace house in Bristol). The nearest hospital is at least a 40 minute drive. Public transport is terrible so you need to drive everywhere. All the city amenities I enjoy here would be far away. Am I forgetting that unless you get into a sport, being a teenager can also be pretty boring and in a few years time, my kids might not care about splashing about by the sea?
I know it’s impossible for you to predict whether moving back is the right thing for my family. But have other people from the coast, be it Pembrokeshire or elsewhere, ever moved back home and regretted it?