Life wobble…..pack it all in and move to the countryside?

[3isthemagicnumberrr]

Just that really. After a traumatic few years life is much happier. We live in a lovely London suburb and have lots of friends.

BUT

I have a niggling feeling that there is a calmer, slower pace of life with a lot more greenery that might be a good next step.

Life feels HECTIC with 2 busy jobs and long commutes and 3 pre school children, and I fantasise about moving out and calming down a bit. Totally unrealistic?

Any advice? Is my countryside dream worth it even though we’d have to start again with friends/ support network? Help please!

If the financial savings would allow you to work less then I can see benefits. I’d personally never give up work though - protect yourself. But you’d still have the three kids so I don’t see how that would change, and in fact you might have to spend more time driving then around. Definitely consider how rural you are, and how much of a taxi service you are willing to provide then when they’re teens.

Surely life is hectic because of work, commutes & dc. Could you reduce a commute?

We do this every summer when all our neighbours go nuts and start burning rubbish and shouting at each other every evening in their gardens. However, the countryside round here has more expensive houses than the towns/ cities and now you can build on greenbelt, there is no guarantee the lovely green fields that surround you won’t get a housing estate or a factory slapped on them.

3 under 5 is going to break anyone tbh - could either of you go pt for a bit or compress hours or negotiate more home working to take the pressure off?

I think it depends too on how much you would 'use' the countryside. We moved from the outskirts of a large city to the countryside just on the edge of a national park and have previously lived in London. The main reason was that we were spending all our weekends travelling up here to go walking / climbing / kayaking. We have a young dd and luckily she enjoys all these things. I don't mind the driving, we are 20 minutes from a market town but it's a beautiful drive over. It's true that we don't get just eat deliveries but we didn't before anyway. If you enjoy the outdoors then I would definitely recommend but if you would be travelling back to the city all the time for activities then maybe not for you.
We haven't felt the need to go on holiday since we moved up here as there is so much for us to do, we get a lot of tourists each year and feel very lucky that we are here all he time..
No problems with the local primary school which is walkable and there is a bus for high school. We also have regular trips to cities for gigs and museums. A big thing for me was safety, I feel much more relaxed here as there is a very low crime rate. Life for us is definitely less hectic, I don't feel the pressure here to keep up with things and no one cares what clothes / car you have. We both work f/t but hybrid and luckily really good wrap around provision at school. DD always busy with clubs and activities. We are lucky to have a train station near by and I am sure we will appreciate this as dd gets older. I certainly wouldn't discount it as it's the best thing we have done but everyone is different and I know people who have moved here that hate it!

My children are grown up now but we moved out of London when they were 2 and 3. Until they were teens we lived in a very small village you couldn’t even walk to a small shop no public transport no amenities. When they were teens we moved to a small town with shops a secondary school and very limited public transport.
I not sure life is less hectic when you’ve got children and you live rurally as others have said more driving due to less amenities on your door step and if you live very rurally often no after school clubs after school activities CM etc. for example my local school only has 22 children there is no after school club or child minders for 12 miles. We have one of the lowest population densities in the UK organised out of school activities are few and far between and numbers attending drop of dramatically as children get older and loose interest. But I was brought up in a very very rural area, rural living is in my bones, it feeds my soul, it is everything to me, so every car journey to buy a forgotten pint of milk, every penny spent on petrol is balanced out by my overwhelming desire to live a rural life. I now live alone in a very rural part of the UK and I love it.
To those saying villagers are often unfriendly to incomers this has never been my experience and I lived in three remote corners of the UK but then maybe I’m not a sophisticated “towny” struggling to adapt to rural life and trying to change things for the “better”. 😀😀

I lived in a small town and moved to"the country" ten years ago. Really we are ten miles out from town but do feel we are in the country.

Yes it's a pain not having shops nearby, you do have to drive everywhere and when it's a pain dropping kids back and forth to places.

But.....it's so peaceful and quiet. When I get home I think that I am in my own little corner of the world and we all love it.

Small market town. Rural on your doorstep, as are some shops and transport options

I love London but grew up central belt of Scotland with green all around. I couldn’t live somewhere so busy. But if you have three kids and jobs, moving where there are no amenities will increase stress

Only do this if you are prepared to spend a significant proportion of your time each day in your car.

As opposed to the train, tube, bus, walking ...?
My friend in London reckons it takes an hour to get anywhere else in London.

My car goes where I want, when I want. And is faster than walking, would you believe.
I've just popped into town: from my door it took 15 minutes (including roadworks) and there was on-street parking. Yes- there were plenty of spaces. No 'residents only' spaces. No parking charges (if you bother to park more than 200 feet away from the high street).
But please don't come to my town. I like it being relatively traffic-free.