Escape to the Country annoyances.

[DontEscapeToTheCountry]

Why is there a new part where they show them standing on their doorstep chatting like a couple of vagrants?

Why when they show an elderly couple a kitchen or living room that you could host a barn dance in, do they say that it's much too small? What are these people doing in their kitchens that requires so much space?

And why, when they say that they want a 3 bedroom home with no stairs and a small garden, do they show them Chatsworth House?

Brilliant. I'd add:

• income potential
• I can imagine all the family here at Christmas - ooh, you've moved in already!
• ticking all the boxes
• put my own stamp on it
• I can see us sitting here with a glass of wine in the evening (laughs as though that's an outrageously wicked & unusual thing to do)
• Arabella likes to paint/Godfrey plays guitar !!! made-up names !!! (with cheesy footage which makes it obvious they don't really) so they'll need space to do that (no they won't)

@Robotalkingrubbish thanks. Just had a look for it on iPlayer and it's not on.

You don’t have to have children to desire a big house and they are only in their early fifties, hardly ancient.

He is literally steering, the couple are robots, because nobody in their right mind is going to go on that programme and admit they are too thick to be able to find a decent property for £800k.

It's one step up from being on Eat Well For Less.

Sorry, just noticed @ChicoryDip covered the ticking the boxes thing.

DH, who can't be bothered to remember names properly, calls films & programmes wierd titles he makes up which capture the essence of the thing. Thus, ETTC is also known in our house as 'F!!! Off Out Of London'. No, it's not early onset anything. He's always done it.

Pretty much all of what has already been discussed.

I often watch Escape to the Country, sometimes with DH and sometimes with my mother.

So many people from large cities (mainly London) retiring and "downsizing" to somewhere absolutely enormous and in the arse end of nowhere. Places big enough to need a team of staff to run them.

How do they think they will manage the upkeep of these places in years to come as they possibly become less sprightly? What is the attraction of being somewhere with no amenities nearby and where you will have to drive even for the smallest thing?

We live fairly rurally and at the moment, but in a large village just about 40 miles to the north of London. It does have a number of shops, pubs, car servicing joints and a reasonably regular bus service 6 days a week (so not too bad really). We will still look to downsize and move to something like a small bungalow fairly centrally located in a much bigger town/city when we retire. We will want good public transport and many more amenities close by so that we can drive less as we get older, not more.

We do also like to watch A Place in the Sun. Crikey though, the number of people who seem to want a palace for a very limited budget!!!

I would never want to go on one of these shows. They must be ridiculously stage managed and I would not want to be subjected to any pressure from the production team to make an offer and perhaps purchase something before I was really ready just because it would make better TV. I am sure that there must be some pressure, although not all of the people bend to it.

Today's woman was so annoying. The surprise she expressed at every house was ridiculous. Also ridiculous was her trout pout

I do like Alistair though. He lives in my neck of the woods too.

I always laugh when they mention the nearest village which, inevitably, has ‘plenty of amenities with a pub (dodgy-looking pub), a village shop (tiny place that almost certainly charges £4 for a tin of Happy Shopper beans) and a bus service to Town/City (which goes twice a week)’.

I know a couple who have one teenager, in their late 50s, who have just bought a six bedroomed listed house in the country. It will be a full time job to just live there, it will cost a fortune to run, and the mere idea of it horrifies me. But I’m sure I would swoon a bit at it if it were on ETTC.

i really felt so sad for the vicar and wife who had a really lovely house which they had to move from when he ‘retired’ - they were shown some truly dire houses - Also love Alistair’s detached sardonic bemusement at the ‘needs’ and requirements the guests have to be fulfilled to make it their ‘dream’ house 🙏🏽☘️👍🏿

Also, people buying holiday homes abroad which they are planning to retire to seem convinced that all of their family, friends, grandchildren, great grandchildren, neighbours and every Tom, Dick and Harry they have ever encountered will be coming out there to join them all the time so look for somewhere huge to accommodate them.

No! After an initial flurry of interest it will mostly be just the couple themselves with occasional visitors. So just buy a sensible property in a nice location to suit yourselves, but with a guest room.

Also, why do so few of these programmes advise what the service charge is when visiting an urbanisation, and what public transport (if any) is available?

Another thing now that I am on a roll 😉 - there seem to be people who want to buy property in areas of Spain or other countries that they have never even been to before!! Whaaaat!! I would want to have at least been on holiday to the area several times and got a feel for it!

Dahlia444

I’d love to have the confidence of some of the people on it. “Martin and June are looking at houses 300 miles away from their family and friends. They are looking for a house with space to entertain 20 people”

Eh? How many friends are they expecting to immediately make in the new area?

Friends of my parents made this mistake. They retired and bought a massive house with room for “entertainment” and “space for visitors”, a good 3/4 hour drive from family and friends. The first few months when they were not in a great position to have guests they had loads of family visiting for the weekend and curious old neighbours coming to stay. After about four months once everyone’s curiosity was satisfied and they’d established what a pig of a journey it was, the visits dried up. Then they experienced a hard winter in an old house with a rickety old AGA and occasional hot water. Three years later they were quietly back living where they started.

A host of local amenities = a book swap in a decommissioned telephone box.

Going in through the kitchen door 'Because we ARE in the country after all'.

Plenty of wardrobe space for her and one drawer for him - ha ha ha sigh.

Ohhhh, they're definitely buying it because they're planning where to put the Christmas tree.

I said I wasn't going to cry (fans face). Oh, don't start, you'll have me going in a minute.

I've been watching this for long enough to have seen Jules turn from a fresh faced public school boy into his own tweedy uncle.

They filmed one locally - we rolled our eyes because all 3 houses had been sat on the market for months if not years. One was on a main road (and a busy one at that), another was tucked away off a maze of small lanes in a hamlet that's literally miles from anywhere and is often inaccessible in poor weather; and the other had had the garden split in half and the seller was keeping the building plot. My Mum was thrilled as they filmed some of it in her shop, and she met Johnnie who was very charming on and off camera apparently. But she said that when chatting to the couple between takes, they were horrified by the houses and admitted that they'd already viewed 2 of them!!

I missed the start of yesterday's episode - was there a reason why everyone kept crying?

Completely agree. They show them a garden which is about 1/2 acre and they say it's too small, yet the house is out of budget anyway. I prefer the Kirsty and Phil property show as I think the researchers are more clued up about what is achievable so only allow realistic people one

I quite enjoyed the one where someone was moving from somewhere like Essex to Cornwall and was insistent that they needed lots of space for entertaining because they were in the habit of hosting dinner parties for at least 12 of their friends at once. Whoever was showing them round was trying to be tactful about it, but you could tell he was dying to say "You're moving 6 hours away from your friends! They're never going to be flogging down here all the time for dinner! Get real!!"

Oh, me too! That's why I could never present one of these things, I'd constantly be wanting to slap the bloke's hand away and point out that his wife/partner or whatever could certainly find her way all by herself without being steered.

The couples always want 'A big family Christmas' which makes me feel sorry for all the children and grandchildren who will be on a three line whip to crawl down the M5 on Christmas Eve in order to spend two days in a draughty barn conversion in a field.

The ones who claim they're up for taking on a project always, always shy away when shown something that might required a wall or two to be knocked down. And the ones who claim they want to downsize always look around some vast, barn-size kitchen barely able to control their sneers as they say "Ew, it's smaller than ours, how would we manage?"

To be fair, they have done. I've seen a few episodes where it's snowy, foggy or frosty, or indeed all three.

Alpacas. Always alpacas.

I actually like the music!

Retired or moving to the back end of nowhere where broadband is going to be flakey.....with a budget of region £1m give or take.
Kind of like Kirsty and Phil, the sums involved just seem incredible.

They've done at least one series of Escape to the Perfect Town, but I don't think it particularly caught on.

For all the people who complain that no-one ever buys anything, look on iPlayer for I Escaped to the Country, which is a follow up on some people who actually did buy.