How remote do you live?

[mytreehouse]

For me I love the sea and have countryside but they are places I crave when I’ve got downtime.

I live a 10 minute drive from a major city, I walk 5 minutes and I’ve got a coffee, I love buying fresh food from the local greengrocers, having people around. Working in a fancy office building and getting lunch at a million different restaurants.

I really do love city life as my every day life - but I also know this is hell for some people.

Now, not at all: Zone 3, south east London - albeit with a garden which backs onto a huge field of allotments so I can sit outside and it feels a lot less urban.

Between 2011-2015 I lived in one of the least populated parts of the central belt of Scotland: tiny village, no shops or other amenities, no meaningful bus service, 7 miles from the nearest small town, 40 miles from a city. There were definitely good parts, and there’s a place for it in my heart still; but even beyond the usual things that were difficult such as not being able to just pop out for a drink at the pub, and having to really plan to go and see friends, I found the quietness of it all disconcerting. I learned that I really like the happy activity buzz of other humans as they live their own lives; I can sit here in my London garden hearing the trains run past at 8 minute intervals a couple of hundred metres away; traffic in the background; the odd plane coming in to land at City Airport; the rhythmic vocals of the radio that the elderly and slightly deaf man who tends to his allotment at the bottom of my garden keeps on for company as he works. It’s a happy place.

I live rurally…literally surrounded by fields.I’m 6 mins from a village shop, 6 mins from the sea. 15mins from a large town and 25 mins from a city…perfect in my opinion 🙌

I don't think I live very rurally at all as I live in a village and 1.5-2 miles from the nearest town. But it would take 40 minutes to walk to get to a coffee shop and supermarket. Today we walked into the town with my painfully slow toddler, we left at 930 and we've just got home having stopped for a coffee and a snack for about an hour (took a packed lunch). 45 minutes drive to the nearest hospital which is on the edge of a city but a good 20 minutes more drive to get to shops.

I wanted to add I live on the edge of an AONB so our house backs onto fields and hills. We also live in a fairly touristy area. But yeah, doesn't feel rural compared to where I grew up which was well outside a village (1.5 miles).

We live remote-ish. Very small village, but it's not actually that far to the nearest town and city.

I've lived in a city previously but my heart just wasn't there. I do love a good day trip and all the things a city can provide are great, but I need the peace. I love green fields and early morning walks down country lanes. The wildlife, watching foxes and all of the different birds. Figuring out the different calls. Proper darkness at night.

DH can't handle city life at all. He's not British (Norwegian, and rural) and finds it really overwhelming. So do I, so when we chose to stay in the UK for a little while for our careers, we decided to move back to the village my sister lives in.

Rural but not remote, 10-15 minute drive into closest town.

0.5 miles from a village (which has a small shop, 2 pubs, a tiny primary school with less than 50 pupils, 1 bus every hour from 8am-6pm but not on Sundays, and nothing else)

4 miles from a small market town (has a couple of supermarkets but not massive 24 hour ones, no train station, a small bus station, a massive high school but no college).

10 miles from a train station.

22 miles from a hospital, 8 miles from a minor injuries units.

Weirdly pretty much bang on 25 miles from 4 different cities in 4 different directions!

We can see the Milky Way at night and my DC have grown up thinking it's normal to see red kites, polecats, otters, deer, and wild boar on the walk to school

I live very rural im 5 miles from my nearest town and 2 miles from my nearest neighbour /shop/village.
I love the peace of the countryside.
I have a car that i need but dont use often i like to ride my bike about.
Its nice to wake and have coffee outside with nothing but the birds.
Love my garden with my veg and fruits and flowers.
I am now making a secret garden going to take time for it to grow and bloom.
But it will look lovely its at the end of the garden in the corner so it will grow and look like a huge bush It's hard to explain it really.
I couldent live in town or a city i wouldent cope its too busy for me.

Time and progress makes the countryside less rural.

I grew up in a small hamlet of about a dozen houses where nobody drove a car apart from the farmers on the edges on the way out. You collected milk from the local farm which dairy had space for only six cows. We would all walk two miles to a wedding in the next village, or the harvest festival, or to a funeral and occasionally farmers might drive us there in tractors and trailers. There was no village shop, but men in vans would come round and repair sowing machines, sell socks and pants, sell fish on Fridays, bread and tinned food. Everybody grew fruit and veg in their gardens and swapped them. When one man lost his wife he carried on growing the same amount and gave more away. At Christmas a van from the local town would drive out and sell draft wines and beers. You supplied your own containers - usually cut glass wedding presents for filling. The only time we went to the pub was when a relative drove out from the city and wanted a drink and drove us to a nice one next to a canal a few miles away. People would lean on gates and fences with a cuppa or a cigarette to talk about little things on a Saturday morning or a week day evening after 6pm. There was a phone box and it was a big thing if you ever had to queue. From here you rang the doctors at 8-9am and he or she would be with you by late morning or in the afternoon. The outside world also arrived in the form of a library van - the old version of a laptop, full of information but nearly 4000 times the size. Shopping was a trip into town 20 miles away once a month and a large horizontal freezer in the shed stored everything. You swapped goods with your neighbours. If you were desperate the postman would bring you things from the grocers in town as well as meaningful or polite letters, in which everyone addressed you personally. You gave the postman a bacon roll or a slice of cake and were thankful for what he did for the community.

The same hamlet today still has a dozen houses, but one got a bit bigger when it expanded into the dairy. Each has a car or two and now a smaller garden in which to park them and in which nobody grows fruit or veg. Shiny Mercedes and Audis sweep into the hamlet at 7pm and back out in the morning. Nobody leans on gates or fences and the Christmas booze bottles get taken away for recycling. There are multiple 'last mile' stores across the neighbouring villages, but rarely a pub because nobody used them. The dairy cows are long gone and crops are to be used for energy production or to feed cattle in large metal sheds which extend high above the horizon. The postman comes when he can but all he brings are impersonal letters that get put into recycling after he goes. I suspect he knows this. You can't give him cake because he does not know your name and he might be sacked if he took it.

I live on a Scottish island.

I live in Northern Alberta in a city of roughly 60,000. The nearest supermarket is a 5 minute drive.

We are surrounded by lakes and forest, much of which has been ravaged by wildfire.

The nearest city is 280 miles to the South. It is a 16 hour drive to the West Coast. Driving to the East Coast would be a 3-4 day trip.

Zone 4 but not really overlooked and with a decent garden. Will stick for many years to come I expect.

Zone 4?

Very, couple of hours to nearest big town.

15 miles from a city.
5 miles to another town.
Own town has coffee and supermarket within a 20 minute walk.
3 miles to train station.

Semi rural here.

Also central Scotland. In a village of about 800 people. We have a good co-op (mini supermarket), butcher, chip shop, two cafes, two pubs, a part time GP and a volunteer fire crew. It's moderately touristy, hence the cafe/pub provision. It's also the 'hub' village for more remote places up the 20 miles of single track road beyond.

25 miles to nearest town, which has a station, dentists and a minor injuries unit. 30 miles to a city or a proper hospital with A&E.

@Fescue we still have library van, fish van, bank van. And we talk to each other over the fence or in the street of an evening. But also there are lots of commuters and I bet it's nothing like it was 50 or 100 years ago.

I'm closer to 50 than 100.

Anyway, 60 years ago the village carpenter used to make sledges for kids' 5th Christmases.

I love rurally. Fifty mins to get to the city. We do have towns about twenty mins away and villages with a shop are fifteen mins away. We are quarter of a mile away from a road, which once there, is just a single track, so we often get snowed in. It’s three miles to the nearest two lane road.
We are surrounded by fields and farms.

35 mins to the sea which I love! Night skies are incredible and the quiet is ace. Although nature isn’t quiet. It’s a different noise to people.

Oh and the local primary school
is fifteen mins away and has 13 children! Lots like that around here.

I'd call where we live semi-rural - it appears really rural but is close to an A road and only 3 mins drive from a motorway junction. It's about a 5 min drive to a village with tiny shop, 7 min drive to a Co Op, 15 min drive to two small towns and 25 min to larger cities. Can't walk to any facilities.

Used to live very rurally - 300 yard track from house up to a tiny country lane, then 2.5 miles to the nearest Spar, and 15 mins drive the other way to a small town. I loved that house SO much. Had to leave because of divorce, but I do like the easier road links now.

Not but we have a bridal path at the side of the house, 20 feet between houses, fields adjacent. A fifteen minute walk to the village. But, we are a 20 minute drive from Wimbledon and I can be in the West End or City in under an hour!

We have no near neighbours, live on the edge of the moor in a national park, so quite remote. The closest small market town is 10-15 minutes drive and closest city is 30 some minutes. I can still get to London in maybe a bit over 2 hours and that’s where my head office is, but I don’t really go in anymore.

I love it here. We see the stars and the northern lights. We can wild camp and swim in the river at the end of our garden. Oddly we have a 24 hour Waitrose at the petrol station 5 minutes away 😂 so we are never without. Anything else can be ordered online.

Not even slightly. London Zone 3, but with a beautiful garden (just seen our visiting fox). Epping Forest is on the doorstep but I can be in Oxford Circus in half an hour. Bliss.
I grew up in rural Somerset. Hated it. I'm a city girl at heart.

I was wondering the same thing.