to move our family to 'the Country?'

[MosEisley]

DH and I dream of leaving the London suburbs and shipping out to ?the Country?. We want to be able to afford a house with views of fields, spend more time together (perhaps running our own business) and with our 3 little children.

This would involve moving jobs, schools, houses and leaving our friends here ? so a big undertaking, and plenty of disruption for all of us.

Is it possible to do all this and have the life we dream of, or have we just been watching too much Channel 4?

Have any of you actually done this move (city to rural area) and did it work out as you planned / imagined?

Where did you move to? We are thinking of Norfolk, to be near family.

I have posted this here partly because I can?t find a suitable board, and partly because I know I will get a good telling off if IABU. I am not new, btw, but name changing as symbolic of new start!

Thanks!

PS Not holding up London as the only place with culture, but when you have kids doing English A level and wanting to go to plays and exhibitions as well as cool shopping (our local market town is rather depressing) you do spend a lot of time going to and from the station!

If you do it, you'll have to do it now before you are trapped by the schools and critical stages. Also, we live in London and the DC are now teenagers and have brilliant social lives with lots to do and wild horses wouldn't drag them away. We will relocate when they have finished school but we will keep a London base for them and for me - the DH wouldn't care if he never saw London ever again.

goingmadinthecountry - we bought a new car when my daughter was born and have done about 500 miles. She is now 3.

"I think even if you are in the city you become a taxi service for your kids, don't you?"

IME, when children are at primary school, this is undoubtedly true - best to live in a very densely populated area, close to school, with lots of facilities on the doorstep!

But once the children are old enough to get themselves to school by bus and have a bus pass - freedom! They quickly realise that they can get up to all sorts if they can manage their own transport

oops 5000 miles. We have actually driven to a few places.

well I've moved from a large commuter town to a small rural town in a touristy area and I believe there are pros and cons.

The pros:

Despite what many posters have said on this thread I have found that the people here are FAR more friendly than where I've moved from, and they are always willing to help you with things, or know someone who can if they can't.

We are a stones throw from gorgeous countryside and only a short drive from lovely beaches too. My DD has completely fallen in love with Dartmoor and she is a lazy so and so usually lol.

The majority of the schools in the area are very good (many being in villages) and we have managed to get DD into a lovely primary school where she is doing well.

I can look out of both my living room windows and see beautiful rolling hills in every direction and it really does make a difference to your mood.

You have more choice of local, smaller shops which is a nice alternative to big supermarkets when you want something a bit different/fresher.

Ok, Cons:

There is more driving involved (although we are lucky to have great transport links due to being in a tourist area). I have to drive DD to school and if I want to do any type of shopping expedition I need to get to the nearest city which is a 30 min drive or a 25 min train journey.

It's a 4 hour trek back up to see my family, which I admit is a PITA.

The jobs in this area are hard to come by and are lower paid, this is ok at the moment as I am a SAHM. But when I need to work again, if I had to I could commute to the local city, so, whilst not ideal, I know work is possible to find.

Property is ridiculously expensive due to it being a very beautiful place, but also because there are SO many houses round her that are weekend homes for well off city/town dwellers who want to escape at the weekend. They have priced most locals out of the market now, which is obviously a concern to the local govt who can do little about it.

So that's my experience of moving to a rural area (and yes I have also lived in London for a while and find rural living preferable to that too). I want to point out that there are alot of generalisation from posters on here about the countryside like kids drinking earlier etc, I have to say I don't agree.

The kids round here are generally polite, well mannered and well behaved (even those that do drink), whereas many of the teenagers I encountered in my home town were not so lovely. Plus even though I lived in a large town I started drinking at 13....just because I was 13. Teenagers will ALWAYS try certain things, regardless of where they live, because it's part of growing up.

Sorry to ramble on and I hope some of my post has been useful to you OP.

OP is talking about Norfolk.

The property prices are cheap here by London standards.

The crime rates are famously low and most the teenagers are quite civil (or even friendly!).

The public transport is hit and miss (very bad by London standards). You WILL be a taxi service until they drive unless you manage to get into one of the few places with frequent rail service.

London incomers often decide that since they're used to commuting 90 min. a day it will be fine to still commute that far daily whilst living here, which is the weirdest thing ever (I mean why did you bother to move then?!). But you may have to commute to get to work, because jobs, especially professional positions, are rather more limited in rural Norfolk.

I live in NE Norfolk and we are the back end of nowhere, it takes ages to get anywhere.

Most of the state high schools have results that many MNers would consider appallingly bad.

You will be surprised how much "mud on the roads" bothers you, my driveway was coated with the stuff for months after sugarbeet was harvested from the field out front. The little village roads are not gritted properly and have been treachurous this winter (many locals fail to take care when they should be the most aware of the dangers). My friend, driving along, had a plow smash her windscreen one day (it hadn't been secured properly). She reported the incident to the police, and has incurred the wrath of local farmers for that, but what is she supposed to do, be complacent about the fact that her children could have been killed?

If you do move to rural Norfolk, OP, I strongly suggest that you choose a village with its own school and a village hall in good nick; that kind of place will have a much stronger sense of community and other fun things going on than in school-less villages.

Thanks for additional posts & points. It is all really useful stuff.

We know it won't be perfect if we move - it is just trying to figure whether one set of pros & cons will be a better 'fit' for us than the set of pros & cons we have now.

Rocklover, your list mostly tallys with my expectations.

Hoping there won't be so much of a problem with house prices being artificially high due to second homes in the part of Norfolk we're looking at. I don't think we'll be able to afford a bigger house - mainly because we won't be able to afford such a big mortgage in an area where jobs pay less - but I hope the same size house will come with bigger garden and maybe a separate garage or outhouse. Somewhere to put wellies would be nice, and not having to drag the pushchair through the whole house dropping mud.

Wymteacher, I'm still hoping to PM you with a few questions in a bit... hope thats ok.

Another thing you may want to consider is

mobile phone connection and broadband speed (or total lack thereof) in some parts of the country. We have to go in a field about 1 km from the house to get mobile reception and broadband is terribly slow where we are.

Thanks Ragged, more good points.

Re the commute, that is definitely something that long term, DH wants to give up. But short term we / he will probably have to do it (to Cambridge) so we can buy a house and until littlest DC (currently 6 months) is old enough to go nursery / school FT and I can work. Jobs are our biggest worry because we know that they are hard to find and less well paid than in London. But then in London I would pay more tax and astronomical childcare so it is swings and roundabouts.

Schools I hope we will be ok, having done a lot of research. Will decide once I have pm-ed Wymteacher! There are several nice villages with schools.

Mud and Farmers are two good points. It is easy to forget just how much mud fields make. I remember my grandparents having love-hate relationships with their farmer neighbours!

Norfolk is beautiful.

We owned a smalll cottage there for a while.

However, consider transport. There is pretty much one road in and out and the traffic can be vile.
We didn't use it enough because of that.

No probs :)

I'd say Wymondham itself is more small-town than rural village, although there are some smaller villages surrounding it. We actually get a fair few pupils commuting 'out' to us from Norwich, as the school has a good reputation.
Where ragged lives is much more rural and 'wild'

But, having taught in a few secondary schools around Norfolk (including rural NE and Suffolk border), I'd agree that "teenagers are quite civil (or even friendly!)"

(in general!!)

I have done it, and to my huge surprise I loved it, albeit with compromises.

I am a city person myself, but I have done it for the children and for us as a family and it is lovely.

GOOD POINTS:

• Can walk to school
• Plenty of open green spaces/fields, there is a sense of space everywhere
• It's always quiet
• Being able to afford a large house with space all around
• Being able to enjoy a sense of community
• Having friends all really close by

BAD POINTS:

• Driving everywhere
• Not much to do in the vicinity
• Not much choice of secondary schools
• Rubbish public transport

I think the bad points above will really come to bite as the children grow up, so we are planning to move back into a town when the children are older. At the moment is great though.

only if there's something to walk to

my parents lived in the middle of nowhere and there was nothing (shops, cinema, schools) in cycling distance, let alone walking distance. no pavements, and horrible loose dogs everywhere so walking was pretty unpleasant as well. no public transport. an hour's drive each way to school, every day.

spent half my life in the back of cars. and just in case you think you get a break from it when your kids are old enough to drive, i failed my test three times and my brother never did pass his, so my parents were stuck with it until we left home. serve the fuckers right.

Strangely, my dd1 is pretty keen on her driving lessons..... I'd move away from here tomorrow if I could. Though the children are at good schools, they miss out on so much more - theatre, cinema, exhibitions, a view of multi-cultural Britain - dd1 went to an all white primary school. There's very much a DM attitude among certain groups round here.

I'd advise putting a lot of effort into your proposed new locality, both before and after moving. I live in a small country town - am city born & bred. Everybody here knows everybody else and it's a very 'closed' community. It took five months of greeting my neighbours before anybody said hello first. Long-term residents are afraid of the others knowing - and judging - their business; new ones are mistrusted.

The smallish town I lived in before this, though (in a different county), was easy-going and I made some good friends there.

What tabulahrasa said on the first page, basically.

I would advise holidaying in the area at several times of year first....for reconnaissance on the ground will be much more effective than internet research.

Also you will see that in winter so much stops from Oct to Easter that going out with children is severely restricted!!! London never shuuts down for months at a time ... it takes some getting used to.

I am another Derbyshire exile. Talk about Cole Brothers has made me nostalgic! I left in 1986 and apart from the first two long vacs, have not been back for more than a week at a time.

My folks are in semi-rural (2 miles from town) but thankfully only 5 mins from the hospital so the buses are good.

And the mailine train goes straight to London.

However, I am currently in a small market town in the nearest in appearance bit of the SE to Derbyshire, as far as hills and countryside is concerned - the Chilterns. And I'd never be able to get an equivalent or even similar job up there, even in Sheffield. And certainly not within 45 mins of London on the train or tube!

So I figure what we have is a good compromise - not much for teenagers I'll concede, but DS is only 3 so plenty of time to deal with that.

Meanwhile if anyone wants to donate me a million or so, I'll quit tomorrow and be in the Peak before anyone can blink!

Good luck with your planning, Mos Eisley!