to hate living in the country?

[Hullygully]

IT'S SO BORING I HATE IT I HATE IT

There are nice bits of country and yucky bits of country.

I went for a walk yesterday though an area with nature reserves and pretty lanes. The village was very well kept. I passed a working group of villagers cutting back the undergrowth along a footpath. Everybody coming together to improve their surroundings and to meet.

merrymouse I live in some of that countryside near a city and it's no comfort at all. You get all of the negatives of rural living (no transport, takeaways won't deliver, slow internet and pathetic mobile phone signal) and some of the negatives of urban living (but not many) and none of the advantages of either.

We only live here because we couldn't afford to live anywhere else in the area we needed. Since then they've got a new headteacher at the local school and the area is in demand again but when we moved they could have given houses away and people would have chosen to buy elsewhere.

I can't wait to move. I'm counting down the years months. I won't be moving to that London or anywhere especially urban but if the next community doesn't have a couple of shops, a takeaway, a doctors surgery and a pub then we won't even look at it

Maybe I should have said there are bits of countryside where the local village/small town has a good takeaway/pub etc. Hate to disillusion anybody, but have lived in urban areas where they don't have any of these. I will admit that bus services outside urban areas rarely exist in any useable form.

Also, I think I need clarification. Are people under the impression that Surrey and Kent are just fields, or is it that posh thing where if you say you are moving to a county outside London everybody assumes that you have bought somewhere with stables not than that you are moving to Guildford/Croydon/Maidstone/Maidenhead etc.

A friend is moving to Surrey next year, to an uber-affluent community where they just bought a sprawling estate with a small palace for a house. She is smart, independent, intellectual, very social. Apparently, schools are great.

I'd think kids need a mother more than a school, which mine wouldn't have for long if I were to be stuck in the middle of nowhere. Palace or no palace.

Do not move to surrey unless you want a slow and very very boring life full of cupcakes and boden you will seriously go crazy through the boring talk of organic muffins and routines it's dullness beyond what you could ever imagine

Then again for a few friends who live in reigate it's perfect for them we escape quickly after a few hours we return a few months later nothing has changed its weird

and yes my friends know how I feel they come to see me for something else to do but after a while itching to get back to dullsville :)

Hmm...I actually think that "Crafts of the Inland Waterways" sounds quite interesting and possibly a bit suggestive. Don't write it off Quick

chandon - personally I favour the option you didn't mention in your list. Live away from a village, stuff your house with esoteric books on subjects such as herbal lore, make evil highly alcoholic concoctions from anything you find in a hedge (which if pressed you can offer to the church tombola), pick and dry magic mushrooms, glare at anyone trying to pressgang you into 'joining in' through curtains of ivy and creeper growing over your house and then set dog on them if they persist, develop a habit of talking to yourself and looking mad, practice cackle. Keep cats and bees.

I'm halfway there already. I just need the cottage in the country.

I do live on an estate, but not the sort with stables...I am actually the scum of my village

We have relatives that live in a really remote area about three miles from the nearest hamlet and 15 miles from the nearest 'shop'

They can stand at their back door and nobody would hear them scream

Hully beginning to think your bit of the countryside is not naice. Please don't label yourself scum even in jest! Ours is like someone said above - true country accept weirdos as the norm. There is no Boden wearing round here, too new fangled.

We've lived here more than 10 years now and I think we have to move soon as DH has been in drag for the last three village pantos.

Scum and proud.

You should see people's faces when I say where I live.

Hully, you've not moved to the wrong road have you? It's easily done, we dodged that by accident rather than design.

We are even the scum of scumland where we live, the dustbin man told me the other day. We are buidling so there is a mountain of earth outside that has been there so long it's turned into a weed meadow. The neighbours hate us.
Totally outing myself now.

Ormiriathomimus, I like the cut of your jib!

You outlined a few of the activities I have taken up since moving to the country. You have to make your own entertainment here!

Good on you! Our neighbours aren't keen on us either

Cuntry locals are always complaining about someone, it's prolly because there's not much slese to do.

Don't move to Gloucestershire whatever you do.

It's Cath Kidston hell.

I have lived on the Surrey boarders for most of my life, and have never knowingly entered Reigate, but I'd say there is quite a lot of Surrey between the last stations on the District Line and Frensham Ponds.

I must have hung out with the wrong people when I lived there. Nobody made me cupcakes.

Best country put down aimed at me - 'I thought I'd give you some pheasants. Oh but I'll have to pluck them won't I ?'

To be fair though 4 plump birds appeared on the doorstep.

GetOrfAKAMrsUsainBolt, I moved to Gloucestershire and I know exactly what you mean. Mind you, there's parts of the county that are like Royston Vasey from the League of Gentleman.

I live in one of the 'local places' and I would rather have Cath Kidston in many respects.

lol lesley - are you in The Forest ?

Or Winchcombe? That is one strange place.

lol GetOrfAKAMrsUsainBolt! Yes to the first one, although there is a definite Cath Kidston contingency in some parts to be honest.

never been to Winchcombe. Where are you? The villages round Cirencester and Stroud seem quite Cath Kidstony.

OMG we went there earlier this year. The Forest that is. I'm mentally scarred from that Littledean Jail place