to get just a tiny bit annoyed when people move to the country and then tell me that London is crap.

[chocolatefate]

Just that really. I grew up in the countryside, but have lived in London for about twenty years, and love it. Loads of our friends are moving to the country, funnily enough often to the area where I grew up. They sometimes invite us for weekends which is obviously lovely and generous but I can't help getting a little bit annoyed when they act as though they are giving us a glimpse into an idyllic lifestyle we have mistakenly foregone and/or start slagging off London, including what a terrible place it is to bring up children. The latter happens quite often. It's also quite difficult to persuade the same people to visit us in town once they have moved out. Why is that?

What I don't get is that people think its okay to slag London off to people who live there. I wouldn't even think of slagging off someone's town to them. I did a thread on this a while ago and people got a bit passionate about it.

The countryside is far healthier and better than the urban environment. There are many environmental issues to living a city that are not present in the countryside - noise, air quality & over crowding are all features of city living. I feel a layer of grime on me due to the pollution when I've been to London. I wouldn't want to be living in that every day.

London is great if you are in a good job or have lots of money, bought a property pre 2000 and don't have kids

If you have kids, rent, live in a shitty area and have a crappy job then London is obviously not that great

Yes there are variables.

I rent, have kids, live in what most would think is a shitty area and don't even have a job let alone a crappy one, but London is still great!

You don't have to be rich to get the most out of london. I could say the same about the country, I expect being hard up in the country isnt much fun either! especially with expensive public transport.

OP yes, I have heard this from people and I think its their need to justify their decision, but it is very annoying.

i laugh at weekend guests with london exiles

london people take them to the MOST DULL THINGS like village fetes and cider festivals and the guests piss off home grateful to be out of there

Hosts are exhausted.

make new friends guys

I like cities but there are other great cities outside of London. Its not just 'London or the sticks...'

Glasgow and Edinburgh both offer city life but 20 mins to the country. Fab.

I moved out of London 5 years ago,you couldn't pay me enough to move back but I do miss it weirdly. I need to get a 'London Fix' every month or so to remind myself why I moved away

I feel a layer of grime on me due to the pollution when I've been to London. I wouldn't want to be living in that every day

I must be filthy oh no, I bath/shower twice a day, don't you need to do that in the country then?

not twice tbh

There IS a layer of grime, that's one of the first things I noticed when we moved out, when I cleaned my face at night the cotton wool pad was no longer black!

London is not crap. It's brilliant. I'd move back there in a heartbeat if I could.

And the blackspot is London, where air quality is among the worst in Europe, according a report by the London Assembly?s cross-party environment committee in May. Living in London will take, on average, three years off your life, according to Walters. ?We?re not talking about people getting sick and dying in a few weeks, it?s a long-term process. We?re talking about people dying prematurely, sooner that they would do if the air conditions were better.?

Just googled OU platform

I love and hate London in equal measures tbh.

I don't bath/shower twice a day. I'm fairly sure I'm not covered in grime either. As for noise, was out in the garden earlier and all I could hear was birdsong. As I mentioned earlier, we live in zone 2. The main roads are noisy but that's true wherever you live.

I accept air quality in the middle of the city isn't the best, but tbh I feel the environmental and health benefits of living somewhere where we can - and do - walk or cycle everywhere massively outweigh any disadvantages. And as I said earlier, I have a gorgeous, green, peaceful (cycle) commute, when I rarely encounter more than a handful of dog walkers.

I would never tell any of my friends who remain in London that their choice is a bad one, or that it's a crap place to bring up kids. I wouldn't dream of it.

I can however, tell you our reasons for not wanting to visit London at the weekends:

• DH still works there, most of the week. It would be his idea of hell to stay there at the weekend too, even to visit friends
• traffic. You have to time your visit perfectly to avoid a hideous journey
• its hard work visiting London when you've got babies/toddlers because things to do are much more limited, than where we live by the sea, for example. On our last visit as a family we went to the same play park 3 times, which was mind numbingly boring to say the least
• most of our friends in London have less space/tiny garden, making it hard work when you have up to 10 in a house for the weekend

So, the last time I went to London, I took DS1 on my own and stayed at a friends. DS1 is 6, we went on the train and just had a fab time. We decided this works really well for us. DH got to hang out at home with DS2, I got to take DS1 on the Eye, Natural History museum, etc and go out with my friend. Perhaps this is something you can suggest to your friends too?

Well... I think maybe I am one of these people who moves out of London and moans about it afterwards. Oops.

We moved from south London to south Norfolk and I love love love south Norfolk so much. I lived in London all my life for 30 years and I'd seen it change so much and my area in particular was becoming rougher. I didn't want my dc growing up in that environment. That's not to say I don't like London culturally and from a tourist point of view, but I don't want to live there.

If we fancy a day seeing the sights ... well we are about an hour and a bit away by train.

You couldn't pay me to move back to London.

I love the fact when I open the local newspaper now all its filled with is stories of charity fundraising and at worst maybe a lost dog or whatever. I have never in the last 6 years I've lived here ever heard about a violent crime or even a burglary in our immediate area. Where I lived in London before they happened all the time. Everyone I knew had experienced something bad. I was mugged too.

I don't think London is all bad and yes I can appreciate the historical aspects, museums and galleries and whatever else. But I'd rather go for a day trip and come back to Norfolk.

I feel grimy after a day in Edinburgh which is really just a big town with a rock in it.

I'm a country lass at heart, I love visiting cities but home is where the hay is for me!

I moved out of London to country ish area lol and I miss it!!!! There is so much for children to do and they're easy to get to. (I don't drive)

Its not crap. In fact as far as we are concerned (zone 2/leafy suburb next to urban ultra cool) we have the best of both worlds.

Definitely a protesteth too much issue.

When one is tired of London, one is tired of life.

Also people try hard to justify their decisions once made, and you as the townie visitor will bear the brunt of that because you know that a weekend in the country is a pleasure but a year in the country is a sentence :)

at ComposHat

I have always lived in London excerpt for university - wouldn't leave by choice, and I think it's a great place for bringing up children. I wouldn't bang on about that to friends who don't live here.

The air may be cleaner elsewhere but as we're all going to live to 110 or something I expect I'll be glad of a few years off my care home bills.

And is the air really that clean in the countryside anyway? All those pesticides and fertilisers keeping the crops uniform and pretty in the fields that you can't walk in because there's no right of way. And the bloody dead sheep. I came across a lot of dead sheep in my childhood!

But I do like visiting a couple of times a year.

London is just too expensive. You have to be absolutely loaded to have a proper garden. That makes parenthood quite hard, IMO - you just have to constantly ferry your kids around from one park to another. I get tired of parks.

I definitely notice the difference in how dirty the atmosphere is in London. I wear glasses and they get mucky far more quickly in London - scientific evidence for you

I grew up in Greater London and worked in the City and then the West End. I moved to Yorkshire more than 30 years ago and I don't miss London at all. I now live in a semi rural area, within half an hour of two major cities and within an hour's drive of 3 regional airports and 3 national museums.

Before DD was born I used to go to the opera and ballet and eat out regularly in various ethnic restaurants in spite of living in what some superior Londoncentric folk (and I include members of my family in this category) think of as a dull backwater.

I resent the fact that so many London lovers think that anywhere outside of London is beyond the pale and a cultural desert.

The crime rate round here is pretty low, DD's school bus goes along pretty, winding roads to her school every morning and they don't encounter any traffic jams. We have several farm shops to buy local produce from - home grown vegetables and local meat that I know the provenance of (no horsemeat in my minced beef thank you). And all the major supermarkets deliver round here.

No, I don't miss London and the horrible commute by train and tube every day. Mind you I have a horrible drive down the M1, but at least I don't risk having strangers groping me on the tube (yes, that has happened to me)

I have a proper garden, I am not loaded.

let the people who don't like London stay away.

Its fab.

I love living in London live in se London a great area for families and easy to get into central London

I have a few friends who have moved out to Reigate way, it's cupcake, boden, cath kidston central very nice but that is it nice nothing too exciting happens it is nothing other than nice

I really really love where we live we have a nice shared garden, lovely neighbours, has a real community feel, great cafe, restaurants, pubs, shops, markets and wonderful parks all very close by