to wonder what country life is really like?

[longestlurkerever]

I've always wanted to start a thread to ask what people in the countryside actually do at weekends and after work, but thought it might come across as a bit rude. But there have been so many threads asking how people can bear living in London lately that I am just going to ask.

I love beautiful countryside. Sometimes I feel if I moved somewhere glorious I could just sit and drink in the view and feel happy. But then I kick myself and think "but what would you actually do?" Where would you take the kids when they're driving you mad and you just need to get out of the house? Would you really just go for yet another walk? Do kids really keep themselves entertained all day with a stick like MN would have you believe? What about when it's dark at 4pm or wet every weekend for months?

So, people who enjoy country life - can you describe what you actually fill your time with? Especially if you're a bit meh about horses and animals in general? Or is that no one who lives in the country?

Coastal fishing town, awash with drugs, underage drinking and very limited transport, chuck in a failing school and a high rate of underage pregancy.... I sang the great escape as I follows the removal van out

ada I would disagree with you there. Drugs are a problem regardless of where you live. Lots of country teenagers do pub/young farmers/friends houses and whatever extra curricular is going on at school.

Its horrible. There is nothing to do and the people are all related to each other in my village. I moved from London to Milton Keynes and then to a village in Nottinghamshire. I have been here 10 years and I have wished to never wake up so many times. I have been that depressed. Currently training to earn more money so I can move back to civilisation!

I grew up in a rural and coastal area and it wasn't much fun, tbh. A few lucky people had access to public transport (buses once an hour that stopped at 5pm) but a vast majority of my friends relied solely on parents or whichever friend passed their driving test first. Play dates almost always required mum's taxi.

Life and choices are definitely limited so it is like groundhog day. One of my friends was desperate to learn to ice skate, but the nearest rink was 100 miles away. It was 60 miles to the nearest multiplex cinema.

I grew up in very remote countryside, now I live in the family home and am seeing my 3 children have the same sort of upbringing I had.

If you're a gregarious sort who likes variety , people, cinemas, swank you bars then the countryside will be hell. You won't like it so just don't bother. Chances are you'll move here and want to change it so just stay away... I am 7th generation here and i love it just how it is.
We are very fortunate that we aren't in a 'gentrified' part of the countryside with lots of city money flooding in so things here are much as they've always been ... Thank god.
I actually went to a place in the Cotswolds a few weeks back and couldn't take my dogs in!!! In a country pub!! WTAF is that all about???

Anyhow, rant aside, my weekend just gone looked something like this:

Saturday:
Get up at 6, quick round of the animals on the quad bike with dogs running behind. About 8miles covered so they're happy.
Back to the house, nice cooked brekkie while sat looking at the dawn over the hills 30 miles in the distance.

Parents came over to see the new baby (5 months old) and look after the twin boys (3years) while DW and I went for a ride on our horses for a couple of hours. Time alone together has been rare the last few years so we really enjoyed ourselves. Went riding through or woods which are really turning now, colours were gorgeous in the sunshine. I've lived here all my life and seen the autumn leaves each year in these same woods 38 times now, it never gets boring.

Back for lunch, all off to the pub, nice walk back across the fields in the lovely scenery (about 4 miles).

Evening, met up with some friends and went duck hunting until dusk. Came back got about 9 with some birds for the freezer and a soggy foot where I lost a welly in the river in the dark.

Sunday:
Lie in until 8!!! Wow!
Normally I walk the dogs alone in the morning but took baby DD in the carrier. It's nice to get some time alone with her sometimes - as the an you don't always manage much baby time.
Retrieved my welly from the river that I lost the evening before (hooray).
PIL came over for Sunday lunch, FIL helped me work on a (hopefully amazing) treehouse I'm building for the DCs.

That's it really... By some people's standards we are quite boring but I can honestly say I'm never bored. I had so much freedom as a child and I find the variety in nature and in the countryside plenty for me.
We ride. sail, shoot, fish, go biking, running etc.

As for the winter when it's dark and wet.... Have you ever heard of torches and wellies? Seriously though, no proper country person would ever even ask that question...

I live in a village of 600 people. No shop, the pub was knocked down for expensive houses. No mobile signal, very unstable internet, only one bus every hour that stops at 7pm.. No one speaks to me.

The upside is the view, the barn owl and other creatures, the colours, my garden.

It's too rural. Though we are only six miles from the city, reasonably close to two major cities and their airports, I miss having people around.

man your weekend sounds utterly blissful.

It does but isn't really typical of your average rural dweller! Comparatively few of us actually hunt, ride, fish and shoot.

"As for the winter when it's dark and wet.... Have you ever heard of torches and wellies? Seriously though, no proper country person would ever even ask that question..."

Yep. torch, wellies...if you were a proper country person yourself you would also have mentioned stout walking boots and waterproofs...of course this forum is famous for glib assumptions...

In contrast, my rural weekend involved taking my DS to swimming lessons, taking another DC to a school friends party, going clothes shopping for DH and having friends over for dinner. All totally normal everyday things that I'm sure millions of people in towns also did.

All this talk of "The Country" just makes me think of people in a Rosamunde Pilcher or Joanna Trollope novel. Honestly does anyone ever say "the country" apart from rich people who have an apartment/townhouse in West London and who drive down the M4 to Wiltshire or the Cotswolds for weekends at the family pile?

Depends where on the countryside you are really. We are technically considered to be in the countryside even though we live in a village in a cul-de-sac and are only 10 minutes drive from a major city. I like it, for the most part. There's definitely a sense of community and I know nearly everyone by name. Of course, that can come with its downsides as I found out my horror when I was trying to by DP a secret Christmas present at one of the shops in the village, only for the lovely lady to tell my DP when she saw him in the pub that night that I'd been in to see her. Unfortunately, it's a shop that only sells one type of thing so it's not like I could say I was in there for something else.

I do agree without a car we'd struggle though. We can get into the village alright but the bus service to the city is pretty poor, only once every 2 hours or so. Nobody seems to be really overly flush with money as a lot of the village is people who have lived there years or who have farmland around the area.

And to whoever said about the drug problems in small villages/towns, they're right. We're lucky enough that it's not a problem here as we're relatively close to the city with plenty of entertainment, but the towns and villages further away are awash with drugs. We drove through one on a Saturday night once coming back from a party and were shocked to see how casual everybody is about shooting up in the street and the doorways were just full of people who were high or coming down. I suppose that's what happens when you have lots of young people with nothing to do.

I don't recognise that description of rural living at all Where in earth are all these heroin villages?

Sukey totally agree with you! Some people in villages probably do take drugs but I'd hazard a guess that happens in towns too!

Villages / towns are not that different really - choose whichever suits you but don't bitch about the other as if they were a hell hole of inequity!

I did laugh at the what do you do in the country when it's dark / wet comments - I hadn't realised London was bathed in perpetual sunshine . As someone who went to Uni in London I get that it can feel like you're at the centre of the universe and that everyone else are ignorant (drug addled) yokels who wouldn't know culture if it slapped you in the face but you know what, that's not the case! In the same way London has conkers the countryside has theatres - you know proper ones! We've just had our annual Lit Fest and - shock horror - people travelled out of London to come to it!!

Nowhere is that different really from each other - chose what suits you best but please lose the smug superiority!

Country life is bollocks, but you save on going out bills. OTOH you probably make it back up in diesel and gin. Hth.

We love rural life. But we have dogs, horses and enjoy a relaxed lifestyle, and live in a village with 2 pubs a restaurant and a couple of shops - so not the middle of nowhere.
Is loads of woodland walks, miles of fields and castle ruins, we spend our weekends riding, walking, and playing and sometimes seeing friends in the pub. For kids we have playing fields, cubs and cadets, a city 45 mins bus ride away. Outstanding village school.
We think we have the best of both I wouldn't like to live in a town and would hate a city.

I think the stereotypical view of living in the countryside is probably more like the reality of life on a very small island. The main difference between the city and the countryside is that in the countryside you can still access everything that cities have, but that you need to drive your car to get to those things. As far as I know it's only the herbidean islands where things get complicated e.g. waiting a week for the boat to bring groceries.

It's my favourite butter at the moment. I used to love Lurpak but I think they changed it.

I loved living in the countryside (very small hamlet, no shop or school - just a Church and a pub) for 10 years when DS was born; it was lovely for many years - healthy country walks every day, very nice community atmosphere with lots of things to do - if you liked that sort of thing - which we did, not everyone's taste I appreciate. We really threw ourselves into village life and got on every committee and made load of friends.

But it was tedious if you wanted a loaf of bread, had to get the car out; very, very limited public transport, miles to go to a cinema or theatre, no diversity, very narrow minded, insular points of view.

We were aware that as our DC got older they would want to be more independent so we did leave it and moved to a small town. I do miss it in some ways, but I think we made the right decision.

I lived in the proper countryside (middle of a forest, nothing else around for miles) and lasted six months. Hated it. It was so lonely and I don't drive so I was stuck there.

Now I live in a small town which is the best of all worlds I reckon - nature right on my doorstep (previous house was right next to the lake but still five minutes walk from the town centre, current house is on the edge of the forested "mountain" and ten minutes bike ride from the town centre), still got shops and pubs and people and parks in easy reach and the city is just a train/coach ride away.

It's my favourite butter at the moment. I used to love Lurpak but I think they changed it

😂

I lived in a large village 10mins drive from a decent sized town (one way) and 20mins drive from a city the other in Northants and it was horrible. They have a doctors, a newsagents, Spar, a home furnishings shop, mobile library, a couple of takeaways and a pub so not isolated. However, there was a bus (once an hour) to the town and to get to the city took 1hr 45 (min) going up to the town then changing to another town etc. The bus did its last stop at the village at 5.30pm (cancelled the service after decades as it wasn't used enough! it was packed with those of us going to work in the morning, elderly people and mums going into town most days). OH drives but if we wanted to go out with friends he couldn't drink (taxis too expensive). The nearest 'country walks' were a 15min drive away at a (small) country park. I'm scared of horses so no riding for me (not that there was a stables nearby) so the whole thing was quite bleh.
But on the other hand, when we lived in N Wales we were 20mins either way to mountains or the beach (and regular buses! that went near stations! heaven!). Places to explore, 1hr 1/2 on the train to Liverpool (less in the car), lots to do but the area is 'deprived' and the teenagers spent most of the evenings drinking/taking drugs at the beach (we heard/saw the police breaking it up regularly).
I'd happily return to Wales but would never go back to Northants. I think it depends where you are in 'the countryside' what you can make of it. (I'd much rather explore somewhere than go shopping - bleh!).

Sukey I think it's very dependent on the area in general. Like I said, we don't have a problem with it but the villages further away from big cities do. When you have a big population of kids with no ability to drive (either too young or can't afford it) with no entertainment nearby and no public transport, drugs are very popular.

It's not like that in every small village and town obviously but it is becoming more of a problem now than it used to be.

Have to agree with others though that it takes time to get used to. We've lived here going on 10 years after living in a city before that and a town growing up and it's very odd not to be able to nip to the shop after 6 or go for a few drinks and jump into a taxi home. If I couldn't drive I'd go mad. We've had a cinema built within walking distance though recently which is lovely. We're right in the center of a big boom really, lots of development going on which we're pleased about, as is the rest of the village as we're finally going to have some much needed housing and facilities built.