Living the dream... and not liking it :(

[hardtoplease]

We made the jump from city to countryside last year. I’ve got everything we talked about, big house, real fires, stand-alone bath, wet room, huge garden, country lanes, nature... and I don’t like it one bit.

The bath. How I longed for a bathroom like in the magazines. It’s crap. Water splashes everywhere including underneath and it starts to small damp if not wiped up. So you just finish a nice relaxing soak and then you’re on your hands and knees in a towel trying to wipe it all up. It’s a big house, it’s hard and expensive to heat. The underfloor heating is cracking the tiles so it looks awful and feels nasty. The place is so big the water pressure is shite and it takes ages for the hot water to come through the tap.

Something died in our roof space, the smell lasted 6 weeks. We couldn’t find it. Experts couldn’t find it. We run out of stuff constantly and the nearest shop is a small garage a few miles away. We have to drive to get anywhere. So much for all those country walks. We did more when we drove in from the city at weekends. The weather has been shit so we haven’t used the garden much. Trees came down. We were snowed in. The cars were iced up in the mornings. When the electricity went we were grateful for the real fires but the mess, the mess. And there’s mud tramped in everyday.

It’s a huge house. I have to walk up two flights of stairs if I’ve left something in the bedroom. Everything you want upstairs is downstairs and vice versa.

The saving grace... we rented! We can move back (not for six months:( ) to our city place and live the real dream with 24 hour shops within walking distance and restaurants and coffee shops and low bills and no stairs and I can have a bath without it being a major expedition. We can drive to the countryside when we want and then leave the dead animals and mud there when we leave.

But DH thinks we should stick with the decision now we have made it! He has a huge commute instead of a short walk, but he says it’s “running away”. He hates the commute! He’s a wackaloon!

Who is being unreasonable?! We’ve tried it for six months. We tried it. It’s shit.

Styyour kids might not all be so delighted, especially once secondary age!

My parents moved to the countryside to create their idea of an idyllic family life when I was 7, and I missed calling for my friends from the start (they compounded the isolation unintentionally by rejecting the village school and sending us to one 7 miles away) but enjoyed some aspects, such as the big garden, for a few years. I started writing detailed plans to travel the world and then move to a city when I was 10, and at 11.5 persuaded my parents to let me weekly board at my then still fairly new school to be with my friends. I left to travel 3 weeks after my A levels finished and never lived with my parents again. I went to uni but only visited for a week at a time in the holidays, always worked in my uni city over the holidays and never moved my stuff back.It was just too dull and inconvenient.

I say try it over summer and then decide. I live rually but on the edge of a small town and half hour away from two big cities. Love it!

Sty90 surely 2000 people is an average village population not a big town? Did you mean 20,000?

OP I loved your opening post, so made me giggle, I have been there with the 'dream'. It was crap!
I have also moved around from a large busy town, to rural isolation and then on to a small market town.
The dream of rurality was open fields, friends camping, barbecues, real log fires and growing our own veg. Reality was stuck at home whilst OH continued his life in town, frequently being his taxi (even at night with me and the kids in our pj's), nobody visiting, rats when we knocked down a large shed, mice living in the house, corn flies in EVERYTHING (even behind the glass in photo frames), half hour drive to the shop or library, driving the kids to school and back (though at that point at least the village still had a financially viable school, recently closed down and increasingly a thing of the past given lack of government funding); and bloody rabbits that ate everything I ever tried to grow. Fat rabbits, starving kids!
Now I live in a small market town. River and country walks at the bottom of the street, 10 mins walk the other way, winebars, pubs, shops and restaurants. Kids could walk to and from school, a God send when I went back to work; kids could go shopping themselves from about the age of 10, or pop to the library without help, so great for developing their independence; a short car ride to a mainline train station, couple of hours to Edinburgh or London. Regional airport 30 mins away.

I have loads of friends, we frequently meet in independent coffee shops or for an early evening drink. This Yorkshire market town is great. I have found my 'dream' (nearly!)

I could have written your post, we made a similar move from London to a massive 6 bedroom house in the middle of nowhere 18 months ago the only difference we bought it so we are stuck here!

My suggestions for coping:

Sign up to Ocado smart pass - Ocado didn't even deliver to my area but before we moved I emailed them and asked if they could and they said ok!?!
Get Amazon Prime, I can usually hold out 24 hours for whatever I need
Get a decent fridge, our Samsung keeps fruit and veg fresh for weeks past sell by date (witchcraft maybe)
Like other said freeze bread and milk, I also have cartons of almond milk if that fails, we also have a breadmaker. I never pop out for milk its too far and I can’t be bothered.
Get a heated blanket for your bed especially if DH is in London, in fact we have heated blankets on our sofas too, awesome if we can’t be bothered to light a fire.
My DH is in London one night a week and I love getting to starfish that night.
Plan monthly trips to London my ILs live there so we always have a place to stay and it means i can get my fix of shops, civilisation and decent food.
I have drop zones in the kitchen and at the top of the stairs so if I am going up or down I take whats in the zone, have trained DH to do this too.
Too far to a gym so we bought a running machine, we also have a good coffee machine, multiple tvs plus all streaming services.
Majestic deliver so we never run out of wine
Also get a cleaner, ours is amazing she even cleans our fires for us.

We have turned our house into a place we dont really want to leave it has everything we could want or need in the house so we don’t really need to go out. No shop or pub in our village but we do have 4G phone signal and super fast broadband which is essential to function. I truly couldn’t imagine living in close proximity to people again!

Like others have said stick it out for the summer, spring, summer and autumn are great in the country, winter is shit and basically about endurance. From the sounds of things its a combo of wrong house wrong location for you not necessarily the countryside. Maybe compromise with hubs on the next house but honestly with the internet country living is so much easier now then its ever been. I'm a convert!

This thread is so interesting. I also dream about rural living. It's in my blood, but it won't be happening any time soon.

I'd love posters to actually name where they live or have tried living and plus points. (Maybe namechange though? )

Having relocated 9 times the worst time to move house is late summer until spring.
It's hard going. You see everywhere at it's worst. Meeting people is also harder in the winter.

I would give it a full 12 months but you may find the dream has been killed. My advice to anyone relocating is to do it in Spring or early summer if you have a choice. The happiest places I've lived or enjoyed living are those with a spring or summer move. The mist miserable an aitumn/winter move.

Snog

No I did mean 2000,

I wanted to live in London - for about 2 years in my 20s. Now you would have to pay me a lot to move there. So busy, it takes bloody ages to get anywhere and everyone is so grumpy and rude in the city. Give me the mud any day!

But that's my preference, everyone is individual and if that's what you prefer that's up to you. As has been said repeatedly it sounds like you went to the other extreme. There are so many villages with bustling social life but the fields on your doorstep (we live in one although I could cheerfully go more rural) and pavements! And plenty of shops!
The house isn't yours so don't worry about that stuff, find somewhere else that suits both of you. I used be a lettings agent in the country and your story is so so so familiar. Some couples went back to London after 6 months with a sigh of relief but others realised that maybe the wonky farm cottage in middle of nowhere was a bit too extreme and found happiness in a bigger village or market town.

I know it's a pain to move but now you have a better idea what you want rather than what you think you want, why not have a look around for a better location/house?

Lots of posts saying the winter is bad in the countryside - since it is an annual event lasting several long and unpredictable months I think that it's actually good you have seen the place at its worst and maybe been disavowed of some romantic notions.

I have moved around a fair bit as an adult and would say life is too short to stay in a place where you're not happy. And as you describe it you don't even have basic amenities nearby. I can see how bring organised with food shopping etc would help but if there's nothing to do nearby why would you stay, especially because of your young child.
When I left a big city the thing I missed most was the spontaneity of life. What shall we do this weekend? Where shall we eat tonight? New restaurants or plays or exhibitions.
It's a good thing that city living is not for everyone, as they'd be even more crowded, and a good thing that country living is not for everyone as that would defeat the purpose of moving out to the country. But whichever you prefer don't stay there if its not right.

@Ilikepinkso
'My dream was to live in the countryside and I’m now living the dream and am now over it.'
I want this on a tea towel and a t-shirt 😄

I grew up in a smallish village. I love going to the countryside...for a weekend. Country walks and all are great. I love nature. But I moved to a capital city for uni 4 years ago and now, while I may not live in this city all my life, I will never live permanently in the countryside again. I love that the shops are open late, and I can literally pop downstairs in my slippers to get a pint of milk. I love that there's public transport (though you can never find a property with a driveway) and you can walk everywhere. I love that I can walk around in the middle of the night if I'm feeling restless without finding myself lost in acres of fields. I love that the city is alive every hour of every day. Whenever I go home I lie in bed at night and wonder why it's so silent. There's no traffic, no laughter, no loud drunken chatting under the window. Granted I've never lived as rural as you seem to, but I love the city. I love the country too, but it's different. I think you maybe loved the country a lot more when you just visited on the weekends. And you can continue to do that and get fresh air every week, even if you live in the city. But it seems like you'd be much happier if you moved back.

• by "go home" I mean when I visit my parents in my family home. They still live in the small town/countryside area I grew up in.

You have described my childhood.

I escaped to the city as soon as I could 😂😂