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.

bluesmarties yes, would miss the space and the storage.

We moved from a large city to a small village, best of both world's, can get a train and be in the middle of large city within 30 minutes, the village had country walks, few local shops, 2 pubs, I cafe , a library, toddler groups and small hotel - nearest supermarket about a 10 minute drive!
Think you've maybe gone a bit to extreme rural, I would start looking around other small towns and villages where there's still things to do but with lots of country walks - that as loads of places that would may e suit you better

Sounds like you need to return to the city and your DH needs to see that.
Thank goodness you are renting. That makes everything so much easier, but apart from the decision to rent, sounds to me (and I mean this kindly) as if you have made many of the classic errors of city dwellers who see rural life as "the dream". I so want to shout at the telly when I watch Escape to the Country! Mud in the countryside - shock horror; having to drive everywhere to access services- no shit Sherlock.
There are so many more options though between the extremes of city living and rural isolation in a huge house.
There are lovely market towns with all the day to day facilities and cities within 1/2 hr drive. There are pretty villages with real communities and modern houses suited to families.
We live fairly rurally, but we have plenty of neighbours, 1 mile either way to shop/pub. Motorway 15 mins drive, yet straight on to lovely rural walks, surrounded by farmland. Sure, if we want a big city shop we have to drive for 45 mins, but that's only a few times a year.
When we were house hunting I was determined not to buy "old & cold" and our house is a conversion with underfloor heating (no idea why your tiles are cracking) and it's toasty.
Perhaps there is a mid point that would suit you all. Just decide before your DS goes to school.

Have you looked at the homeless statistics recently?

This is why country living in places like Surrey, Hampshire and Sussex are so expensive. Best of all worlds you describe. I live in London and have recently visited friends in Winchester (bloody gorgeous lifestyle and so close to London, they live in Twyford) and other friends in a village in Sussex (can't remember the name but equally idyllic) but you pay a fortune to live in these places!

Ah yes, real fires...the romance, the aura.....NOT.
Finding the right size bits of wood, having to have a stock of it near enough, making lighting it the first job when you arrive home in the winter every day. You put off going out on cold days because the fire might go out, the mess left by the wood pile and the burnt ashes. The discovery that, in a large room, it's only warm if you sit close to the fire.
Nope, nope nope.

Your op is absolutely why I have zero interest in moving to the country. Whilst I wish our garden was a bit bigger, I am not going to move to the back end of nowhere to achieve it.

I stuck it out for a decade and my overriding memory is mud. Not helped by having six consecutive shit summers.

Don't think of it as failure, look at it as a year's adventure and it simply confirmed that the town/city life suits your family better.

Are you in culture shock? I've lived in both. The vast majority of people who live in the countryside, live in villages or near them, in modern or modernised houses with proper bathrooms. And get on with life, school, jobs, etc just like in urban areas.

It sounds like you have gone for an extreme magazine - like "dream" that doesn't suit you. If you like the area look at a modern house in a village with a shop and some amenities.

Ive seen posters before determined to move to the Real Countryside - a huge old house in the middle of nowhere, (cheap for a reason), must have the freestanding bath, Aga, chickens, then brassed off at an exhausting lonely and impractical lifestyle. Its one thing if you are third generation farmers but you can still have the community /green space and quiet without the hard work.

You sound like you might need more of a half-way house solution, not city centre living but not quite as rural as you are just now.

We moved from the trendy west end of a large city (not London) to The Sticks, suburbia, boring as heck, cultural desert
BUT - primary and secondary schools in walking distance, shops for everything in walking distance, 200 yards to a river/wooded area for walks, 3x the space for less money our previous house cost us, a community feel and mutually supportive neighbours, we live 2 minutes by foot away from a train station which gets us in to the centre of The Big City in 12 minutes.
I love it! Best of both worlds.

My BiL lives very rurally and while I love visiting, no way could I live in a place with no pub, no shop, no post office, nothing! Needing to get the car out for every pint of milk would seriously annoy me. They however love where they live and successfully raised 2 children there.

Horses for courses, but you may need to think about in between options rather than just 'city=good' and 'country=bad'.

What will convince DH is that he never gets to see us while we’re awake! In the city he doesn’t have to get up until 8, it’s 6 here!

His “made our bed must lie on it” attitude is silly.

I hope people thinking of moving to the country read your post! YANBU and your DH will probably come round to moving back to city if you keep discussing the downsides of the country.

Friends who live in the country would say wait for the summer.

And what about having friends to stay ?
As for the mud etc yes it's always struck me that someone has to do a lot of very boring work to support a country lifestyle and hey shock horror it's usually a woman.

Metropolitanisation hasn't helped villages and small towns. More and more is sucked into cities. Need to reverse the trends. Would never bring my kids up in Manchester. Sad x

Sounds like you went too remote, too soon! DH and I nearly did this, beautiful old house with a couple of acres in the middle of nowhere, but thanks to a really shitty inspection report we pulled out. A couple of year of looking later and we found a house that ticked all of the 'dream' boxes for us but was still on the edge of a town with good transport links. I've met loads of lovely people, there are lots of good schools in the area, both primary and secondary, local shop, cafe and pub a short walk away. But still loads of lovely countryside walks of our doorstep.

To be fair our house is a bit of a project but we knew and wanted that. Our house also isn't cold or even draughty despite the age of it so I suppose we were lucky in that respect too. I guess there's an up-side to braining yourself regularly on low beams after all.

They want to depopulate the countryside and have everyone living in rabbit hutch blocks of flats : (

Our city is London, not Manchester.

Now we are parents, there is a lot of city talk about moving out and the dream house and what have you and I think DH sees it as a failure to go skulking back lol!

I'm a country girl - love it

Here's some advice:

• do you shopping on the internet and have it all delivered
• make friends with the folk in your nearest shop
• join things...anything at all just to get to know people and become a part of the community. Local primary pre-school? Volunteer for the PSA? It takes time to bed in to a rural community and requires you to be pro-active.
• stick it out till the summer when the real benefits will sock you between the eyes.
• get a different bath - a free-standing bath is not obligatory in the countryside!
• walk - just get out and walk - you will meet people and get chatting.

I feel dead if I cannot see a green hill or a tree - cities are living hell to me.....traffic smell, can't hold a conversation as you walk along because of traffic noise, general filth on the streets, light pollution, watching people walk past homeless on the streets with never a care, tall buildings blocking the light.....etc. Yuk!!

In our rural community we have a decent town nearby with cinemas, theatre, shopping centre; huge concert halls within an hour's drive. And in addition we have the joy if nature around us and views to die for! Wonderful!

I'm with you, op. Why live a lifestyle that makes you unhappy in a house you hate? What sort of weird attitude is "yes our quality of life is much lower and we're unhappy but we have to stay living like this because we once thought we'd like it"?

We are rural but a 20 min walk to the nearest coastal village which is brimming with life. We also live in a moneypit house tho, and I yearn for a modern energy efficient rural home. They do exist. Best of both worlds.
On a positive note I also find that our area is brimming with creative folk who make a real effort with social stuff. And we e been to the theatre more since moving than when we lived in London... sometimes it's a half hour drive. But it's affordable. And while not west end material is often more interesting.

@LibbyBrown - yes they do.

If OP had bought the house I'd say give it a bit longer, but as she's renting and unhappy, I don't get why her DH wants to stick it out.

I think houses like that will be demolished and those left will go up a lot in value.

I thought country living would be healthier than city living but reality for me is having to drive me and kids everywhere. Have to drive to work which shuts at 5pm. Not same number of variety of activities available here as in city. Not same variety of restaurants - no healthy places or sushi/Turkish. nothing is 24 hour. I stay in and watch tv here way more than I did living in the city as everything was easier there. Plus no gas here - all open fires and oil man.

London schools are generally better than country schools. children need museums theatres toddler groups and parks more than mud and impractical baths! tell dh to tell people youve moved back for ds sake!

"Park" not work

I was a very rural country girl from birth until 3 years ago , when I moved to a large town , most of my friends said I would find it hard , strange , overcrowded etc but in truth I've loved everything from the moment I arrived and my only regret is the move didn't happen sooner , I said before the move that I could always move back to a rural setting if it didn't suit and would have if I needed to - still would if I decide eventually it's not for me
Life is short - enjoy where you live - if that means another move so be it