To ask what it’s really like to live rurally?

[BuffaloCauliflower]

Currently holidaying in the Lake District and as usual wishing I could up sticks from London and move to somewhere beautiful and with real community. But having grown up on the edge of London I’m so used to a world where there’s buses every 10 minutes, 24 hour supermarkets 5 minutes away, lots of jobs, lots of schools, I know I really have no idea what it would be like to live in the countryside. I’m definitely in a nice, more affluent part of the countryside right now and there will be areas far more rural than this, so trying to think broadly, I know not everywhere will be the same.

What jobs do people do? Everyone surely can’t commute miles and miles to cities. Where I am now I’d guess a lot of farmers and a lot in hospitality, but that can’t be all. What’s the transport like? Does it matter? How do your kids get to see their friends when they don’t drive and everyone’s houses are so far apart? Can people move from the city and be happy, and accepted into small village communities?

A broad question I know but there’s such a range of places that will all be different, but would love the real story instead of just the ‘holiday’ view of the country.

Disclaimer: I’m aware as a born and bred Londoner my concept of what is rural might be really wrong, and that I also very likely have some rose tinted views of the countryside. I’m not trying to offend, so please be kind, I’m genuinely trying to learn!

I lived fairly rurally, in a large village. But because the school was also rural, the catchment area was massive, up to 10 miles from edge to edge so friends lived all over the place.

We were lucky to be quite near a large town and have good train links in our village but some of my friends were really in the boondocks and as soon as you were away from the larger villages, there would be one bus a day. All the parents did a lot of driving, getting us to our evening jobs and school, never mind our social lives.

Very very little for teenagers to do except hang around, but to be honest, it's not that much better here, except at least kids' friends live no more than 10 mins away.

Everyone learned to drive ASAP.

I do think about moving back but it's the lack of transport that puts me off, among other things.

Bad internet. Your surroundings make you feel good. Can breathe more easily. Casual sexual harassment and robberies by strangers in the street are actually rare. Burglaries a bit less so. Less rubbish thrown all over the place. Bikes still get stolen, but not quite so much.

Society is nicer in some ways (see above) but some people do judge anyone who differs from them at all.

All in all, will never go back to London to live. Even working there feels like riding the train into Mordor.

What I'm struggling to fathom is given that living rurally seems by all accounts to be so much nicer than living in London (the benefits are obvious who wouldn't trade helicopters for birdsong?), then why are the rates of depression higher in rural areas?

And I'm comparing to a not very affluent (average salary comparable to other UK cities) part of London with its fair share of crime and unemployment.

See Dorset, Devon, Cornwall, Sussex, Suffolk, Lakeland etc on attached link.
Am baffled.

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/ng-interactive/2019/may/06/london-v-england-where-does-your-area-fit-in-the-great-divide

Comparing living in London to a place in the middle of nowhere is a false comparison. I would not like to live in the middle of nowhere, but that does not mean you have to opt for London. Plenty of small towns where you have services and loyts of access to countryside.

We used to live in a village .(moved there when my parents left London when I was a teenager .)Still lived there when we had our first child.All the time I was growing up, I hated being so far away from the bigger towns .Moved into suburbs 20 odd years ago ,love it ,best of both really .River nearby ,parks ,woods etc .More places to walk the dog than when we lived in the sticks!.

dameofdilemma I imagine that's because if you haven't chosen a countryside lifestyle and it doesn't suit you, it could be pretty depressing. There must be lots of people who don't move away from their rural area because they are tied to family or can't afford to etc.

Many of the people who love living rurally have probably chosen it, like me, after having experienced city and suburban life. Also it depends on the area. When we were looking to move to Cumbria we looked at the far West villages and towns and they seemed very drab, depressing and down-at-heel. I can well imagine being depressed living there, even though it has such beautiful countryside right nearby. Where we live is still in Cumbria but completely different in terms of demographic and atmosphere.

Because living rurally isn't actual magic.

I love living in Suburbia. I can walk to country walks across fields, and it is a short drive to cinema, theatre and restaurants.

Sadness correlates with how enjoyable your life isn't and how nice the setting isn't.

Depression, on the other hand, is a mental illness. Different things can exacerbate depression that don't constitute more or less nice - you are probably (for instance) a lot more likely to get depressed if you don't have anything you really have to do every day than if you work down a mine or on a rubbish tip in China.

5 hour round trip to IKEA, not counting being in there shopping!

Re, depresssion, the analysis I read in the Guardian this week, linked areas with high depression rates with poverty and unemployment rather than rural/urban.

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/may/06/most-depressed-english-communities-in-north-and-midlands

Drink driving is common, if you're known to the owners they can get you a parking spot round the back so that the police don't spot your car sitting out the front and look for you on the way home

We have very little crime thankfully

Does not compute...

I've heard some young boys come to our pub from a neighbouring town as a pre drinking thing before their proper night out and there's suspicion that they might take drugs. But you certainly couldn't buy any in the pub and I've never seen evidence of drug taking

But drink driving is encouraged? Good God, it sounds terrible.

Absolutely love it, I’m not at all made for the city life. There are cons of course but wouldn’t live anywhere else. I need the silence.

It’s not that silent. I’ve had to go inside to work from home on many glorious sunny days due to the overly loud bird song making professional phone calls sounding like ur Dr Dolittle.

It’s not a terrible problem or anything 😂

Re the drink driving - I don’t live there now but have moved around a bit and Broadway/Cotswolds is absolutely FULL of drunk drivers!

It’s shocking tbf. It’s not yoofs in small cars with dump valves, it’s the older, “socially distinguished” who are the drunk driving maniacs who prevail there!! Just strong levels of blatantly wrecked driving- presumably because they def do get away with it?

As someone who has lived incredbly rurally, then in a big city, then in a small town, I'd not live rurally again. Lived in an area with gorgeous countryside and a lovely beach on our doorstep but nothing else. Literally. Nothing in walking distance (no pub, shop, anything). Not an insignificant drive to get most places either. Like PPs said - in summer it was lovely - could stock up on food and have picnics and long walks etc. Shit in winter. SO shit. Also inconvenient, and not very fun. If you forget something for a recipe it's a right ordeal to go and get it. No popping to the ATM, nipping out for a pint of milk, etc. When I think back to that time it's a cross between 'wow that was so beautiful in summer' and 'God that was mind-numbingly boring for 90% of the year'. Spent a fortune on petrol too. Oh should add，the buses were shit too - scheduled as one an hour but realistically then just turned up when they fancied it so you could be waiting up to three hours if you needed a bus. Friends often can't be assed to visit (maybe occasionally in summer) and those who don't drive are a write off unless you are willing to be taxi service. You have to do most of the travelling to people if you want to see them. And if you're invited for nights out you have to choose between going and not having a drink or going, having a drink and paying an actual arm and a leg for a cab. It's really boring for young people and I'd say almost verging on unfair to live somewhere like this with teens! If you have teens and can't afford for them to have their own car, I'd not even consider moving somewhere like this. It's so much better to live in a town - my favourite place to live was a beautiful coastal town with gorgeous countryside in very short driving distance, as well as everything else you want in life - shops, restaurants, cafes, schools, parks, etc.

Jobs: my dad was a programmer working in Lancaster, my mum was a writer working from home. Next door neighbour a translator working from home. A friend works in marketing for a local school, and her husband is an accountant. Solicitors also in need in the area.

As a kid: need a lift to go everywhere, but parents basically trusted us because there was an upper limit on how much trouble we could get into. And no one did get into trouble. Almost none of the kids in my school smoked. As a teen I was very fit from all the natural exercise.

As for the shops stuff... We just never did run out of things. When not having shops is your norm, you develop pretty easy coping strategies of just buying plenty.

I couldn’t live somewhere really rural. We’ve rented cottages in places like that and within a couple of days we are bored.
We live on the Northumberland/Co Durham border near a medium sized town which has all the usual retailers, Matalan, B&Q, Tesco Extra etc but a five minutes drive the other way has you in the Northumberland countryside or breathtaking moors. We have Newcastle or Durham 25 mins away too. The actual town isn’t the nicest but I love living so close to a choice of schools, shops, pubs, restaurants all within walking distance.
I do think you can have the best of both worlds living in a town which is near countryside and cities.

Love it. But I was brought up in it and although I travel into town to work no amount of tea in china could get me to live in the town.

You do need to get into a bit of a routine for your shopping etc as it isn't acase of nipping down the road if you forget the milk. Buy a chest freezer and freeze bread and milk. keep the car fuelled. Buy decent clothes for the weather and enjoy :)

One thing i will say though - and I mean this in the nicest possible way. If you are completely new to rural/country life and make the move then please please familiarise yourself with the country code! We have new people moving out here now and then and they are always welcomed but it can be so frustrating for folk who live and work the countryside when people move out, think its great and start parking over gates/access to fields, letting dogs run riot and disturb livestock, complain about the smells/sound etc etc. Just something to bare in mind :)

I really don't get the attraction of towns. I live rurally and probably visit a town once a month if that, and then it is usually to buy something specific that I can't buy online and get delivered.

How anyone could voluntarily live in a city like London or similar and actually enjoy the filth, noise, and endless concrete and bricks is beyond me.

Still... live and let live.

You can live in plenty of places which feel fairly rural without going to the extreme of being gazillions of miles from a shop or a pub. These threads always seem to polarise into comparing concrete jungles with remote idylls, whereas obviously there is actually a huge scale of different levels between.

For example there's a massive difference in how rural it felt for us to live in an Oxfordshire village and a Cumbria village. Nearest supermarket about the same distance, pub in both villages, village shop in both etc. But surrounding area very different- bigger gaps between villages here, wilder, less manicured countryside, much much less traffic, lower poulation, different lifestyle feel altogether.

London isn't your typical town or city, though, it's a massive noisy expensive place of its own. I enjoy city life but wouldn't consider living there. If that's your only experience of non-rural life then of course you think towns are awful! I've lived in the middle of a small city before with beautiful Georgian architecture, quiet roads with good public transport, green airy spaces all over (3 parks within 10 mins walk), great community, groups etc, woods, fields etc 10 mins drive away, plus all the convenience of shops and lovely restaurants. plus as everyone has says, there are plenty of towns and villages at other points on the urban-rural spectrum.

I hated living in London. I missed proper countryside so much and that it was such a long drive out of London to get to it.
But I would hate living rurally as well.

We moved from south east London to quite an isolated place - it was just TOO isolated for us.... it wasn’t in a village (but you could easily drive to one), it had terrible phone signal and broadband, I was looking after a small baby and we were still sharing one car. It made me miserable. We got snowed in, I frequently went days without speaking to anyone else .... BUT then we moved not far away into a medium sized village - it is full of young families as well as older people who have lived there all their lives. Quite a few newbies and we have always been made very welcome . Village has a shop, post office, pub, school, doctors and dentist, plus we are 20 min drive away from a big town and supermarket etc. There are buses to the town but it is quite expensive and only once an hour. We have two cars now, still crap mobile signal but good broadband thankfully. We adore living here, it is just wonderful.

Maybe I’m basing it too much on my own experience but I would choose village-near-town any day over properly rural.

Things I’d recommend you do if you move to the countryside:

• get properly good outerwear (raincoat, warm coat, wellies, boots, hat etc)
• find a hobby for winter time! It gets a bit boring!!
• have a car per adult unless you’ll both be making the same journey every day
• get used to having to plan shopping more thoroughly
• have emergency supplies in (for example in case you get snowed in, electricity cuts out, water supply is shut off)