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!

Another one really late to this but also very rural.

Dh is a farmer, I work about forty miles away as a solicitor. Forty miles here is about an hour plus drive each way, on a good day.

Our nearest non family neighbours are 3 miles as the crow flys, 5 by road.

Dh brother and family also live here and we are all very close, you would have to be or it wouldn't work.

There is no public transport or council services. The kids have a mile walk then a 30 minute taxi to school. The bins need taken that same mile. Dh has a snow plough but if it snows we would be last in the area to get a council plough to us.

Nearest village is five miles and there are buses to town from it, one in morning and one home in afternoon.

Rural crime is a real issue just now for the first time ever. We have a lot of dogs and yes guns. In an emergency I would reckon half hour for emergency services if lucky.

Our post lady delivers at tea time, online shopping has been a godsend for SIL and I. Tesco do deliver as of last year and prime for most things. Internet is a joke and there is zero mobile reception.

It can be bleak, cold and lonely. More so on a shitty windy day than a snowy one. If it snows we are stuck so tend to make those fun days. Get the stock safe and fed and then sledge....

SIL and I are very close. We don't go out much but tend to socialise with them every weekend, drinks, dinner and often games. People come to visit and stay over on the most part. Neighbours would come by quad over the hills.

I usually feel safe, it's my home. I struggle more in a town at night. The noise, the light. Dh struggles in busy areas full stop. Since the theft last month I have felt more vulnerable and exposed. It's so dark here. I can't explain that really, violated maybe. Everyone was away that night and I was alone with baby DD. It never entered my head to be scared before. Think it will be a while before I feel safe at night when alone.

We have our own meat, fruit and veg. We make a lot of flavoured gin and vodka.

It can take a while to feel part of the community but these days there are village Facebook pages that are good for fostering a sense of community along with events.

Buses are expensive and infrequent so you need a car. We use school buses to get the children to school. It is expensive sending them to college as the transport is no longer subsidised over 16. Cost £200 a term, could even be more now.

It’s a fair drive to town for shopping etc but I often use Tesco online and get it delivered these days unless I fancy going into town.

However it is a lot different from London. The view out my bedroom window is of open fields. There are nice walks straight from home. The children’s schools are small and friendly. I prefer living here even though I still like going back to visit London.

As for work, currently I have a five min commute as work in a nearby village. I have worked in the local town too, about a 15min drive. Currently work in a preschool. If you wanted something different to care, retail, farm, catering you’d need to go into town or one of the nearest city which is approx 40 min commute.

Leave voters everywhere:(

I live in a tiny village of fewer than 30 houses on the top section of the North Coast 500 route in the Highlands. Nearest corner shop is 7 miles away, nearest supermarket is 25 miles away, nearest proper high street is over 100 miles away in Inverness. I'm freelance and work from home, DH is an engineer and works about 15 miles away.

After seeing MIL go through old age and end of life here, I am determined we'll have moved away before we get to that stage. At the moment we can end up doing a 220-mile round trip for a 10-minute hospital appointment. The 'local' hospital is still a 90-mile round trip and has very limited services.

We live in a village which has a train station. Essential as I don't drive and there are no buses.
DJ works away all week.
I do Genealogy for other people, do a lot of veg fruit growing. Make my own chutney and marmalade. Dr's and dentist appointments can be a but of a pain to get to. If I'm going to an appointment I combine it with a trip into town.
I also do lots of shopping online.

I love rural/village life. It's quiet, lots of lovely walks, local pubs/school and a nice sense of community. Of course that can come with pitfalls too such as everyone knowing your business but having been anonymous when living in a city in my younger years I have to say I enjoy the fact that my kids are growing up with familiar faces and a strong sense of community around them.

I wouldn't change it and im also lucky that our village isn't a million miles away from towns and good transport links either

Forgot to say. The only shop in the village is a Gun shop selling guns to farmers etc.. And one crap pub.
We have two freezers and keep them stocked up for winter. Some lovely walks tho and a friendly community

I think we must have the worst of both worlds where I live! none of the conveniences of the city, still need to drive everywhere, but we're not even in proper countryside.

I think you just adjust TBH. It's only reading this that I became aware that a routine hospital appointment didn't used to involve at least half a day off work, or that parents weren't responsible for ferrying their DC everywhere.

As I said I wouldn't change it for the world. I would however advise that you don't plump for a deserted farmhouse six miles from civilisation if you're fresh out of London- there's plenty of middle ground!

I was brought up in a village. Big enough for a primary and secondary school, butchers, couple of shops, doctors, buses every 30 mins into town. Then moved with DH to a similar village 8 miles away. Now living in a village with no shop, no school, 3-4 buses a day, no mains gas but i have great internet as BT have fibre here! Amazingly 😂

2 miles up a mountain and its a constant incline. No pavement but a through road to other rural villages/hamlets. When there is snow I usually get it. Lived here for 7 years and ive been snowed in 3 times, just for the day or so.

2 teens and one 11 yr old. Older 2 will often walk into the next village to see friends and younger will be driven down to see his.

I love the walks through the mountains and quarries. I can often go for a few hours and not see anyone. Its heaven.

We have a small holding and i work part tine and dh full time. Town is 8 miles away and there's a cinema, supermarkets, pubs, cafes. Its a very touristy area and very busy with mountain walkers and the area hosts a lot of outdoor activities and races.

I loathe going to the city. Too many people and traffic.

We lived rurally for about ten years, as others said loved many aspects of it but there are serious downsides and we moved when our DS was 10, for work reasons and anticipating the teenage years.

The lack of diversity is a real issue in any rural areas, DH was a Governor at the local school and to try and find an opportunity for a new teacher to gain experience teaching children from different backgrounds was really difficult . People’s attitudes can be shockingly racist and insular.

The pros were that we were easily welcomed into the community (no doubt because we were white, middle class, church goers) and we did have many lovely times. Absolutely needed a car each and I was fortunate enough to be a SAHM with money to spend ... if you couldn’t afford to go out and do things it could be very bleak. If you didn’t ‘fit in’ with the local demographic you would find yourself very isolated.

Taxis, Uber, take away deliveries absolutely not available ... to book a taxi you would need to reserve it a week in advance and none later than 11pm! On the other hand lots of local teenagers willing to babysit and I easily made friends who would offer sleepovers etc to my DS (we had no family locally).

We now live on the edge of a small market town which has the best of both worlds, plenty of countryside locally but also facilities for our teenage DS and a wider cross section of society.

I live in a semi rural village.
Nearest shop is 10 min drive. We get cut off by snow, as they don’t grit our lanes. You can get out, but would need to park on a main road.
Bus every two hours. Mainline train station to two cities. ( 8min drive)

I think it’s the best of both worlds really.

Living on the fringe of the lakes/ peaks /dales is better than deep rural.

I live in a tiny hamlet. We have nothing but a postbox. There is the old bus stop but no bus service!
3/4 miles into a market town which has supermarkets etc.
I think whether you’d enjoy rural living depends on your interests. I have more pets than I’d guess would be average and living rurally facilitates that. We have a pony, a dog, 2 cats, 3 chickens, a rabbit and fish. Hopefully soon to be a pet lamb also. I imagine it could be dull if you weren’t a fan of animals and nature.
There’s lots of lovely walks and woods etc where I rarely see a sole. It’s lovely.
Winter there is mud. And snow. And rain. Being snowed in for a week isn’t unheard of. So a good freezer is essential. Although I now have a 4x4 so that helped a lot the last time it snowed.
My daughters in a class of 5 at school. But I travel a few villages away for that and it isn’t one of the schools in town.
I know people with all of the jobs you could imagine really. A mixture of commuting and local industries.
You can buy a 5 bedroom house with a few acres and stables with stunning scenery (plenty of areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty around here) for about 385k around here.
I think people fail with moving to the countryside when they move and start moaning to farmers about the noise of their livestock at 5am and things like that. I’ve heard about it often.
It’s very different but I wouldn’t change a thing.

Do you not mentally stress/panic about what happens if you are seriously unwell (a dr home visit as in too much pain to move) or need an urgent ambulance? Or your elderly relatives do?
We get an ambulance. Even when I lived even more rurally in a small holding on the side of a hill an ambulance was there within 25 minutes when we called one. If you’re mega rural eg on the moors then you’d get an air ambulance.

What do you do about buying fresh produce? (if it's several hours drive to buy a tomato or a peach) Or do you grow your own?
Not an issue for me as although I’m rural here I can be in a shop in 15 minutes. Even mega rural places tend to have a small village shop within 20 minutes or so.

If you live alone or happen to be alone (family away), how do you cope with the stress of a man breaking in to your home while you are alone and too far to get help? (no one will hear you scream)
I have a few houses around me here so not the same concerns. But when I was alone occasionally at an isolated house I used to live in, it never really crossed my mind. You’d have been lucky to have found the house in the first place. But then I’ve always had dogs and usually always a big one. Crime is pretty much unheard of here. Also, quite a lot of people in stand-alone houses such as farms or small holdings where no one could here you scream also happen to have guns. So I think you’d be stupid to risk breaking in.

I lived rurally in New Zealand. It was a massive dairy farm. Absolutely STUNNING, especially at sunrise as the sun would turn all the mountains and sky pink and purple.

Very isolating though. No phone reception so if going on a long walk or hike you had no phone. Driving was a must as no public transport passed anywhere near.

So so gorgeous. But not for me, I missed people.

A few summers ago we went on holiday to Donegal and that was really rural. The village had one post office, one tiny Spar (where a tub of ice cream was 10e!) and about 5 pubs. Nearest ATM was 'in the next village' which was 12 miles away. The nearest supermarket was 90 minutes drive and the local hospital was the same. The caretaker of the cottage said he was having cancer treatment and had to drive 3 hours each time to the more specialized hospital. There were hardly any young people about, apparently they all went off for university and never came back.

I wouldn’t call village with a Post Office, Spar and five pubs ‘really rural’ but I guess it is all about expectations .

It never occurred to me to worry about someone breaking into my house, crime tends to be much lower in rural areas (although not unheard of) & I’m another one who never locked my door, although I tend not to where I live now either (small town).

The point about walking is another issue, although we were just under 3 miles from my DS’s school it would have been incredibly difficult to walk there, no pavements at all - I suppose we could have crossed through fields but that is not easy. Fortunately there was a great school bus service. But no other public transport apart from a weekly bus to the nearest town .

Yeah, that's not rural 😂 We don't have any pubs, shops or post offices!

I used to do a five mile round trip to walk DD to nursery last year, on roads with no pavements. It's fine. You just get used to wearing visible clothing and getting off the road when you hear or see cars. You see masses of wildlife, too!

I think it depends where you live Sarah, not being deliberately obtuse but were I lived there were deep ditches on both sides of the road so it would have been a challenge to leap out of the way of the farm traffic and speeding commuters .

I moved from a city five years ago to an area that is called semi rural. I love that it's so quiet, crime free and I have a lovely house and garden but that's about it. There is no bus route and the roads are too dangerous to walk on, I have to drive my dog two miles to the nearest safe place. I can not walk out of my home anywhere and when people visit there is nothing to do within walking distance. There is no bus, no community, no shop, no pub, no post box. The five or so neighbours all work miles away and are out by 5am returning home late evening, we are all on just nodding terms but everyone's every move is watched and commented on by someone else ( eg a neighbour may say something like ' I noticed Jo Bloggs left his house at 5.45 this morning, that's strange as he usually leaves at 5am....'that sort of thing)
I've enjoyed the peace after city living, I've enjoyed no cold callers and the beautiful birds and other wild life that come into the garden. I've hated the inconvenience of having to drive everywhere and am now feeling socially isolated. A move back to the city is in the pipeline although I will miss the house and garden

I grew up living somewhere very rural (a couple of houses down a long track) without mains water, frequent power cuts etc. The freedom I experienced was immense - played outdoors all day. However I didn't used to like the fact that I couldn't walk home from school with friends or get the bus with them, it made me "different" and I felt a little isolated. When I was younger Mum collected me from school (when she remembered, but that's another story!!) and when I was older I got the bus to as close as it got to our house and then had to walk the rest of the way home which was about 4 miles. Older still and I cycled to school which took ages. We were miles away from any shops or cinemas etc and just going to swimming club took a fair while by the time we'd driven there and back.

I moved away as soon as I was 18 and lived in Manchester which I loved and then spent many years moving constantly (military). Having believed when I was younger that I would never move to anywhere really rural again DH and I do, in fact, live in a small village in a very rural county. We don't have children so school isn't an issue (the nearest school would require a fair drive) and there is a small village shop. I adore where I live; so many walks and trail runs right from my door through beautiful countryside and it's quiet and peaceful - the only noises really are from animals and farmers going about their work which I like. The downside is that you have to be able to drive to realistically get anywhere as the public transport available is very limited and work is also limited in the immediate area so I have about an hour's drive at the start and finish of my working day.

YY, absolutely depends, and I wasn't so much comparing as commenting (I don't imagine it'd be as much fun with school-age children as with a toddler who is still at the 'tractor TRACTOR!' stage).

I haven't RTFT but I'm picking up a constant refrain of "you have to drive everywhere" as if it's a bad thing. A car represents freedom! It goes precisely where I want, precisely when I want.
I don't have to walk to a bus-stop to get a bus to get a train. I don't have to set off 15 minutes in advance in case the bus is early and they go without me. I don't have to hang around because the bus is late (or cancelled!) I don't have to wait about on platforms for a change of train. I don't have to worry about them going on strike. etc etc
I was once asked by a traffic survey about my journey. They wanted to know where I was going from (A) and to (B). I told them that that was nonsense: I was going from A to B to C to D, back to C, on to E and then home to F. Try doing that on public transport, whilst conveying DC, all their kit and groceries! The car is the multi-taskers friend.
Public transport in big cities ain't all that. My friend in London says that he allows at least an hour to get anywhere in the metropolis. I can drive to town and back in half that time.

Never could I live in London or a big city. We farmed for twenty years, three miles from village, five from nearest shop. The only thing I hated was townies driving like idiots in their Chelsea tractors and whinging about cows pooing on the roads and church bells.
Now live two miles from village that has small shop, eight miles from nearest supermarket and train station. There is a bus service of sorts. Very quiet but as I get older I want to move to a small town in Wales, so I don't have to drive everywhere and where I would get cut off if it snows or freezes.
Really quite looking forward to it just need to persuade DH