To be worried about village life already?

[AdoptedBumpkin]

Hi all. This is my first post, so be gentle.

We moved as a family from Greater London to a medium sized village in a national park a few weeks ago. While I enjoy some aspects of rural life, I am beginning to worry about some of the villagers. They seem to gossip a lot about each other and it seems probable that that they must gossip about us, if only because not much else is going on.

Yesterday I was walking through the village with my daughter and passed a local old-ish couple. I heard the lady say something about 'the gilet' and I was wearing my purple North face gilet. It may have been positive and/or throwaway, but it spooked me that something so mundane would be commented on. I am used to a life where you really have to try hard to stand out.

I slouch around my village in all kinds of different clothes. No one blinks an eyelid. Some people wear gilets, some dont, some are quite hippyish, some not, it's a non issue. There an old gent that walks around the village every evening without fail wearing a huge luminous hi viz jacket with his walking stick.

This autumn, most people have been permanently wearing waterproofs.

Strangely although this is a pretty rural area, farming isn't the be all and end all here, which is something of a relief

Why would that be a relief?

Who looks after the fields and countryside around you then?

@AdoptedBumpkin - you are Flora Poste and I claim my £5.00.

If you move to a village, do NOT moan about agriculture. Do not bitch about tractors leaving mud on the lanes, or roaring down the village street at 6am, or combines going all night during harvest, or being held up by agricultural machinery on narrow lanes. To complain about any of that is on a par with moving next to an ambulance station and then bitching about the sirens.

OP, can I ask, why on earth have you moved to this place? It sounds hideous and I feel claustrophobic just reading your posts.

Can you move back at all?

GrumpyMiddleAgedWoman some people think the countryside is made of lego as a little gift for them to play with. No concept of it being a working place. Even national parks have farming. Perhaps we should rebrand farmers as "environment managers" so that people from towns get it.

Excellent Bertrand, bring on the Starkadders. That'll learn 'em

@Trewser - nothing against farming or farmers, but if life was all about farming, it would be a lot harder to fit in.

@Cosima1 - It was partly for work reasons, and also because we fancied getting out of London.

You're becoming a bit contradictory. You know in some detail how petty and gossipy people are. Yet you've barely begun to get to know anyone.

You haven't answered my earlier question about how much research - specifically into the cultural and social aspects of this and other candidate villages - you did before choosing and moving. (Not that you're obliged to answer of course but it is very relevant).

Researching physical infrastructure is one thing but staying for a few weekends at least, spending a bit of time in the pub, walking around in different weather, maybe attending an event or two, as well as doing the obvious demographic research, would have offered quite a different sort of insight.

I know sometimes people need to move for a job, so just go to a new place blind - but then know people through their job there. But if you're choosing to move because you're choosing a lifestyle for your family, surely you do your research.

So what I wonder is, where did your research let you down? How would you do it differently, knowing what you know now? Or is it too early to say because you haven't actually discovered very much yet?

Sorry, missed half a sentence there. 'But if you're moving because you're choosing a lifestyle for your family, surely you do your research about what that lifestyle is.'

We did research . Looking at it financially and with the children in mind, it was either move to one of several similar villages or to a larger town to the north which gave us a bad vibe.

“It just seems like some in these parts gossip about pettier things than town twits. I don't only mean the gilet comment.“
What other things do they gossip about? You

Surely the gilet comment will just he identifying you. Eg “that woman in the purple gilet is the one that’s bought the Jones’s old place”
The more people you introduce yourself to the fewer will need to identify you by the colour of your gilet.

I'm asking about social and cultural research.

You're expressing surprise and disquiet about village life. I'm asking what you'd found out about village life, in this particular village, before moving there.

Sorry but the words 'village people' always makes me titter and want to start dancing ....

We did visit beforehand and spoke to a few people in the area, and others who have lived in the wider area. The trouble with a village in a secluded part of the country is that it is hard to find people who have lived in the exact place, even online.

Which NP is it, OP? Seriously, you're not going to out yourself, as you are not the only person to relocate from London to a NP. 'Secluded' makes it sound like you're in the middle of nowhere.... Northumberland? Although Northumberland isn't as backwards as you seem to think this place is.

We moved to a village once, the house backed onto fields, and one day the farmer knocked on the door. How nice, I thought, he's come to welcome us ... but he said, in a somewhat unfriendly way 'I'm spraying the fields today'. I asked why he was telling me, and he said the previous owners had complained about it so he had to let them know every time . Now I live in another place surrounded by fields, but the only time I have complained to the farmer is when we were in the garden and bullets came whizzing over our heads and fell into the pond next to us. He had friends shooting on his land (a regular thing), but had neglected to tell them there was a house on the other side of that large row of trees.

“ Sorry but the words 'village people' always makes me titter and want to start dancing ”
It makes me think about building an effigy out of some sort of dried twig like material,.....

We are in the Peak District.

We moved to a village once, the house backed onto fields, and one day the farmer knocked on the door. How nice, I thought, he's come to welcome us ... but he said, in a somewhat unfriendly way 'I'm spraying the fields today'. I asked why he was telling me, and he said the previous owners had complained about it so he had to let them know every time.

That is hilarious.

Tbf, putting your clean washing out and then finding out the fields are being sprayed wouldn't be good....

'Reservoir 13' was quite a fun book about village life in the northern Peak District. Fictional obvs but good on the gradual tides of comings and goings.

I don’t live in a village but a small town, I live in a quite area with only a row of 8 terraced houses it is quite like Coronation Street most of the time. My neighbours seem to like to think they know me when in fact all they know is my first name, maybe my surname at a push from taking parcels in. It’s very gossipy and I presume if I had a crying row with DH, Deirdre 3 doors down would know about it the next day! I’d prefer to live somewhere where no one has the time to even consider who the fuck is living next to them let alone what they’re doing all the time. I would love to live in a City