To want to move to Yorkshire/Cornwall without being able to drive?

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Come October, I will have the freedom to move wherever I like. No responsibilities in terms of mortgage or kids etc. I've spent the past few years in big cities and am absolutely sick of pollution/constant music and noise/concrete jungles etc. I can work anywhere (frontline NHS role in a field experiencing severe staff shortages) and my main priority is to move somewhere beautiful!

I would love to move to either the Yorkshire Dales or Cornwall as both are stunning but am aware that public transport isn't brilliant in either place. Learning to drive isn't an option due to health reasons, unfortunately. If you live there without driving, how do you find it? Are there particular areas you would recommend, with good trains/bus links etc? I know these threads tend to get posters warning that rural life isn't all it's cracked up to be but I'd love to try for a year or two - if it doesn't work out I can move on again. All suggestions welcome, thank you!

How about semi rural? Like one of the vilages between Leeds, Harrogate and York. Still open countryside all around but reliable buses and local shops

TBH, in a rural village you need a 4X4, never mind just a car. The roads flood/ don't get gritted/ fill with snow drifts. As PP has said, you could easily move to a village with a bus service, only to find it gets axed.

I think a market town is the way forward. I live in one- it has a cottage hospital, two supermarkets and a high street with a good range of shops. You could live on foot pretty easily. It also has a mainline train station and is big enough to ensure the busses won't be cut.

what about getting an ebike with some good panniers for shopping....get some winter tyres and some waterproof clothing too. You could get 10 miles in around 35 minutes plus a bit of exercise.

I live in rural Cumbria and I honestly wouldn't live here without a car. Public transport is appalling - slow, unreliable and bloody expensive to boot. It pretty much never runs on Sundays or Bank Holidays, and getting a bus after 5pm in winter is nigh on impossible.

It could be done if you lived in a town or a city but otherwise it's a lot of hassle. I have family who can't drive and their lives are so limited as a result of it. But again if you move to where the amenities are, the prices skyrocket.

Driving in Cornwall isn't necessarily a great option in the summer. You would need to be somewhere with a reasonably good rail network.

Have you considered a move to the suburbs at all? Or a small town like Truro ?.Our DC lives in Hebden Bridge ,but it does flood a lot and is a loong way from London! Maybe you could rent somewhere for 6 months or so see how you like it? I think you will struggle with not being able to drive outside of London and the big cities really .

I was just about to suggest an e bike too!
However, a rural idyll and an inability to drive are uncomfortable bedfellows. We live rurally and when I was working it would have been impossible for me to earn a living without being able to transport myself around. Buses are very few and far between (and even fewer now than there used to be). You are going to be restricted to moving into, or close to, a largeish town, which won't be much different to what you've got now.
I have friends who live in Cornwall. The miles they do in their cars dwarf mine, simply because everything is so far apart and public transport is dire. I think by restricting your self to just two counties makes it difficult too.

Is the reason you can't learn to drive insurmountable?

It's not a realistic consideration unless youre planning on living in a decent sized town, idealy with a rail link. I live in Cumbria and would find it nigh on impossible not to drive here.

I live outside of York, near a village called Wilberfoss. Decent buses, can go to Pocklington for grocery shopping or of course have home delivery. I don't drive and while i live here given the buses are good i don't intend to learn.

How would you manage to get to work if you were working shifts and have no means of transport of your own? You aren't going to get village buses across the Dales to get you to work at, say, 9pm on a Sunday night. Public transport is poor and there are often cuts and cancellations especially in the winter - people don't realise that there can be feet rather than inches of snow in parts of the Dales when it all drifts and ends up on the roads.

Grew up in rural cornwall and passed my driving test one month after my 17th birthday, as did everyone i knew.

There were buses to my village twice throughout my childhood - both times they started after 9 and finished before 5, only ran every two hours, went to every small village possible (turning a quick journey to the nearest town into a nearly two hour odyssey) and both were cancelled with no notice as mysteriously as they appeared. you just cannot live rurally without a car.

At the very least you want station, chemist, post office, pub and shop Within walking distance. Bear in mind that Cornwall was historically methodist, so many if not most of the small villages don’t have pubs, you were supposed to do all your socialising at Chapel, so v.isolating by modern standards. Small towns that have these things in Cornwall, eg St Austell, are often rough. Large towns (eg Truro) are v.expensive compared to local income.

I wouldn’t contemplate it without a car, although i assume Yorkshire may have more civilised middle ground. I’ve moved 16 times around England, and London was the only place i could rely on public transport for work and social.

Rural life is great, OP, if you can drive or if you are happy to spend hours waiting at bus stops at inconvenient times in the rain or afford taxis or if you are happy to rarely go further than you can walk or cycle. It's almost certainly not feasible to live somewhere really rural and still commute daily without driving. I have friends in the NHS in Cornwall and they all drive to work unless they're living in the town/ city where the hospital is situated.

I live in a large village in an area of outstanding beauty just 10 miles from a city with a hospital and a university. We also have a relatively good bus service – buses every 90 minutes on week days. But the journey into the city takes the best part of an hour instead of 15 minutes by car, and would involve arriving early at work and having to hang around for 40 minutes after work. And we are nowhere near as rural as Cornwall or the Yorkshire Dales.

If you're currently living in a big city then relocating to a calmer, smaller city or town where you can look up and see hills might be the answer. I know you've said you have a disability that prevents you driving. I don't know if that's something like epilepsy or a physical impairment. If you can cycle then maybe living somewhere a mile or two away from a station, in a more out-of-the-way area, might work.

Look at the places you might work, then do your research to work out where it would be possible for you to live.

I live in Ilkley and don’t drive (medical reasons not choice). It’s kind of fine. It would be possible to work at LGI - as long as shifts matched train timetable (think last train home is about 11.30 or midnight). It’s worth being aware that the trains are really busy and regularly cancelled - in my last job I could wfh when this happened, but I doubt your patients would appreciate this.
I’ve also lived in SW Sheffield which was truly lovely. I had a neighbour there who split his time between the hospitals and cycled everywhere so that is doable as long as you’re happy to cycle on hills! Bus service there was fine if you were going in straight lines but more difficult getting to places not on your route (you had to go into town and back out - or change part way but sometimes to a different operator).
Personally I think it’s manageable if you’re prepared to take a little longer to do stuff and are happy to take a taxi when necessary

Coming as someone who was a teenager and didn't drive till I was in my 20s. I'm really glad I finally learnt to drive. The buses are dire. I guess it would be better if you lived somewhere in a town where there's a station on the main line or Falmouth or st ives. But even then you'd be rather limited. Like exploring the country side or the peninsulas

@raindropsfallingonglass how true!! I love in Cornwall, and as soon as my son turned 17 last year he started driving lessons as did most of his friends. In fact I have told my 2 sons that they must 1 learn to swim (which they do) and 2 learn to drive as the transport is rubbish down here.

I was thinking Devon, Plymouth has the derriford hospital, and buses run from Tavistock bus station every 15 minutes, and it takes about 45 minutes according to my dad, Tavistocks a small pretty town, plus there’s buses that go up over Dartmoor too I believe. From Plymouth trains to London take about 4 or 5 hours I think, which means you can head anywhere.

I would move to Exeter (or Topsham if you can afford it). Exeter has everything you need and good public transport; it's fairly rural anyway - and Topsham is a village on the estuary - but there are trains to seaside towns or Cornwall, it's all easily within reach for day trips or weekends.

unitedforever ooh, the ebike idea is a good one, thanks!

Thank you all, that's given me a lot of really useful food for thought. Glad I have several months to do some proper research! I am thinking market town/large village rather than full on rural isolation (blissful though that sounds). I don't work shifts so that makes things easier. Thanks again :-)

fedupandlookingforchange Thanks for the suggestions, will definitely have a look into those mill villages

I am thinking market town/large village rather than full on rural isolation

Please make sure you do your research. Market town doesn't necessarily mean amenities and good transport links. Plenty of the decent sized towns around here don't have train stations or regular bus links, and your shops are limited to expensive corner shops (co-op, spar or Londis type places) or local independents that aren't open in the evenings or on Sundays.

Like a PP said, I couldn't earn a decent living here without driving. All the work is in nearby towns and the public transport links are just awful. There's no bus service - the trains are often cancelled and rarely ever run when they're supposed to.

I know lots of people who have had to give up work because commuting on public transport was impossible.

How about Wales if you're after nice views? Abergavenny has a hospital and is on the edge of the Brecon Beacons. Decent public transport links as there is a train station and regular buses to larger towns/cities like Cardiff, Hereford and Newport although I haven't had to regularly use them so wouldn't be able to comment on reliability or regular use!

We’re on the Devon/ Cornwall border. Public transport is dire. Many bus services have been axed recently, so if you moved to a village on the strength of a bus timetable you could suddenly find yourself without it.
It’s also fairly common for scheduled services to not appear, especially at night.
Taxis are expensive and scarce.
Id say you need to live in walking distance of your place of work.

Is your health concern about driving physical or due to a damage to your brain (epilepsy type thing ?) If phdical you would be amazed at the adaptions available . My neighbour has Spina bifida.. no feeling from waist down but drives brilliantly..