If you live in Cornwall

[Flopseemsstoned]

What’s it really like to live there?

Parents and sister live there, thinking of maybe making the move (abroad at the moment)
What’s life like? Is it affordable to get a house on average wages? We have a toddler, is the lifestyle as great as it seems?

Depends where you are in Cornwall. Coastal property very expensive. Places in land cheaper. Water bills high. I love it here, but I like being outdoors (although the rain and wind get tiresome) DD 21 was born here, can't wait to leave - job opportunities so limited, lack of entertainment.

@Pirrip Did she not enjoy growing up there, with the beach lifestyle etc?

Please watch the first episode 'Cornwall with Simon Reeve' on BBC iPlayer, it's as accurate as you will get on the issues down there.

@Demelza82 Bugger, I don’t have iplayer where I am, but will try to find. Can you elaborate at all?

It wasn’t the fluffy ‘look at lovely Cornwall’ show people expected.

More the real ‘look at the horrendous poverty and drug problem we have’ show

NC'd for anonymity

I have lived in Cornwall for almost 4 years. I married a Cornishman and we settled here due to him, at the time, being in a high paying role. I'm from the rural outskirts of a large SW city.

We live in mid Cornwall, in a lovely house, much larger than we could possibly afford in my home area.

DD is 16 months. She LOVES going to the beach, riding her Shetland, lots of beautiful space for her to enjoy... we have a very outdoorsy lifestyle which suits us great, we are an outdoorsy family.

All seems very idyllic however -

• it's very isolating. Truro is very small. Cornwall is a very small county. Every knows everyone. There's really not much going.

• poverty. There's an awful lot of poverty. If you have a well paid job working from home, great. If not, you're a bit screwed.

• at the moment, house prices are ridiculous.

• anti-outsiders. This is something I have personally experienced. Have a look at the comments on the Cornwall Live Facebook page. It's shocking.

• small town mentality. A lot of Cornwall is very racist, very old school values.

• tourists. In the summer, it's genuinely impossible to do anything down here. We dread it. Impossible to book tables for dinner, we can't walk our dogs on our local beach (DH gets up at 5am to do it), taking DD for the zoo, as an example, is a total nightmare.

We have discussed moving to Exeter outskirts as there's more going on and it's much closer to my family/more jobs/restaurants/the rest of the world. I do like living here but if I had the same choice, knowing what I know, I would have held out and stayed in my home area.

For context, I am late 20s.

Ps agree with NewLynHill - huge drug problems especially around Penzance, St Austell, Camborne and Bodmin areas.

I moved down to Cornwall at the beginning of last year. Glad we made the move when we did as rental and house sales are just ridiculous at the moment and I don't think we would have been lucky enough to get a house. Locals are really struggling to move house as they either can't afford the prices or they're missing out on people who are moving into Cornwall with more money (some people are offering 6-12 months rent upfront which locals don't have).
In terms of living here, we love it! Even in the rain and wind but that's just part of being here. We're expecting our first this year and are really happy we can bring them up down here with the beautiful countryside and beaches rather than where we were before.
Although we still work the same hours as before, it's just such a nicer way of life down here than up country. We live inland a bit which makes it easier to avoid all the traffic and hotspots when it's tourist season.

@OverAndOut123 "anti-outsiders. This is something I have personally experienced. Have a look at the comments on the Cornwall Live Facebook page. It's shocking."

With this, I know what you mean to an extent however I actually find that the Cornish (born and bred) are much more accepting than those like me who moved down. I've always found that people who are not actually Cornish are more hostile to outsiders or tourists than those who've lived here all their lives.
Could just be my own experience.
Comments on Cornwall Live are shocking but you will find that on most Facebook groups as it's easy for people to say mean things when they're hiding behind their computers. A lot of those that comment are not Cornish and just people who've moved down here.

Tourist season is a nightmare though and we do the same as you, take dog out early if we want to go to a beach and things. Fingers crossed it calms down when people can go abroad again next year

I’m from the North west so some aspects of poverty and drugs etc is the same 🤔
Are there job opportunities or is it pretty impossible to find work?

What sort of work would you be looking for? It's hard to know unless you say what sector you're interested in. Minimum wage waitressing - endless jobs available. Other stuff, not so much. It's a county of real inequality and that - fairly reasonably - drives the people at the bottom of the pile into rage. The middle of Cornwall has been fairly trashed too - slag heaps from the mines etc. When it's sunny, it's utterly gorgeous, but that coincides with the world and his wife heading down.

I lived the from 3 and moved out when I was 26.

Drugs- I lived in an area where drugs were quite prolific and there had even been quite a few drug related murders.

Poverty- lots of poverty in cornwall. There are no jobs, and with people moving down or buying holiday homes, the average Cornish person now can’t afford to live. I lived in a house that cost 500 a month, when I moved out the landlord charged the next tenant 750 to live there. This is a house with no garden, right on a main road.

The biggest thing for me was lack of ambition. Out of my year group (I left school in 2010) only 5 of us went to university. There’s a very old school mentality where you’re scared to leave, most of the boys got reading jobs and most of the most of the girls become mums at around 20 and stay at home.

While the beaches and country side were great, it’s not somewhere I wanted to raise my own kids. Most people who experience life outside of Cornwall, when they come back, they feel trapped and like they’ve been in a time machine and gone back 20 years and can’t wait to leave again.

@Pirrip Did she not enjoy growing up there, with the beach lifestyle etc?

She doesn't like surfing, despite her father being an avid surfer. She went to surf life saving for a few years, not that bothered. Prefers fashion, music etc. She knows she is lucky to have the beach literally five minutes from our door and does go if the weather is good, but honestly just wants to live in a city and have a more varied social life and career opportunities.

@ShutUpAlex That’s so interesting, is it the lack of culture etc? Wondering why there’s a general lack of ambition or are they just happy with their lot and not wanting to move anywhere else?

@Countrylane Well, for me I think it would be easier..education, childcare...teaching, work in early years, childminding or nannying
My partner-carpentry, furniture design etc to a high level

I think it’s just the “why would you want to leave?” Mentality. I know hundreds of family’s that have all lived in the same village and none of them have ever left. Theres no point doing a degree if you’re not going to do anything with it.

@Pirrip Yes, I can see in a way why it might get boring in terms upwards, unless you’re really into surfing, the beach etc

@Flopseemsstoned

What’s it really like to live there?

Parents and sister live there, thinking of maybe making the move (abroad at the moment)
What’s life like? Is it affordable to get a house on average wages? We have a toddler, is the lifestyle as great as it seems?

More to the point, will you be able to FIND fulltime employment at an average wage in Cornwall.

@ShutUpAlex But, do you think that’s because they love it so much that they wouldn’t want to leave it because their ambitions don’t stretch to the rest of the world?
I loved where I came from in the North west but was itching to leave from 17 onwards..and I did at 23, haven’t lived back there, but now we’re older, my family are now in Cornwall and we currently live by the beach etc so are very used to that lifestyle.

@2bazookas Are wages that low? 😬

Lived here on & off for twenty years.
Moved back for good 8 yrs ago, as I got a ft job down here, had a young family so wanted to be close to DPs & wanted a rural upbringing for them.
It suits us perfectly, but we've both got good stable jobs & own a house so we're settled.
Love the outdoors life, not hugely into shopping or arts, but do miss choice of gigs & restaurants that we had in a city.
So, pros & cons, but outdoor lifestyle (we live on the coast) wins for us.
Summer holidays a bit mental in terms of traffic, busy beaches & pubs etc, but it is what our local economy needs & it doesnt last for ever.
Ignore Cornwall Live at all costs.

[quote Flopseemsstoned]@Countrylane Well, for me I think it would be easier..education, childcare...teaching, work in early years, childminding or nannying
My partner-carpentry, furniture design etc to a high level[/quote]
Childminders and nannies depend on the availability of employers earning enough to pay for those services. Easy in London. Not so in rural areas.

You'll struggle to find work as a nanny when most people work for the tourist or farming industry I.e. not much money to pay for one. The poverty thing is also down to minimum wage jobs and high rent/council taxes.

I'd recommend sketching out what your expected incoming and outgoing money would be and what you would want to do with any leftover. Honestly, tourist season you can't even get out of some towns or you don't dare drive to the shops to buy your shopping or you'll be queuing for ages and have nowhere to park when you get home. A friend often had to queue and then pay to park in a public car park because her roads weren't permitted and were used by everyone. 30 min journeys took well over an hour on a good tourist day and far far longer if there had been an accident.

Cornwall doesn't have motorways either so it's a limited way in and out.

I live in Cornwall have done for over 2 decades

Depends where in Cornwall you live. It's a long county if you live in Penzance it's an extra 2 hours to leave the county

Jobs- plenty of job last but not many careers. Unless it's a public service NHS/ teacher type job

Only one big hospital

House prices it's all about location location location

@Flopseemsstoned I don’t think it’s a case of living where they live, it just wouldn’t occur to them to leave. My ex MIL was so proud of the fact she had never set foot over the tamar bridge. That’s 60 years never leaving her town, and she was born in the house she lived in.