To think I am idealising this idea? (Remote living)

[AtlasPine]

What is it really like living remotely? I dream of a house on a hillside miles from town but that’s possibly because of being in one of the busier parts of London now. Have you or do you live remotely? What are the unexpected pitfalls? Would you recommend it in practice?

We are rural now but with houses on the road. I adore it in a way, in another miss the ability to walk to a shop, or just even walk without having to be in against a wall if a car passes!! Saying that we have the luxury of a half an acre for a garden, amazing nature and sunrises, and the stars at night are phenomenal!! I have lived really remotely, middle of nowhere, pitch black at night as no other houses, nearest shop a single one and a 20 minute drive. Every night I looked into the darkness and found it really affected me, plus the house was old ... cold ... damp ... carpeted ... (shudders)!!!

Ps I'd test if at all possible, I think then you'll know. Hope it all works out OP!:)

Yes, I would test, not just in summer but particularly in winter. You could just try a few things out. Next time you forget something at the supermarket, picture a 2 hour round trip to get it. Personally I found I got less forgetful and more likely to make do with other things, but some people hate this. Don't get takeaways. Again, I don't do this anyway. Want to pop to the pub? Imagine driving through pissing rain to get there, in the pitch black, and then not being able to drink anyway.

Also, if you are planning to be somewhere where you depend on a car, bear in mind most of us want or in fact need to stop driving at some point in our lives. I love being remote from most people but my parents also live remotely somewhere else, and that can be very difficult.

@soloISland, i didnt see your first post but yes it covers everything. Sounds like you have everything you need.

@Antinerak

I'm rural enough to not have cars pass my house and my nearest neighbour is far enough away that I can drink a coffee on the way there. I don't have kids, it's just me and my husband and cats here so we aren't depriving children of interacting with others.

My husband commutes but mainly works from home and I don't work so have a lot of freedom with how i spend my time. It works for us because we prefer each other's company more than anyone else's and we both drive and can afford to drive everywhere. If you can't drive I imagine it wouldn't be as good. We drive to meet grocery and takeout delivery drivers but only 5 minutes down the lane to the nearest proper road.

Winter is difficult and our lanes aren't gritted so we or our neighbours have to do it. If you don't get on with your neighbours you may have to factor in getting a vehicle or snow tires to cope with snow or gritting- you won't be able to just sprinkle it by hand while walking.

If it's relevant, I'm early 20s he's late 30s, you don't have to be retired to have this life. But keep in mind you won't be able to nip for a coffee with a friend or pop to the shops as you did in a town. Prepare for bulk buying food and having a stocked pantry and freezers in winter and most of the year.

I'd recommend it to anyone who is actually interested in it. Usually Londoners arrive and mess up the community so aren't often welcome. You'll still be more welcome than any Americans in the English countryside though!

All sounds very very good.. I lived rural remote in Ireland for many years iike that too. The snowy winter we had I was up in the Donegal mountains and was cut off for six weeks.

It is a fine way to live if as you say the interest is there.

At any age.... Folk out here live long lives. The man who lived where I do now lived to A HUNDRED and another lady to a hundred and four.

I am nearly eighty and with limited mobility like others but that is fine too. Everything is to hand for me and I am well catered for supply wise.

I live in a big city in a tiny flat and I've often fantasised about travelling around to find my little peace of heaven. City life makes everything convenient. I can order so much from my sofa and wait for it to be delivered. It's made me soft!

People say I couldn't cope with total isolation and I would agree with them. As I get older I know I need a GP and a decent hospital within easy access. I also can't drive, yet. But I am shy, socially anxious and dislike crowds and I yearn for a little bit of land to raise a few crops on, just enough to get me through winter without too much fuss. A few chickens, a dog, not much. So I'd need some civilisation nearby but not too much, iyswim!

I live somewhere very similar to SoloISland. You have to enjoy your own company and not humph around the place like Kevin the Teenager saying you’re bored. 😁

Today I’ve spent about 4 hours sewing whilst listening to audiobooks, about to take the dog for a whirl on the beach and the Chinese takeaway is coming over from the mainland tonight - ie, they come to US!

Another important factor to note is that there really is community - and aside feudal stuff going back centuries over a stolen sheep - people have your back and will do anything to help.

When I was younger, I lived and worked all over the world and tbh, it’s overrated. My passport expired years ago and quite frankly- seen it, done it.

If you're fed up with living in a busy city, there's a lot of happy medium between that and remote living. I'll never live in a city again, but I'm happy in my quiet, rural but not remote village. I have the views, the air quality, the slower pace of life and the lower population, but without the inconvenience and isolation. 5 mins to the nearest small supermarket, 15 to several big ones and from the motorway.

Ps a couple moved next door 6 months ago- the wife is in heaven and we chat to her every night as she star gazes, husband is depressed and missing Dublin. Both have said now theyve sold they'll never afford to get back in. She said it shrugging and smiling, he sounded like he was going to cry

I would maybe do a trial run first.
I watch short documentaries on YouTube called Green Renaissance, where they show this type of life, basically about people who follow a different path in life. They are really interesting and beautifully filmed.

You're in a lovely part of the world @soloISland.

I’m rural but not all that remote compared to others on here but in winter if the weather gets tetchy we’re stuck on the side of a hill with whatever we have for however long it takes; no-one in and no-one out on the 4 mile lane down to the main road that masquerades on occasion as a Bob-sled track from the months of November to early March. I have a large stocked pantry and 3 freezers year round because popping to Aldi is a 3 hour round trip and buying anything more substantial than milk and bread in the spar 6 miles away requires a second mortgage. You do adapt quite quickly- always have backups and spares for important stuff etc. We do a twice yearly primark/city centre mega shop for clothing essentials/staples, most of the other stuff we need comes from Amazon. I do spend a heck of a lot of time driving though and I’d love to live somewhere where the kids could walk to school and I could ‘pop out’ for stuff.

I lived in a reasonably sized town in the UK bit moved to the USA to be with my American husband. I moved from a place with buses going by regularly, shops within walking distance, a train service to London once an hour, etc to rural isolation.

How remote are you thinking? Small village? Small town? Or complete isolation with no neighbors like we are? Nearest village is 23 miles away. Nearest town with shops, cinema, hospital, supermarket, etc is 75 miles away. I struggled at first but my husband is used to it as his family own a ranch. It involves being very good at preparing and planning. You can’t just “pop to the shop” if you run out of milk or toilet paper. There are no delivery services. If you have a “font fancy cooking today” moment, you need to make sure you have a supply of batch/cooked meals in the freezer that you can get and re-heat. Getting to hospital here in an emergency involves a helicopter. It’s a 90-mile round-trip just to get a blood test although there are plans for the mobile unit to start coming a little closer to us.

But on the plus side we have complete peace and quiet, can hear the ocean waves in every room of our house. So much space for the dogs. No need to worry about noise. I have been known to vacuum at 2 am. We live the wildlife here. We see more bears, coyotes and mountain lions than we do people and cars. It’s our own piece of paradise.

Sometimes I look at property listings online in towns and think “what if…” but something always puts me off, usually how much less space they have.

Before you do it, think very thoroughly about the small things in life that bring you joy or frustration.

Do you depend on being able to nip out to the shops to pick up food or milk or a treat if you fancy one?

Do you enjoy people watching? Buskers on the tube, amazing hairstyles and fashion, neighbours having a quick chat while they weed their front garden etc?

Do you or any of your dependants have medical/optical/dental issues that need regular attention that is conveniently nearby in London?

Do you love art exhibitions, live music and theatre?

Do you enjoy gyms, fitness classes, park runs or bootcamps and attend them regularly, spurred on by the cameraderie of all working out hard together?

Do you like walking everywhere?

If so, then I think you'd go mad.

But if you plan menus weeks in advance, are happiest on your own, looking out over rolling hills, never seek company, like crafting and reading more than going out, are happy to jump in the car every time you need something, rather than go on foot, and can handle narrow or rutted lanes in pitch dark and bad weather, then you could be OK.

Rural living is my idea of absolute hell, as you might have guessed

I used to do mental health work in a bunch of small villages. Saw a lot of locals who all wanted to move into towns as they got older and a bunch of retirees who wanted to go back to where they had moved from. Remote life is very hard work.

We tried it for one summer with the possibility of moving there permanently. In our case it was Ireland. Three hours to nearest supermarket, 4 to airport, 12 miles to next village. Our village had about 4 pubs, 1 hairdressers, 1 tiny Spar and a hardware shop. It was lovely being surrounded by Heather covered mountains and right on the beach for about a week. After that it got tedious. And everyone knew exactly what everyone else was doing, despite houses having fields in between them. One of our neighbours baby daughter had suspected meningitis and the nearest children's hospital was a three hour drive. That alone terrified me.

I used to live on an otherwise uninhabited island — just me. Canister gas cooker, well water, no electricity, wood/turf fire, no non-ruined buildings apart from my cottage, no ferry. Used to arrange with a local fisherman to do a trip to the nearest port to do a supermarket shop periodically, but in bad weather, the island wasn’t reachable at all, as the only slipway was tiny and exposed. I could see the mainland, but often couldn’t have got there if I wanted to.

I loved it, but I enjoy solitude, am physically hardy, had a lot of reading material for bad weather, and was writing a book. And I knew it was for a finite period.

I lived fairly remotely, up a Welsh mountain, but wouldn't choose it now. You do need to drive. I remember a three mile walk to the local post office for frozen peas and three miles back. It's wonderful if your job is there, less so if you have to commute. The nearest town was a dozen miles away but nothing on the road there after the village. Fresh milk once a week. It's a way of living but not as I approach retirement.

I had a friend who moved remotely. It didn’t work out, there were a few things that killed it for her. The only shop in the hamlet closed, all the shops in the area were super expensive, she spent her whole life driving children about and no one came to visit. We all did visit, but only once or twice. It was a 3 hour round trip, it’s not like popping in for a cuppa. I didn’t like it as we all had to go and her husband and kids were about and was hard to be alone with her. She’s back round the corner now.

I actually know someone who regularly gets cut off for weeks in the winter. She loves it. It’s just her, husband and her dogs. Her only complaint was you have to get used to UHT milk.

Depends on your age for a start - teenagers may despise rural living but older folk might prefer it. And how rural is rural? Are we talking a little village in West Sussex for example with one pub, a nice village green, a local store & a fairly easy commute to one of the big towns- as that would be my idea of good living. But for some it’s literally an island, with the nearest neighbour 3 or 4 miles in either direction, no shops on the doorstep and surrounded by nature & the elements.

It’s a sliding scale.

I used to live on an otherwise uninhabited island — just me.

Wow - that's a whole other level of remote! I like my own company, but that would freak me out a bit!

@SeriouslyISuppose

I used to live on an otherwise uninhabited island — just me. Canister gas cooker, well water, no electricity, wood/turf fire, no non-ruined buildings apart from my cottage, no ferry. Used to arrange with a local fisherman to do a trip to the nearest port to do a supermarket shop periodically, but in bad weather, the island wasn’t reachable at all, as the only slipway was tiny and exposed. I could see the mainland, but often couldn’t have got there if I wanted to.

I loved it, but I enjoy solitude, am physically hardy, had a lot of reading material for bad weather, and was writing a book. And I knew it was for a finite period.

Wow, what an experience!

I love the idea of something like that but I'm not sure I'd cope with the reality - I'd need electricity and internet at the very least I think

I think as you get older you'd have to think about how much support you'd have if your other half died or became disabled. I quite like the idea of DH and I retiring somewhere fairly rural, but I can't imagine what it would be like to be a grieving widow in a rural place where you don't have any roots, so no other family close by. Even worse if your husband died because he had a heart attack and you couldn't get help for him in time. Imagine having to stay in that same house with those awful memories, and not having enough money to move back to your old home town if you wanted to.

Even before that stage, what about when you're on your own in a house with no-one nearby?....DH works away a lot (well, he did pre-pandemic) -that's fine here where I am in the city suburbs in a street full of houses with lots of peop;le about. But I imagine it would be terrifying to be alone in a house and hear a noise of some kind, even if it did just turn out to be squirrels in the roof. You'd have to not be a wuss. And you'd have to be physically strong too I guess.

So I live rurally- in a hamlet, nearest pub 3km away, nearest petrol station 6km away, nearest lovely village with bars etc 4 miles away, nearest large town 6 miles away.

I love it. Near enough for socialisation but no:
Uber
Deliveries
Local shop
Neighbours on top of you
Never see another person or dog on a walk
Roads not great in winter

I grew up 8 miles from the nearest (small) city, on a rural lane, about 2 miles from a village with a tiny post office and petrol station shop. We were at the top of a hill so I couldn’t really even cycle anywhere because I would have to cycle back up. There were 4 buses a day into town where my friends lived and the journey took an hour. I hated it. We regularly got snowed in, or had power cuts. There was nothing to do, I spent my teenage years being bored stiff or nagging for lifts so that’s something to think about if you have dcs!
My parents still live there. The broadband is dire, my mum finds working from home very difficult. They don’t have mains gas, and they have a septic tank.
I moved away for uni and never went back, nor would I. The thought of spending lockdown there brought be out in a cold sweat!
Weirdly dd1 wants to live there when she’s older (she wants a horse) so maybe it’s a case of the grass is always greener!