To think a place can cause depression?

[Kittycattenklump]

I am wondering whether I might need a change of scene.

Appreciate that I am ‘lucky’ to live in a lovely place, I live and work in Windermere, Lake District, and have done for the past 6 years. I am 2 yrs single and happy with that, have some nice friends and am happily self employed, but recently I am coming to feel that the place itself makes me feel this weird depression, like a hopelessness, that I don’t feel when I visit other places or stay with my longer distance friends.

I left for a year during the pandemic, and it doesn’t feel the same since coming back. Even the people coming here seem different somehow. But I can’t explain. There was previously a kind of nature lover/alternative vibe which is now missing.
I rent and the prices seem to have flown up in the past year -although that’s an issue everywhere, there’s a sadness to it here as what’s left of the market is dated or drab for a very high price. Local friends are depressed with the housing situation as many are sold off to airB&B.

I am comfortable financially but the manic switch of quiet grey gloom then heavy tourism has begun to put me on edge, something hard to explain.
Perhaps the balance has shifted and it’s no longer the right place for me, no matter the grandeur of the landscape. It feels like a giant commodity, bland and soulless recently.

other areas of my life are great, so i do suspect I might be up for a move. Would you consider it? Would you live here? Would love some thoughts on this as I haven’t discussed it with anyone yet.

Liverpool, the heaviness as you walk through the center with those tall buildings and wide roads and biting winds, lovely people but that city is so tough and I find Leeds is the same, maybe even worse.

I'm very surprised to see St Ives at No 1. I've heard and read about a lot of unhappiness locally because of mass tourism and the huge number of second homes, holiday lets and Airbnbs.

I get it totally. We left London is search of a rural idyll in Scotland, which we found and we hate. Me and DH are so miserable here, we’ve got a trip down south in a few weeks that we already feel sad about coming back from. We’re planning to move back to the city as soon as I can find a job and just the knowledge we’re planning to leave has made me feel so much happier!

@Kittycattenklump - I do see your point - my parents have been going to the lakes for over 50 years . I love some of it - not others. It does not distress me ( as long as only quick visits ) - I live 300 miles away

My DH had family in Herne Bay - Kent - SE England. Oh, now they have passed away ( sadly ) I will never go there again - I find It eerie and creepy) Look nothing wrong & I thing Sandi Toksvig lives there but it gives me the shivers - can't explain why but it does ) That whole Herne bay , whitstable , Kent coast area with such flatness just - I don't know - I can't abide it - but so many people love it - I suppose each to their own . I am not a one for ley lines etc - I just found it a bit depressing and the flatness I found oppressive. That said , I had a lovely afternoon when FIL took me to Reculver where they did a test of the bouncing bomb. But was happy to leave.

I think it is funny how people like different things. I went to school on the coast & would never live there again. For others , it is what they want.

This is a really interesting thread - thanks all

Oh and one more - & I am sorry for this - I know how so many people love it and it is full of culture and restaurants and lovely places - but if I never see Manchester again it will be too soon, (This for the avoidance of doubt is my particular fault - I know it is a fantastic place - but for some reason I don't like it and that reason is irrational - I know that - it's just a feeling. Quite happy to pasted for that one 😊 )

Mile End, Whitechapel and Stratford make me unbearably depressed. They have such a feeling of foreboding.

YANBU. We lived somewhere for years that I began to find really depressing (Glasgow) - I found it especially hard coming back to it after holidays. We moved away and the depression lifted, I love where we live now and am so much happier.

I am from a fairly flat part of the Uk. I've been to the Lake District, peaks, Wales, Edinburgh and always been able to appreciate the beauty of hills and valleys and the land in general.

I'd never ever want to live there however as I find that reduced amounts of sky above my head is oppressive and depressing - probably just what I'm used to but it feels real to me. If I had grown up somewhere like that, I'd probably find East Anglia hideously bleak but having grown up here, it's what I prefer.

Whitechapel was where the Jack the Ripper murders happened…….

Oh I quite love Manchester and have a soft spot for it in my heart, but I wouldn't want to live there. I lived in Greater Manchester with my ex for many years and didn't get on with the towns there at all. I just felt like such a bad fit.

I only lived in Ludlow for a very short while (a sic month sabbatical taking my work with me), but was moved by the soft light and gentle hills, something in the landscape down there soothed my soul, nothing harsh or rugged or tough to it. I so enjoyed just walking around at a leisurely pace, and found it to be a bit more alternative than the Lakes, in a subtle way.

I quite love the idea of the fens, especially Wicken Fen, but that's the artist speaking, I think. Wales is stunning but I can't imagine living there, and the climate further and further north always depresses me regardless the wondrous pennines, fells, lochs, etc.

St Ives sounds delightful but I agree with the pp who said it will be scarred by tourism, possibly long, long divorced now from the bohemian vibes and more affordable lifestyle of the era enjoyed by artist's such as Barbara Hepworth.

That's basically what I did the last time I was there, too! I had to see some people and the rest of the time, I just stayed in the apartment with the telly on, counting the hours until I could get away again.

Sad thing is prior to this, I lived there for several years. I thought the problem was me!

I think a lot of these places are surviving on their myth alone.

I absolutely think it can. And it doesn’t matter whether ‘on paper’ you shouldn’t feel depressed living where you do, or whether someone else would see it as perfect or not. It all depends on how you feel.

So many people (my mum included) talk about wanting to live by the sea or directly on the coast with a direct, wide sea view. She has in mind the coastline near where she lives, which is, to me, quite bleak as it is often very, very grey, or rainy, always windy. Yes, there are some sunny days, and I’m sure they’re lovely. But I would find the overall bleakness really depressing. I would on the other hand like a marina (more activity/interest).

I once visited Queenstown in NZ and met an acquaintance who had been living there for a few months. It is breathtakingly beautiful there, it seemed a fabulous place to live. Yet she really didn’t like never being able to see a sunrise or a sunset, due to the landscape. I understood what she was saying.

I feel similarly about where we live. We moved to West Dorset last year, from Wiltshire, for several reasons, and need to be in this area. DH used to live in the place where we now live, and it was he who suggested we move here. I don't blame him at all, because I think even he feels it's not right. It isn't the same kind if place that it was when he used to live here. There's just something off kilter about it, flat and depressing, soulless, but hard to say quite what it I that causes that feeling. We've both agreed that we'll move when we can afford to, in a few years' time.

Does anyone ever wonder if the past decade's tv obsession with crime dramas set in lovely British landscapes has had any kind of galvanising effect on tourism or moving out to the country?
Series such as Vera, Shetland, Broadchurch and many more; almost all new drama seems to be set in wide open spaces or wild rugged coastlines which are heavily relied upon as an integral (often central) feature of the plots and storylines.

There's definitely a trend, or a new national obsession for seeking out the wild places, which has given rise to those irritating books by Robert Macfarlane (no offence to anyone who enjoys them, I'm just tired of him dominating the genre) and their plentiful imitations. It's all just another, bland tentacle of capitalism to my eyes, but it could be driving demand for visits to certain areas.

There's also the myth or dream of 'the relaxing break' which is strongly marketed, quite aggressively, really. And with our often chaotic, burnt out lifestyles it isn't surprising that it's taken off in such a huge way.

The really wild places still don't tend to have many people in, but I bet as someone who lives in the Lake District you know that anyway! I bet it's a case of: towns thronged, beauty spots with car parks rammed, short or popular walks (Scafell Pike? Helvellyn?) pretty busy, but miles and miles of countryside away from the roads where you can still walk for hours without seeing someone- is that so??

It's certainly that way on my "patch", Dartmoor- further mitigated by there not actually being any sizeable towns or many places to stay up on the Moor. Once you get a mile away from the roads, with people parked up in the car parks with their camping chairs and disposable barbecues feeding the ponies, it's deserted again.

I agree with you about Robert MacFarlane, by the way. Totally derivative of Roger Deakin, who was a bit of a mentor to him, yet better known whilst not as good 🙄

My personal TV bugbear, as a resident of Cornwall, is the "ageing celebrity visits lovely Cornwall " genre. Just go away. We're suffering from overexposure down here as it is, and it's bloody lazy. At least Simon Reeves came down and covered the food banks!

It’s a nonsense isn’t it? Sr Ives is dominated by tourism and very expensive to buy property. I don’t for a minute believe it’s one of the happiest places to live in Britain. Looking at some of the other choices, including Perth, you have to wonder how in earth they compose these posts.

I’d love to know where in Scotland. We nearly did this and it would have been an unmitigated disaster.

We holiday on the Isle of Skye most years. We really love it. We stay in a tiny village that’s ten miles away from the nearest pub/shop. I find it refreshes my spirit in a way I can’t describe…..but no I wouldn’t want toil E there.

It's interesting. I think a lot is to do with what life stage you are at and how contented you are generally. When I first met my H we had a very gritty 1 bed flat but it was in Hampstead, I was newly in love and we had the heath and the village on the doorstep, lovely little cafes and bars, and I really didn't think about the flat being a bit grotty. It was just a lovely place to live and lifted my mood every day. 27 years later and lots of moves -we live in Bath and pay a bomb to do so- I appreciate it's not everyone's bag but I personally love it . I like looking up to the hills at night with all the lights on them. I really think it depends on the kind of person you are and what life stage you are at.

OP you're certainly not imagining it about how the people who come to visit your area has changed post pandemic.
There are now vastly more people visiting the countryside than there were pre-pandemic and unfortunately the majority of these people who've newly discovered the countryside are just disrespectful arseholes.
They way they act makes it quite obvious they have no love or passion or respect for the countryside and its a complete mystery to me why they choose to venture to such places rather than sticking to their traditional haunts of flat roofed pubs or the bars and beaches of Magaluf and Benidorm.

@Yants

i wondered about this. The thing about the countryside most visitors loved was the quiet calmness, the space and lack of other people and ( most importantly for me) the chance to wander fairly aimlessly in nature and not feel I had a checklist of things to do. Now I see the culture of doing things because they are supposed to be the things to do has hit the countryside along with self appointed experts who feel the need to tell others what to do.

For years, I climbed a mountain in a regularly visited place. Now that there has been investment from local govt to create jobs, all the people you went up a mountain to avoid are there, including the hyper professional walkers all kitted out in the latest gear, making everything a ‘thing’.

People have been walking in the countryside for millennia. It’s only new to them 😁

We used to live in a beautiful scenic and fairly quiet part of rural Wiltshire, unbothered by tourists or holidaymakers, who tend to head to Bradford on Avon or on to Bath. I loved it, but there was nothing there for the DC and DH's work was drying up, so we've ended up in a non-picturesque part of Dorset, not far from Weymouth, which I loathe. It's built up, busy, and has an odd unsettling vibe. It's not a place that you'd have seen on any TV series. Possibly quite identifying, now 🤔

@RainyReadingDay it's interesting you say that- a relative of ours lives on edge of Weymouth (we live in Bath) and H commented that he hated going down there as he felt it had a weird unsettling vibe. He couldn't put his finger on it and yet loves most of the Dorset coast .