I want to move to countryside but DH not sure

[MaybeRural]

I'm fed up of city life and want to move to somewhere more rural, not to a really remote location but definitely to a place where I am not woken by car doors slamming, neighbour's children screaming from all sides, excessive traffic noise etc. DH is a city boy through and through and thinks we'll hate country living. I've been studying the online property websites and have found three houses to look at this weekend. He says he might be 'too busy' to come with me. So AIBU if I go and look by myself and try to persuade DH to at least consider moving? There's nothing keeping us here really because we both WFH and can work anywhere and have no dependent children or family nearby. Has anyone else moved to the countryside during Covid or any other time and did you love it or hate it? Obviously, I'd like some 'good news' stories to tell DH but perhaps I need the realistic ones to stop myself going off on a romantic quest for something that won't actually make me happier?

I used to have my horse at livery on a farm with some very imposing looking bulls in one of the fields. One of them tried to get to know me and my horse better by leaning on a stone wall until it collapsed. We scarpered because it was a toss up who was more scared, me or the horse 😂

That's actually a very good point!! I keep thinking the storm will have blown over by tomorrow but maybe I am being over optimistic?

If you thought the suburbs were too far from amenities & nobody to be friends with, why do you think you'd be okay when even further from amenities with even less people to be friends with?

If you found the suburbs isolating & boring, I don't think you'll settle in a more rural location.

Dh and I moved after 15 or so years in London to a lovely market town in a national park. We absolutely love it here. Beautiful countryside right on our doorstep, never feels too crowded anywhere even on a busy Saturday in town,loads of beautiful places to walk and 15-20 mins from the sea and a couple of cities for culture, better shopping and choice of restaurants etc.

One of the things we loved when we first moved here were the dark skies and smell of the air. Also people just more relaxed and less stressed.
We are enjoying bringing up two small children here.

It's fairly quiet where we live although sometimes a bit of noise from guys in their 20s next door having gatherings. Unless you're detached you don't really know what you'll get noise-wise from your neighbours..but compared to the city flat we were in before it's pretty quiet!

I second the idea of trying somewhere out before making any decisions.. maybe your DH could be persuaded.. but it sounds like full on rural wouldn't be a wise idea.

I'll pass on your good wishes to DH 🙄Honestly, no-one's ever had his best interests at heart more than they have today. If he wants to divorce me so be it. Bet he doesn't though!

Ok, more disclosure - I come from a farming background. Tractors moving are tractors making money! It's the ones in the barn being worked on that my family never liked. No longer got the family farm but I have met plenty of tractors I promise you, even the mighty caterpillar tracked beasts that take half the tarmac off the road with them on a sunny day.

Excellent point and shows my lack of logic somewhat. As long as I have my horse (and DH if he deigns to come with us) I think I'll be fine. I didn't have the horse when I lived in the suburbs so I was really lonely. Livery yards are good for making friends though even if all else fails and the locals are hostile!

Think carefully before you do. I've lived in the country all my life (Essex/Suffolk border) and it has changed profoundly. Frankly, I find life in an Essex village more stressful than life in a city. I'm near Colchester, and the traffic on the outskirts of the town, and in the local villages, is awful. In fact, it's so bad I increasingly feel like a prisoner in my own home. Most of the villages round here have been ruined by developers. Half my local woods have been hacked down to make way for a new estate, and at the other end of the village a massive new estate is being built that looks more like a new town. They squeeze houses and flats onto every bit of available land – and it's never enough. No matter how many they build, we need more, more, more. I lived in London for a bit, and looking back it often seemed quieter there than it does here.

He's coming home soon so I'll see if he's had time to get used to the idea. I'm pretty sure he'll agree to give it a whirl for six months or so. Fingers crossed!

I live in a very rural village. Its lovely in the summer..in the winter floods/ice/snow makes things very very hard. If you cant get to supermarkets due to snow etc, the supermarket vans cant deliver to you when you order online! A lot more electricity cuts resulting in no heating/cooking/Internet etc as we have no natural gas only electricity in our village, and NO roads get gritted. The bad winter weather closes roads so it means I cant go into work and kids cant get into school. Pipes freeze regularly due to being rural. Winter is really rough!

I live very rurally with empty fields for neighbours. I love the peace and quiet and pitch black skies at night.

DH grew up in Glasgow and I've also lived in cities and neither of us miss the noise and bustle and with online shopping, we've got all we need.

As I get older, I might want to move into a village or small town but that's not going to be for some time yet.

The only advice I strongly recommend is to rent somewhere for at least 6 months during Winter/Spring rather than risk everything buying, to see if you really really like it.

We sold our house and put everything into storage and rented a 3 bed furnished house in a village to try it out. We rented for about 10 months before our house purchase went through and during that time really got to know all the surrounding towns and villages.

Same!

We're in the process of looking to move back to the city.

We're in a tiny village in the countryside and we hate it. We're bored and lonely, not a pub or coffee in walking distance, 7 miles to a supermarket. I hate it.

That sounds pretty grim and I'm sorry for you 😬I must try to figure out if there is going to be a lot of building going on in the places I'm visiting. I'm pretty sure that there is a new build estate close to one of them from looking at the satellite view actually so thanks for the warning.

Right, got to get ready for meeting now. Thanks everyone for all the positive and negative countryside tales. I appreciate them all 😀

Do you know how patronising that sounds? He is already pretty sure he will hate it. If he forced you to make those other moves then yes maybe it is your turn to force him to move where you want to, although personally I couldn’t be in a relationship like that. You need to both be on board for a move and booking viewings is frankly out of order at this point.

As an aside, I am somebody that has made the move from city (Wimbledon to be precise) to a rural location. It is quieter and we have more space here. But the mobile network is patchy, the wifi speed is slow, there is no public transport, nearest shop is seven miles away, Uber / Lyft don’t operate, it is even hard to get a taxi, can’t get a takeaway food delivery, the roads are badly maintained and do not get gritted in bad weather.

Overall, swings and roundabouts. I am neither happier or less happy here versus being in the city. I tend to think my happiness is more from the within, wherever you go, there you are and all that.

A lot of the Airbnb / country cottages are keen to have long lets in the winter, and you can do some surprisingly good deals.

I understand the desire to live rurally. We moved out of London to the countryside but in the Home Counties so DH can commute. I can't function in a city, I need to live in nature or I feel drained and unwell.

I live very rurally. I still get woken up, but instead of car doors slamming its foxes or the collie dogs barking from across the valley.

I think you ought to go for the edge of a decent sized market town, which is near enough to access countryside but also close enough to amenities.

I love living here, but I'm a farmer's daughter so this is normal for me and I felt out of place in the small town we bought our first house in. The WiFi is crap, as is he mobile signal. It's muddy all winter and the neighbouring farmer spread slurry during the heatwave last year. We have to drive everywhere and my kids can't 'play out' with other kids, not will they be able to cycle to friend's houses when they're older.

That said, we live a different lifestyle to friends in the local town and it's wonderful. My kids play outside heaps, they can be as loud as they like and no one hears them. They also have a sense of independence because they have so much space. They don't have iPads or watch much TV. The house, gardens and views and beautiful and I never get bored here. There is always something to do. We love being close to nature and all the activity it brings. We are closer to our neighbours here than we ever were when we lived in town, despite the fact that we were in a row of houses before and now our nearest neighbours are a couple of fields away.

Think very carefully if one of you isn't keen. I don't know that it's something you can convince someone to like.

It all depends on the type of lifestyle you want. I moved from big city to tiny rural village 14 years ago for love and I didn't realise the sacrifices that would be made. There are pros and cons to every where, if you like eating out or take aways then rural life is not good, if you like more solitude and wide open spaces then it's good. I have struggled with the distance from things I miss such as nightlife, choices to eat out and leisure activities such as swimming, gym, cinema etc . However my younger children have not experienced the elbows out attitude you have in city schools. Kids are less judgemental and they don't grow up as fast so there are good points as well.

Thanks for your input. I think you are taking me too seriously though. My DH is happy to try new things really but he has to put up a token protest. Oops! There I go being patronising to the poor chap again. Like I said, if this is a deal breaker for him (although the previous twenty moves at his instigation weren't) then he is perfectly free to head to the nearest divorce lawyer. Heck, I'll even take out a Plenty of Fish subscription for him to make my departure for pastures new (pun intended) a more seamless experience!

You sound fun and funny ( srsly, I know that sounds sarcastic) Encouraging DH to mix it up a bit and have a look at options does not make you evil! And viewing in a storm might actually give a realistic idea of what it can be like! I’m in a small rural village , wind is howling at the mo. It’s good and bad - and honestly even though I’m in the rural north , the bright lights of London are 2.5 hrs and Mancs 50 mins. It’s not the moon. I even have super fast community broadband (B4RN) apparently some of the fastest in the country! Rural communities are changing, people are moving around more. Give it a whirl! I love cities and sometimes think I want to move, but then I come home to quiet and nature…

MN - the home of stark choices!! (One of them invariably being to LTB, no matter how minor the complaint)

I think the context that you have 'followed him' for the last 20 years with your horse is important but I think the key thing might be to try and find a reasonable compromise rather than going from one extreme to the other. I currently live in a very rural location and I hate it; I mainly hate not being able to walk anywhere, but that's by-the-by. This shouldn't be about whether it's better to live in the country vs a City.

Could you look at small towns with good access to the countryside? But still enough 'life' to make your OH happy? For me there is a massive difference between being able to walk to a decent coffee shop and a nice pub / restaurant and literally having nothing but fields around.

Where are you currently?

All sensible advice, thank you :) I tend to be a bit of a hot head when it comes to decision making I admit. Friends also call me ditzy but I don't think I am. I can be serious and I'm happy to take responsibility for my own decisions rather than blaming other people.

We're living in Surrey currently with easy access to London. We can't afford the Surrey countryside prices, unfortunately so I'm looking in two other counties that we've holidayed in but never lived in.

I'm semi rural, within 10 mins of a large town, but surrounded by fields. We are in a village, so we do have some neighbours, but at the moment I am in my study looking out at sheep, red kites, and tree covered hills. DH loves that he can just pop out for a half hour walk in the countryside at lunchtime.

We do have a train station, but not many trains, often cancelled for bad weather etc. You do need a car. We have good wifi. We do have power cuts as overheads get damaged. We do get stuck when it snows. We are in SE though, so that's not often.

We are very glad we moved out of town.

Not RTFT but you're unlikely to be able to view any houses if yours isn't at least on the market and under offer....