Is it a townie thing? Or am I just anti-social?

[oObyeOo]

I live in a very popular part of the UK that basically triples in number the summer months.

It’s the Lakes, so it’s ruralish and lots of space if you know where to go. Yet despite this space…. Like today for example….

Me and family (dh & 11yr old dd) are sitting on the lake shore, really long section of beach. Lots of space as only us and another family approx 20mtrs away.

Another family with younger kids approx 1 and 4 come and sit RIGHT next to us!… About 2 meters away. There’s a whole fucking beach!

Why?!

I think it’s a townie thing… when you live surrounded by people you feel safer/more comfortable next to people.

Whereas if you live rurally you prefer your space more.

Nah, we might not have retail parks or an insurmountable amount of roundabout…. This is my criteria for any town or city!… although cities also have those really drab roads of random independent shops such as pound shops, barbers & bookies on the way in.

But the lake has way too many shops, pubs, cafes, traffic, people that I don’t think it’s rural enough

A northern townie 🤣

I’m a ‘townie’ and wouldn’t have wanted to sit next to you.

I’m glad!

This pisses me off no end! I absolutely don't get that goes through their heads!

It's even worse if they park behind you so you can't open your boot (to get anything out OR put your shopping in)

Nonsense. This has nothing to do with where a person comes from. I hate the word townie, but i guess that is what we would be classed as, we wouldn't go and sit this close to another family on an empty beach /open space etc.

Surely in the lakes, if isolation is your thing, there's plenty of places you can go where you won't see another person all day.

Absolutely!! I know the best spots!! However you often have to work for them… walk uphill, for a while. Which is something my 10yr old doesn’t always want to do, or we don’t have time to do.

We also live in the central lakes, and the best lake access spots are busy spots in summer.

Maybe they hoped you'd have a conversation and your kids might play together?

Damn. Well your only sensible option then is to adopt some eccentric way of dressing or intensely distasteful behaviour that makes people avoid you like the plague.

I once saw a man cutting his toenails on a train - the seat besides him remained empty from Bath Spa to Swindon. Also, a man in a cafe garden with a rat on his shoulder.....table entirely to himself. Options to try perhaps?

It's called flocking behaviour. It drives me mad. I won't stand for it, though - I just move, immediately, and I don't care if the offender realises why I've moved.

I know you've since mentioned it but I immediately thought car park.

I can guarantee if I park somewhere secluded in a car park (because I prefer to walk a longer distance/don't want my car scratched again, etc, etc) when I return there is a car in the space next to me, when there are 50+ free spaces around.

Sorry I think it's a 'flocking' thing not a rural/townie thing.

We live on a farm, very isolated, proper rural.

DP is a flocker. I'm not. My parents, also farmers, were also flockers and made friends everywhere they went. I hated it.

Some people want to be left alone and some people want to try and make friends. That's the top and bottom of it

Oh I hate this! I'm a townie and I do not want people anywhere near me 😂

The worst was when we were literally the only ones on the beach, they came to sit right next to us ... and then told us to move our dog away from them!!!

I'm from the continent. I flock and then I get my tits out.

Me too. My DH hates it. He’s from a farming background ( ultra rural) so hates anyone that comes within a 100yds of him. Farmers have evolved to live remotely. We live rurally in a small hamlet, he hates having neighbours.
As for the Lake District, I’m from the Lakes and until recently we still had a family property there, our idea of hell is someone within 100yds of us. Fortunately, being local we knew the best places for solitude.
I have signed the official ( Lakeland) secrets act so cannot divulge our places of solitude.

In a lifetime of travelling, I've concluded that 70% of people do this. It's nothing to do with wanting to talk to someone or with place of origin. I think it's some sort of atavistic instinct - which I haven't got - to follow other people's lead. I bet it's the same instinct that makes people join queues before finding out what they're for, or fight for the last one of something even if it isn't what they wanted.

People be weird

Me, too! I quite like the idea of whipping my sagging baps out, though, that should get rid of them.

Perhaps not in a supermarket car park.

I must have looked completely unapproachable, too wierd for Santa and ready for Nurse Ratched for my 60+ years of life because I have never experienced this oft-reported on MN phenomena of seemingly 'normal' people plonking themselves plus family, equipment, animals, etc right next to me in a vast available space.

Really, @TheHateIsNotGood? They don't park next to you in half-empty car parks, either?

I want what you've got 😆

Not a townie thing. I like being as far away from other people as possible!

I live in Central London

Hate it when I sit in a park or on a beach and someone plonks themselves right next to me when there's acres of space.
And in near empty cinemas.

@Garlicked - it must be a 'gift' - however I do have a beacon on my head that attracts the 'odder' form of person; thankfully those who remind me - that it can happen to anybody - and kindness can go a long way.

I think lots of townies like space and isolation when they go somewhere like the Lakes. But I can see that people in general who want to be near others will probably move to towns (if they don't live in one already) and become townies. So most likely, people who put their blanket next to yours on an otherwise empty beach are going to be townies. But that doesn't mean all, or even most, townies want to sit next to people on the beach.