To ask if there are quiet places to live that dont involve having to be incredibly rich

[Newstartplease24]

I’m a single parent, not that high an earner, low professional salary.
I could move anywhere (sort of)
does anyone live in a sort of normal house (not a million quid mansion) that doesn’t have neighbour noise?
any tips for where to look?

YABU - no such thing suck it up buttercup
YANBU - there are ways of finding peaceful housing (and I will tell you them)

Tell me more about quiet London - how quiet? Like, does traffic pass your door during the day, or is there a bus nearby?

But how quiet would that be when, say, a couple with a teenage son who plays the drums moves in next door, and the 30-something woman on the other side has a baby that cries day and night? That's what happened to me in my terraced house. Lovely and quiet until new neighbours arrived.

The Scottish Borders is lovely and you could get a place commutable to Edinburgh for that price. Peebles is a nice town and you can get a bus into Edinburgh. This place is lovely.

3 bedroom semi-detached house for sale in Rosebud Cottage, 12 Rosetta Road, Peebles, EH45 8JU, EH45

Northumberland beautiful and affordable

This is what I mean, really. Are there places less susceptible to general noisy selfish behaviour than others?

thanks for all your brilliant suggestions - lots of posters have suggested places where I could get a detached house probably, which would help.

but what about when your lovely old lady neighbour moves out into a flat and someone moves in who wants to play music in the garden all day, or out the front while he leans over his car bonnet, every day in summer? Are there any places where that kind of thing is just not considered to be acceptable or tolerable? Or is it just purely luck that if someone brings that vibe in, everyone else has to put up with it?

This is not practical as a parent when transport and lifts are needed the whole time plus teenagers need the stimulation of different amenities. It is not fair on them when they get
to this age. Plus they need to have friends to see not live hslf cut off from civilisation.

1. I didn’t ask for extremely remote. I asked for quiet. I’m getting told I need to be extremely remote, for quiet ,which is a bit disappointing, but
2. my children will not live with me for ever

but yeah it’s annoying that apparently you have to move to somewhere you need a ferry to get to. Some posters are suggesting not tho - places nearish to cities with buses.

We live in rural County Durham, on the edge of weardale, about 20mins from the city. Two kids. One late primary one in high school. Very quiet, lots of garden, couple of neighbours. Most of our noise is tractors and animals.

Yes we run the kids around a lot, but we also have their friends here. A garden full of teenagers on a summer day is brilliant fun. They go out walking in the countryside too. I just act as a taxi and she doesn’t miss out. None of her friends live in the local village so they are all driven places and are in the same boat.

It’s beautiful here. Our living room looks over rolling hills and fields. We have deer, and otters, and owls, and bird of prey. We have our peaceful nook.

Are there any places where that kind of thing is just not considered to be acceptable or tolerable? Or is it just purely luck that if someone brings that vibe in, everyone else has to put up with it?

Rural, semi-rural, detached etc is more likely to give you peace and quiet but I doubt if there are any areas where noisy behaviour isn't known, unfortunately!

It's just the luck of the draw how your neighbours/future neighbours behave.

I live in a block of flats in inner London - there are traffic noises and sirens of course but my neighbours are quiet and considerate.

Don’t go somewhere too rural - you’ll be lonely and isolated, particularly with young children and if you’re an “out of towner”.

You don’t need seclusion- just a quiet road with a house with a garden and no passing traffic. Look for small market towns and then look at quiet, no through roads in their suburbs and nearby villages.

Please don’t take your DC somewhere extremely rural; there’ll be nothing for them to do as teens, no friends for miles and very lonely in the holidays. Or you’ll end up taxi-ing them
everywhere.

Look at the cathedral cities and their nearby villages. Ely, Winchester, Wells, Salisbury, Norwich etc all very quiet. But don’t cut yourself off.

Bear with me here 🤣 in between Sheffield and Rotherham there are some fantastic places and it's pretty rural whilst not being far from Sheffield. Cheap too.

Unfortunately where you live it’s luck of the draw with regards to your neighbours, unless you buy a big house with massive gardens so you can’t see/hear anyone else!

We’re another family in rural-ish Cambridgeshire - well Cambs/Suffolk border. We’re in well served village which is a rarity with a couple of shops, a garage, garden centre and good primary school. We’re a 20 min drive from Cambridge and you can be in central London by train within 2 hours of leaving your front door as we’re 15 mins from a train station that has regular trains on the Kings Cross line.

It’s not perfect, nowhere is, but we’ve been here 15 years so it’s been good enough for us!

for that kind of budget you could buy a nice house on Gower. Beautiful, quiet, close to amenities. Heaven on earth

I actually think it's luck unless youcare the middle of a big bit of land you own.

I live in a quiet cul de sac and my house is detached so we don't get neighbour noise coming through the walls, but the houses are still close enough that if people play music, do car stuff or are anti social etc it carries and it only takes a change of neighbour to make everyone's life a misery.

I'm 10 miles from Lincoln in a village where 3 bed detached houses have sold for around £300,000. 10 miles in the other direction is Woodhall Spa, a bit more expensive and a nice place to visit/have coffee/meals.
Also Horncastle, Louth, Market Rasen have very reasonably priced houses - all less than an hours drive from Lincoln

Budget?

isle of Lewis

We used to live on the edge of a village, only one adjacent neighbour, over high hedges that absorbed any noise. Sheep on two sides and a road on the fourth. If that road had been quiet it would have been idyllic. I think you need to look at specific properties not try to find an area full of quiet people. Now I live up a footpath in a popular holiday spot where all my neighbours are second homes, it is literally silent here for 40 weeks of the year. All I can hear right now is my own tinnitus! Sometimes I can hear the sea.

I live on the edge of Bridlington, NorthEast coast. Very quiet here. Property not expensive at all.

I'm a single parent, too, and don't earn loads. We live on the edge of a small town, about 30 minutes from a major city. Our road is really quiet because it leads into the forest and nobody ever comes through here unless they live here. Neighbours are quiet (and mostly older) but seem ok with my kids being a bit noisy sometimes.
We've got a large detached house, huge garden in the back, pool, hot tub, summer house.
I'm currently sitting in the sun in the front garden while DC2 naps in the pushchair.
DC1 attends the local primary school (he's just moved from his private school because his father likes to be difficult) and DC2 will start at nursery in a few weeks. Nursery will be about £300 a month for a full time spot and I'm also paying around £100 a month for DC1's wraparound care.

@Newstartplease24 Do you own , private rent or council
housing association ?

My thoughts too ! Lewis has all you will need too. Sports for kids a community, work .
vet good priced housing .
Orkney. Shetland

I live in an idyllic hamlet in the rural south West Midlands, two miles from the nearest village, ten miles from a small city and thirty miles from a large one. So would suit you in that. But right now the sheep and lambs in the fields make the most appalling racket during the day and into the late evening, the peacocks at the farm shriek incessantly, woodpeckers drum and owls hoot, you can barely breathe for the oilseed rape pollen, there are continual parking wars and the neighbours have fun with chainsaws, mowers and other power tools at the weekend, making it difficult to relax in your garden.
Everywhere has its drawbacks, though my son’s home in London is in a quiet, leafy street where the only disturbing noise is sometimes sirens in the distance.

I do think the only way you can guarantee no disturbance is plenty of space around you, yes.
But you can increase the odds - always buy a detached place, and avoid places popular with families, and new build estates. Areas with bungalows are more likely to have a mixed demographic, and some bungalows have big, mature gardens which helps.

@Newstartplease24 just read your updates .
For they price I’d choose either
Scottish Borders - close to Edinburgh
Northumberland - close to newcastle

If it was a north of Scotland city I’d choose Inverness and find a surrounding area there .