Pros and cons of living in the countryside

[sharkstale]

We've made the decision to move to the countryside next year.
My daughter will stay in the same school (will be in yr6 then) and move up to the same secondary school as planned, so she doesn't have to leave her friends. It just means more of a drive (roughly 15 mins, so not too bad).
My son will be 2.

To anyone who lives in the countryside, what are the pros and cons of living in the countryside?

I'm looking forward to more nature, open spaces, quiet surroundings, and good views.
Not so much looking forward to more spiders in the house as we don't tend to get spiders where we are now and I absolutely hate them!

Currently in a new build, so wary of things like damp problems and higher heating costs in an older house.

But I'm sure there will be more pros and cons than just these, so would like to explore them more before committing to moving.

Ok fair enough and point taken!

Lots of the things people are listing as cons of countryside living really don't apply to all or even most countryside locations. For a start, train stations and buses do exist in the countryside. Everywhere doesn't constantly smell of manure. I definitely prefer countryside smells to city smells! The cleaner air is one of the benefits. My phone signal and internet connection are actually better than when I lived less rurally. People are complaining about travelling 30 mins in the car, but when I lived in London, travelling on packed tubes was way worse and often took ages.

It entirely depends on the children and their friends/hobbies. Is there any bus service where you are moving to that they can use?

I have 3, and between them we were driving them for hours every day. The round trip to school every morning was 50 minutes. 2 were able to get a bus home but one wasn't. After school activities added extra pick ups and as teens, evening clubs with late pick ups (10pm) meant that most evenings I had to drive late on so could almost never have a drink. With 3 going to different activities on the same days it was a logistical nightmare. One evening a week I left for the first school pickup at 3.15pm and apart from a hobby of my own which lasted 1.5 hours, I was picking up and dropping off children until arriving back home with the last of them at 9.40pm. Normal was 2-3 hours a day. My kids may have been more demanding than most with competitive sport, training and other activities that needed commitment. But then you add seeing friends (which actually didn't happen that much) and part time jobs when they reach 16 that you have to ferry them to/from it really adds up. We agreed because moving was our choice and we knew this was time limited until they learned to drive, but it was a very hard 5 or 6 years. And it would be rubbish for a teenager who can't get anywhere unless you drive them, if you refuse to do so.

I think a lot of the cons can be eradicated with being prepared and budgeting the running costs

for example- we have power cuts so we have a charged up power bank we have for camping but it is amazing in a power cut. Just being able to cook dinner using the microwave or toaster is amazing. Also being able to watch tv helps toO

having charged up wireless lamps is also really useful

electric cars are not a good choice in the country if you don’t have solar panels- the power cuts stop the charge and you are often not legible for lower smart meter tariffs because you live remotely

septic tanks - getting regular service and upkeep is essential

distance to gyms etc- a home gym is a great investment but you can also get a gym next to work etc which cuts commute time

there’s a lack of traffic which makes travelling quicker so 22 miles is often 25 mins

you become very pot hole aware and change your driving position for this

socialising changes - your local pub becomes your local and you can meet people easily- likewise you may find you host people instead of going out more as people will always want to visit

for teenagers you may also find you share the driving with other parents and take turns in hosting
there’s no drinking really in my daughters group or drugs, they are more Pilates and matcha lattes these days - loads of young people jus don’t drink

you pack your car like it’s an apocalypse and have food / kit / drinks / hoody’s so once your out you ge everything done- for example I take my daughter to an mma gym a 40 min drive away in Manchester and I also train there, but we will also shower / grab a coffee etc and go the shop if we’re early so only one trip out instead of multiple

high school will out a bus on for you- college won’t but we have found a way round it sharing lifts and joining a local gym I can drop dd1 off on my way to work and she goes the coffee shop there after to do her homework

tripple glazing is amazing and blocks out any noise

Older houses mean more draughts, more maintenance and often more cleaning. Unless it's been ripped out and refurbished. So higher costs. It doesn't sound much different refurbished transport to were you are now. The rest sounds good, especially if no change in GP etc.

We used to live fairly rurally and then moved to a tiny housing estate on the edge of a small town when my kids got older. I much prefer living closer to the town, but living on the edge of it means I have the best of both worlds.

I feel like there were way more cons, and cons that I found difficult to live with rather than just mildly annoying, than pros when I lived rurally.

Having to drive everywhere - school runs, pub, to pick up a take away/no deliveries. Couldn’t just nip to the shop when we ran out of milk, no public transport. All those dog walks in the countryside - yeah, I had to drive to them anyway as there were no public footpaths in easy reach of my house. Kids couldn’t play out of knock for friends, as they became older I was driving them everywhere too. Stuff like learning to ride a bike - nowhere particularly safe to do so, had to drive them to parks and stuff like that. No park in walking distance. Our road had no pavements.

I wouldn’t move back rural again. Living on the edge of a town gives us the best of both worlds

I live in a small village that has no centre so no shop or pub or GP surgery etc - they have to be driven to. But we have a train station in the village so it’s an 18 minute journey into the city. If I couldn’t drive or the car was off the road I coukd still take the train to the next village if I needed to visit the GP. Tesco deliver. Broadband’s not great but usable for streaming etc. Phone signal is poor.

Ideally I’d live in a village with all facilities within walking distance and good transport links with accessible countryside.

The best place I lived for dog walking was an army town that owned huge stretches of land that was open to the public unless red flags were flying and they were shooting. No livestock and no public footpaths alongside fields of crops. No one but dog walkers used to go there as others preferred the local managed country park so it was acres of ancient woodland and gorse where the dogs could be off lead and you rarely met another person because there were so many access points. It was a shock when we moved to a more rural area to find our access so heavily restricted by private landowners.

Your kids will be bored and moan they can’t see their friends. They’ll lack independence. You’ll have to let them use their screens a lot more to shut them up, and they’ll want to learn to drive a car the second they are able to. Make sure you buy a place with a big drive!

My kids were brought in a place that had a bit of everything in walking distance. Fields, parks, train station, beach, high street, schools. I could never live somewhere where your only route out your house for amenities was by car, especially when at senior school. My kids could meet with their friends at our house then walk to whatever they wanted to do. The train could get them into a city if they wanted. We had a bit of everything.

You can have the best of both worlds if you choose carefully. I brought my teens up in an inner city suburb and to be honest ferried them about anyway for safety reasons. When late teens early 20s and eldest already moved abroad I moved to the edge of small town. To the rear of my property are views of hills, water, geese & ducks, lots of walks straight out of my back gate. To the front every amenity you could wish for all within a couple minutes walk for when i can no longer drive and a railway station 10 minute walk if sons want to go into the city which takes about half an hour (I have no desire to go 🤣).

I grew up in the countryside, no public transport within walking distance and our schools were miles away. Both my parents worked.

Term time = LOTS of sitting in the car.
School holidays = being totally housebound whilst parents worked. LOTS of watching the telly/being incredibly bored. I couldn't go and meet a friend independently until I passed my driving test.

Yes it was scenic and peaceful but teenagers generally aren't interested in nice views. I don't think your kids will thank you.

It does of course depend on how rural..

Mobile phone signal can be hit and miss, we have to go through WIFI so if goes down your stuck.
Even with fibre broadband its not always brilliant.

Yes, the pay off is you'll have to be a taxi driver for some years, even fetching/returning DC's friends.

We've no public transport and no shops within easy walking distance...nearest is probably an hour one way on foot.

Even in a car it can take an age to get to any decent shops.

Road closed signs seem to pop up on a regular occasion with absolutely no notice, sometimes no work being done, sending us on miles of out of the way detours.

Glis Glis love houses in country.

There's literally one road in our village, used as the way in and the way out, no pavements, no street lights....The local fields/woods are mud baths in this weather so unless you're a muddy field walker you're not going to enjoy the winter walks.

Some dog owners, which there are a plenty, seem to think dog poo is as much a part of the countryside as a cow pat is.

When checking out the proximity of public transport, make sure you check the weekend timetables as well. There are many villages round my way that don't have any buses on Sundays/Bank Holidays and buses and trains operate a much reduced timetable on Saturdays.

Also, hay fever: if you move to an area that is predominantly arable farming, any hay fever sufferers in the family may well find it much worse, especially if there's a lot of oilseed rape grown in the area. I got asthma when I first moved to Sussex, never had it in smog-filled Croydon! I was fully acclimatised after a few years though.

Afterthought: reptiles. A snake-phobic friend nearly shat herself when she saw a grass snake sunbathing beside my front steps. Same friend went white and froze when she saw a lizard, I thought she was going to faint. And I've seen 2 adders a few miles from where I live (I've never mentioned this to phobic friend.)

Being cut off with relatively ‘normal’ weather narrow country roads flood easily fields spill out and ice and snow doesn’t get gritted or ploughed as rural roads low priority .
Wear and tear on car - pot holes
SUV or 4X4 necessary for ground clearance - my mini had to go !
You need to be confident driver and able to reverse well when you meet the tractor and trailer on narrow road
Driving kids everywhere so no wine on a Saturday night !
Yes to high heating bills
£500 a month for oil and electric in our four bedroomed cottage - one of us works from home and one of us refuses to be cold!
Noise from
lambs and cows
Smells - field injecting and animals often get plagues of flies in our house from
livestock on nearby fields
Farm traffic when silaging or combining .
Not getting post or deliveries when expected
Less choice with supermarkets
less options for a meal out .
No takeaways .
No street lights I love that aspect but my MIL refuses to be alone in our house as the pitch darkness outside really spooks her .
Overall I love it .
My kids all headed to cities after uni though .

I've lived rural/semi rural all my adult life, brought my dds up down a long track in the midde of nowhere (well, 2 miles of lanes to the nearest village) and loved it, though the taxi thing is definitely a consideration! My girls loved it although did miss out on a certain amount of impromptu get togethers in the village most of their friends lived in.

Cons: mud, scary narrow lanes (here at least) which meant it wasn't safe to let dds cycle, high bills and council tax, no services to speak of - no street lights, had to drive out bins to a mainer road, deoivery drivers frequently not even attempting to find us, the odd dickhead farmer neighbour shooting things and scaring the shit out of our dogs (though most were lovely), the prevalence of support for fox hunting drove me mad, drink drivers barrelling back from the pub at night, distance from everything, reliance on cars, flooding/ice/snow preventing is getting anywhere fairly often. Etc. Oh, and lack of mains services = nobody to call when things went wrong! We soon learned who would maintain things like spring water treatment/sewage plants.

Pros: space around us, beautiful countryside, lovely childhood for dds, spring water, lovely community feel (in our tiny hamlet as well as the larger village where dds went to primary school), beautiful historic house that I still miss, glorious views, privacy. Also the space meant we could host a lot - we loved being a house where lots of kids/friends could visit, though that depends on them wanting to drive there and it can get expensive!

I lived rurally for 6 years
Cons..
No shop I didn't have to drive to
No public transport
No takeaways that delivered
Neighbours with septic tanks that had to be emptied and stunk to high heaven
Rats and mice in the wood shed
Having to pay in excess of £500 every time the heating oil tank was running low
Stranded in snow (actually I wrote my husband's new car off in snow so never dared drive in it again)
Very, very dark at night
Selfish twat landlords (nothing to do with living in the countryside)

Pros
Birdsong in the morning
Silence at night (unless my twat neighbours had a dinner party)
Log burner in winter
We lived right on the edge of the woods and I'd drive to school through it on sunny days as it was so beautiful
The view from my loft bedroom saw all the way to Whitstable sea (I was near faversham)

We decided to stay in London as the kids go through secondary / 6th form etc... Just feel like the freedom and opportunities are abundant here and the country side they would be cooped up at home all the time.
Friends who have moved to the country all say their kids are on screens all the time when not being driven around...

I grew up in the middle of nowhere with parents who refused to be a taxi service - they bought me a motor bike when I turned 16 which was brilliant and I loved it. as soon as I was 18 though I moved to a city.

i’m back in the countryside now and despite the power cuts (weekly), and the fact I can no longer walk to the shops I’m quite content. I have a lovely non dirty wood burning stove, good neighbours and a bus stop at the end of my road. It’s all very peaceful, but I would hate it if I had kids here and had to ferry them around.

I've not found any disadvantages to living in the countryside. If dd needs to go somewhere I'm happy to drive her and know she is safe.

Being a taxi service is not easy, not just for your own child but potentially dropping friends home as at some point many parents don’t want to drive dc (or can’t due to work schedules). You obviously aren’t thinking really rural as you are saying a 15 minute drive but remember roads get closed and diversions are far longer in the countryside, when my route to work is closed (surprisingly frequently) it’s an extra 10 minutes in driving plus any extra time due to congestion. If there’s no shop you need to add time for nipping out.

my advice when house hunting is ti be a little flexible, edge of a large village or town even with more services and buses can be a good compromise - I can reach the countryside on foot within 10 minutes, the beach is 5 minutes away, I’m able to get off the road and onto paths by crossing the road - might not be a village but my non driving dc doesn’t need lifts and we’ve reduced to one car

We lived rurally when mine were teens.

teenage taxi service was significant. I drove them to the nearest train station (20 mins) to get train into the city. I picked up from a different train station near my work.

we often did dinner at McDonald’s or wherever because evening activities - cadets etc - were in the town.

we’d leave at 7:20 and often not get back until 9 or 10. ExH commuted to London and left 5:20am and got back about 8.

not much of a community compared to other villages we had lived in and not much going on at all. We moved there when the kids were pre teens and they never made any friends in the village - they were never there and neither were we.

I live in the country and aren't that keen. It's very pretty but no public transport so have to drive everywhere, I'm not sure how people manage without a car, you need two cars really just in case. Anything you want to do is a drive away, GP, hospital, supermarket, cinema, restaurants. And the wildlife, great to look at but it seems to me that wildlifes mission is to get in my house, huge variety of flies and creepy crawlies, mice, birds falling down the chimney, bats, small deer. It's like Disney is trying to get me.

Pros- wildlife and birds, fields a minute or two walk (because we're in a wood).
Lots of routes to run and exercise off road - so no heckling!
Teen girls both go off walking (solo) and are into photography and take proper cameras with them.
Village is well served for activities, churches, pub etc.
There's space, no one overlooks our garden.
People say hello if they walk past you.
Our signal is good for mobile coverage.
We're also not hugely far from a town, 10 minutes, so some takeaways deliver!

Cons - public transport is expensive.
Bus =£3/journey and non existent after 7pm.
We have to pay for the school bus to our catchment school despite being more than 3 miles away... Well we don't because we lift share with others, but you get the picture.
Suffolk if you're wondering- you get funded travel to your nearest school which isn't necessarily your catchment school...
You will be a taxi.
Mud. And potholes. And spiders.

I wouldn't want to live in the middle of nowhere, but DH would! I think the plan is to head into the nearest town when we get a bit older.

@sharkstale - what is your definition of 'the countryside' please? From what you said it doesn't sound like the 'real isolated countryside' which I would think of if I was planning on doing that. You're getting a range of replies on here, based on what other people mean by 'living in the countryside'?

If you're only moving about 15 minutes away, by car, it doesn't sound like you are moving to what I would call 'the countryside'? I live in a small town (population around 13,000). We live in an Estate built more than 20 years ago on the edge of that town. Lots of fields and the like and plenty of green spaces to drive to within 10 - 30 minutes of home, but we don't have all the disadvantages of being 'out in the sticks' . We can get some takeaways delivered, we have a couple of small supermarkets and within 20 miles or so of bigger supermarkets which will deliver. We are served by a train between 2 of Scotland's biggest cities ( a basic train stop, not a proper station with facilities and only one line in each direction) and there are buses (but not many and not frequent.)

Would something like that be better, maybe? Or is it somewhere like that you are considering?

Will you have to drive everywhere? Drop off and pick up your teen DD all the time.
No walking to the supermarket?