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.

I think it’s ideal when they’re young, now they’re getting older we have to drive them everywhere or for the older two risk that they’ll get lifts with non safe drivers from the class. It’s lonely for them and boring but then a pro is that they’re not in and around town. Nighttime is quiet and lonely and our house is too big. I’d guess we’ll downsize into town when they all get older, fed up of driving and I miss walking on paths!!!

eta in the morning there’s no place on earth like our back garden and night it’s scary😅

"I'm looking forward to more nature, open spaces, quiet surroundings, and good views."

Nature is noisy.
Open spaces are noisy.
Farming is noisy.
Good views get built on.

What is your definition of countryside - I live in a town with population of 6K. Someone from a big city would think that is countryside whereas I picture a farm cottage in the back of beyond with nearest shop/pub being 5 miles away?

Yes, it is. Pretty much anything your DC do involves a car, and it starts before the teen years. There is no running and knocking up next door to come out and play; playtime involves driving DC to & from their friends' houses. Trick or treating? If you want to do that it involves either driving somewhere for an organized event or driving to a neighborhood to T&T. Sports/hobbies? Drive. School? Drive. Parties? Drive. Now, I do live in a place where 'car is king' and teens get their licenses at 16 so the driving actually decreased for me when they became teens. And we were lucky that we had a 'rattletrap' for them to use so they didn't need to tie up our cars. So although I know that teens driving isn't as common in the UK as it is here, it is well worth it to have your teens get their licenses.

Another thing is if your DC don't enjoy 'country pursuits'. DS2 did and won awards at our local fairs for his poultry. But DC1 was a 'city boy' through and through. Luckily he found music and a group of like-minded kids to keep himself out of trouble until he was old enough to drive into the city for entertainment.

Another thing that stunned us (and this may not be an issue there) was the prevalence of drugs in the local high school. I guess since there isn't as much to entertain kids in the country, they find their own 'entertainment'.

I would say that for many villages you are not only moving physically you are time travelling 50 years back as well - that may well suit you, but I found it a bit of a shock in Derbyshire - wasn’t awfully rural where I was either, but did apply in most areas I got to know. I did adjust and only found how much I’d adjusted when returning to work in a city rather than the nearest town. For me not the best discovery and I was glad to move - as always planned just took a while when you get used to being somewhere and life stuff builds around it.
Despite not being over rural I really struggled with no car to do much with young kids, buses when available spent forever going around all the villages to their destination- and I will never, ever have even a decorative fire again - felt I was in a Dickens’ novel as maid shovelling coke from a coal shed in the freezing cold 🤣 - I was particularly bad at lighting them too for a long while, bless my little kids! But main objection if not reliant would be the dirt of them.
Villages are often quite insular and you will probably remain that newcomer forever.
I think the estate you are on now is different to all this as it’s obviously all new people there in a new place.
I also was surprised at the crime and drugs high levels, particularly as many in the village pulled faces about that big rough city I came from, but some stuff there felt closer and more unnerving to me than anything I’d encountered before - obviously not all villages will be like this. I also tbf, later, didn’t really know of gangs that kids can get caught up in.
Having said all that villages, and including those folk who live miles down a track, do get together to make their own (interesting at times!) entertainment and will help each other in snow, in times of running out of tea - often walking straight into your house to check on you or have a catch up.
It’s Probably clear it’s not really my bag but that is personal and place dependent and I do sometimes still think how nice it would be to have silence/countryside noise and stars, not sirens and shouting (not all the time!) and light pollution! But I remind myself of my reality and now I live near water - 15 mins drive to beautiful countryside and 10 mins walk to a train or national express station that will take me anywhere, along with all the stuff a city can offer on my literal doorstep. Also it’s my background and my normal and I think for many it can be difficult to change those used to ways of living.
I sometimes wonder why folk go on about ‘British culture’ as I found massively different British cultures within 15 miles of each other.
Really hope you do find your happy place OP.

We live rurally and moving here is the best thing we ever did. Less than 15 minutes to the nearest town but we're very organised and food shopping etc is all done in the town we work in before we come home. Children go to school in said town and are dropped off/collected on our way to and from work so it's no big stretch as we would be travelling there anyway. Eldest is a teen and so far we don't have an issue with boredom or having to taxi every 5 minutes. For the moment he is very content to be here and the freedom of being able to use our garden without being affected by other people has made a massive difference. My children can play out without disturbing anyone or being disturbed by anyone, they play basket ball, football, play in the paddling pool in summer camp out and watch films on a projector under the stars, plant their own vegetables.
As far as driving everywhere I can't say it bothers me all that much although of course there is the cost in petrol. We previously lived in a town why by we could walk to most places but to be honest I actually prefer driving as it means I can avoid people more easily!
We do of course get power cuts but again we are organised. We have wood burners for heat and plenty of battery lights/candles etc.
Having no immediate neighbours is absolutely bliss and my mental health has improved massively since living here. Every con is worth it in my own personal experience.

We did the opposite as I grew up rurally and hated being stuck or having to ask for lifts all the time. I could never go out with friends after school as I had to get the bus home, and missed out on quite a lot of usual teenage shenanigans because I just couldn’t get there.

We chose to move to a small town so my kids could walk to school, their friends houses, afterschool classes like swimming and football, catch the bus to the city or the cinema, hang out in coffee shops (and now they’re older, the pub). They are very independent and thankful they can get anywhere under their own steam.

No regrets at all. I think rural is great when they are primary aged but I see my village friends spending their lives ferrying teenagers everywhere and am so glad we don’t have to!

That is true. You could walk a bus route quicker than riding it in London before the emission zones

We live in a village miles from the nearest town. Since moving here the pub has shut and the bus has been reduced so be aware that amenities may reduce further!

It has been wonderful while DS is primary aged but we are just about to put our house on the market and move to a good sized town. As DS has got older he wants to do more activities and socialise with his friends and we are at our limit with the driving.

I really miss walking being my main form of transport, I hate how often I have to get into the car. I also miss travelling by train so we are moving to a town with a train station.

Winters are tough too, once it is dark it is properly dark and you are so limited in what you can do. There is also mud everywhere.

Personally I would't move a Year 6 child to the countryside but would wait for all the DC to have left home and then go for it with the country living.

I say this as someone who watched Escape to the Country for years and dreamed about it all so much. I don't regret it as it has been amazing for the primary years but I am very much looking forward to being in a town.

Cons
rubbish public transport.
unless you really do live with in walking distance of parkland / wild space then you’ll need to use the car for walking.
you’ll be surprised how much you end up not getting out for walks!
as your kids get older, you will become a taxi, once they get to 15/16 you’ll be a night taxi too!
holidays can be really boring as the days of 10-13 year old kids slinging a rucksack over their backs and cycling or hiking are pretty much in the past, and even when older, country roads can be much more dangerous than in towns and cities.
in winter our lanes aren’t gritted which makes driving more hazardous than on the main roads, similarly potholes are a nightmare, and the council never clean the drains resulting in significant flooding.
no street lights means from Nov-mid Feb you’ll need to remember to have a torch or high viz if you go for a potter.
with fuel prices increasing its getting more expensive going from A-B and back again.
its APITA when you’ve realised you’re out of milk and have to get into the car to get some!
mud, mud and more damned mud! No matter how much you try mud will find its way into every corner of your home!
mice, squirrels and bats and rats will want to share your living space!
tourists, tourists and more tourists meaning a car journey of 12 mins in the winter takes double or more in the summer.
unless you are willing to taxi, no jobs for teens, last summer I’d drop dd at the cafe and pick her up, weekends were doable, but trying to flex it during the working week, meant we had to be really organised (I’m lucky with flexible working), but just something to be aware of.

pros:
the night skies are beautiful.
sitting having breakfast outside in the spring / summer listening to the birdsong in the warm sunshine is the best mindfulness/ meditation/ relaxation!
the silence at night and no loud neighbours is a balm to the soul in an otherwise busy, noisy world.
in the summer holidays my dc put the big canvas tent up, their friends come and stay, they’re nice kids and and entertain themselves by taking picnics and walking to the lake to swim / sunbathe / chat.
winter, with the fire lit, curtains drawn and listening to the wuthering wind outside, is really cosy!
generally less crime, I never lock the doors during the day, and have been known to leave the doors open at night🤦‍♀️, then again we have a beast of a dog, although dog is a complete wuss, you wouldn’t know that to look at it!

Space - sooooo much space
No traffic noise or pollution
Large, spacious house with no neighbours
Stunning views across land that will never get built on
Low crime rates
Fabulous wildlife
Proximity to mountains and beaches but only 2 h away from the capital - so easy for shopping and to meet friends for lunch or dinner
Great places to ride and walk dogs
Living rurally is an absolute dream

The main thing - and it's big - is the lack of independence for children once they get to secondary. For me, the pros didnt outweigh this. We lived about 10 minutes drive from the nearest town and, if I could go back, I would have moved into town before they started high school. It's not just that you are a taxi service, which is a pain, it's that they lose all independence and spontaneity. I also grew up in a village with crap public transport and once I reached secondary school, I hated it. Sorry, OP, probably not what you wanted to hear but that was my experience.

The best thing was hearing the animals at night: owls, foxes etc. But i hated living near a farm and hearing the dairy cows crying and bellowing for their babies for days after they were taken away from them. I also used to hate hearing the farmer shouting and swearing at his dairy cows when he was rounding them up on his quad bike.

I suppose it all depends on where exactly you are and the exact set-up really.

Loads of places are like that, we live in a tiny village with a couple of footpaths but other than that you'd have to drive as the footpaths peter out 50yards from the village and then you're on crazy country roads with massive hedges rising up on either side so you'd be risking life and limb to walk, cycle or run on them. It's not like towns with parks etc that's for sure

A pp have said, it depends! But I read something once that said city dwellers often have better access to green spaces than rural folk because farmland and estate land is often private and not accessible. So that may be something to consider.

i have lived rurally for 10 years- before that in a small market town. I do like the quiet and the views, but honestly if I were choosing for this ten years, I’d go city. My daughter is mid teens and it would be far better for her to be in a city, with the independence around travelling that would bring. We’re three miles from a bus stop and the roads to that bus stop are dangerous- fast, no pavement, frequent tractors (who drive without due care and attention) and covered in mud from the farm traffic and the solar farm heavy plant. I can walk fairly safely to the doctors and the pub but nothing else really unless I like cricket and overpriced stale bread.

i agree about suburbs. I don’t see the point of living in a very built up area if you don’t have the amenities of a town. But I would move further in to the city, or to a market town, rather than to a very rural location.

Countryside can feel isolating, lonely - no friends nearby, no helpful neighbours to call on.

Were rural but not remote.

No more spiders than in town, or damp in the house. I know my neighbours, we all look out for each other.There is a lot going on, it's very community focused. Being close to nature is amazing, but having any bus service is very useful. Not all rural places have less traffic, fecking annoying motorbikes love the country.

Pros - space, quiet, views, room to host all our UFL crew who like weekends in the countryside, room for a pony!
Things that might be a con for others but I don’t mind them - driving everywhere and driving DC everywhere. I hate public transport so even when I lived in town I preferred driving and I have accidentally raised DC to have a similar aversion. Lots of friends are in a similar position so DC isn’t an outlier
Actual Cons - potholes, draughty old money pit of a house (I love it really), getting cut off if it snows, mice, fucking bats and their protection orders, motorbikers who think country lanes are racetracks.
We are super happy where we are but I think the following makes it a lot easier:
We both love driving and hate buses
I am ruthlessly organised about meal planning and the online shop so we never need to ‘nip’
DCs main hobby is horses
All other hobbies are done through the school
We both work in hybrid jobs
Our village is the halfway point between a city and a large town so we can gets Ubers and takeaways pretty easily
There is a GP surgery in the village
We liftshare school runs with other parents (I set this up via the village FB page)
Village benefitted from the rural broadband scheme so connectivity is great
We bloody love it, but it’s definitely not for everyone!

Most places in the countryside have narrow lanes with 60mph speed limits and no paths - so way too dangerous to walk on.

lovely for primary but I thought my dc would have lifelong friends due to proximity
of village school but at secondary in nearest town 10 mind that hasn’t been the case

As @MsJinks said, consider the filth of heating.

Bringing in wood from the barn in the driving sleet, knocking out the mice and spiders, carrying the coal hod upstairs etc

Pros:
Quieter
Feel more isolated from some current affairs/news
Nice walks
Community feel, if you get involved

Cons:
Have to drive everywhere - it’s 5 miles one way to a supermarket here which gets tedious when you just want milk/bread
Mud
Potholes!
No public transport - depends how rural but when we lived in a small town it was easier to just go out for dinner/coffee for example

Honestly I wouldn’t want to live in a big town, I hate them. I’ve always lived in the countryside, including now, where technically I live on the edge of a VERY small town, I can walk to the local shops in 10 mins, and be in open fields within 30 seconds walk of my house. It’s the best of both worlds as I have teenage/early 20s DC, they are able to hop on a train from our tiny town if they want to, so less dependent on me. I grew up in the absolute middle of nowhere and I hated it as a teenager.

Sorry, yes, so to clarify, I'm talking about something like this! Certainly not somewhere with a 5 mile drive just to get some milk, or bringing in the logs to make my own fire! (Although a fire sounds beautiful minus the mice and spiders 🤣).
My mum lives in what I consider to be the country, a tiny village with one road running through it and she still has more shops than I do here 🤦‍♀️ a convenience store, a coop, 2 petrol stations, a gp, a pharmacy and a dog groomers. Tractors and road kill (as pp mentioned), I can't drive there (35 mins from me) without getting stuck behind a tractor, seeing a few dead deer along the way, and passing multiple fields of sheep. I absolutely love it, and would love to move there, but I need to be closer this way for my dd's school and friends.

Upsides: it’s quieter, and you don’t always have as many neighbours disturbing you with neighbourly noise when you’re trying to sleep. You might just get woken up by local wildlife instead. It’s usually calmer. If you’re hoping to avoid takeaways, the countryside is perfect, because they don’t all deliver so far out in the sticks. If you want to ‘get away from it all’ (or have the perfect excuse to avoid long conversations with people on the phone) then you can blame it on the phone signal, which can be an interesting concept at times. Ditto the internet. Your children are more likely to be interested in passing their driving tests at an earlier age, so that they can get around to see friends and go to events, without having to rely on you. They are possibly more likely to learn to ride a horse and drive tractors (depending on their friendship circles), and possibly join Young Farmers when they’re older. That is an excellent in-built social life! If you live in a dairy farming area, they might be more likely to be able to get a weekend job milking. You might all pick up some more country interests, like beekeeping, shooting and riding. There’s less crime, less light pollution, it smells better (unless it is chicken manure!) and there’s a slower pace of life. Are you looking to update your wardrobe? Good! Get some wellies, hats and fleeces in there. You’ll learn a lot about wildlife, farming and the countryside… and get laughed at if you think it is unreasonable for farmers to allow their sheep to have sex in a field that your new house overlooks (seriously). If you’re looking to be off-grid, then septic tanks and compost loos are the way forward, and stock up on camping gear (or solar panels and batteries) for all of those power cuts. If you’re into butchery or taxidermy, there’s a lot of roadkill around to experiment on.

Downsides: you will have to drive everywhere. If you can't drive, then your world can become very small. You’ll have to remember to make shopping lists on your phone, because you will not want to have to drive back into town for those items that you forgot, so you’ll probably end up fantasising about the perfect pantry and chest freezers. Booking your car in for its MOT will mean arranging lifts, relying on public transport (if you’re lucky enough to have it) or staying in town all day until you can collect your car. Taxis might be few and far between (our local rank consists of one car). You WILL get stuck behind tractors and farm machinery, and might have to stop to let livestock cross the road, or report them as having escaped from their field. Your house might get invaded by mice or rats, as well as spiders and flies. Horseflies are my least favourite, because they bite, so I have fly-screens up at the windows to keep them out (tip: go for the ones that are sealed all around the edges, so you don’t get intrepid moths and spiders climbing around the edges). Your council will not consider it a necessity to grit your area in the winter, because you’re not on a commuter belt. In our case, we also have regular three-day power-cuts in the winter. If you or anyone in your family has hay-fever, that can be horrific (but, like mine, might be made better by the change of scenery. It depends on the pollen that you’re allergic to). Your hobbies might be limited (e.g. for me, the nearest ice rink is over an hour away, rather than a quick hop on a train, like where I grew up) or just different.

Despite the cons, I will never EVER live in a busier place ever again! I am quite content where I am, though sometimes I fantasise about somewhere more even more remote!

I think most of the pros and cons have already been listed but for me the most important aspect is that you need to be close to your friends and like-minded people. Where do your friends live and how do you spend your weekends?

I hate all the spiders and insects, dislike all the driving, particularly on narrow pot-holed lanes, wish we had mobile signal and decent broadband, and I hate the constant mud everywhere!

But, I have spent all my life in the countryside, my friends, my work and my hobbies are based in the countryside around me so I wouldn't live anywhere else. We are a community of like-minded people and outsiders are only welcome if they also accept our way of life.

As a farmer in the south east, I am fed up with townies moving to the countryside and expecting it to be picture perfect. The countryside is not a theme park, it is a dangerous working environment.

The roads are used daily by tractors and livestock so expect them to be muddy and your car to be filthy (summer and winter). Expect to see dead animals sometimes and understand that the lambs will be heading to the abbatoir come autumn, and that deer need culling. Don't complain about horses holding up your journey or about the fact that they poo in the road. Expect cockerels to crow at 5am and cows to moo loudly during the night. If you are in an arable area then expect tractors and combines to continue working through the night to get the crop in. If you live near farms, expect smells and flies. Forestry is a business and trees need to be felled - they don't live forever. Moorland needs to burn to re-generate.

Do not walk your dog in farmer's fields or woods unless you have specific permission or you and your dog stay on the footpath - the farmer may be out with his gun. Keep dogs on leads at all times (particularly from March to July as it is not amusing if your dog chases nesting wild birds off their nests) and always pick up after them as dog poo can cause sickness and death in grazing farm animals. If you want to let your dog off for a run, go to a designated dog field or park - not on a working farm.

If you don't want a country lifestyle, with country interests and friends (who may be farmers that hunt and shoot) then please stay in the town and leave us in peace.