To just say F it and move to Cornwall and homeschool my Dc

[Typingonkeyboard]

Or find a lovely little village school and spend our days living a slow, traditional life

It’s my dream

Has anyone got this, am I being realistic?

Cornwall can be particularly grim because in winter there is nothing to do. It's a relatively sparsely populated area when not overrun with tourists so it's population can't support lots of decent shops, cafes, libraries, leisure centres, cinemas, trampoline parks etc.

So you find that although there are these things you might be a fair drive away from them.

Quaint fishing towns with cute cafes and tat holiday gift shops are very pretty when the sun is shining but in winter can often become shabby places with lots closed up for winter or on very reduced opening hours. It can be quite desolate.

Theres also a certain amount of deprivation in winter in Cornwall because people are heavily dependent on seasonal income so winter can be a tough time.

Open shops, especially more upmarket ones, bring shoppers and footfall and make a town feel more thriving. Not to mention the footfall brought by better shops brings business to cafes and restaurants and other traders.

There's a reason people are always a bit upset when their local high street goes downhill and fills up with vape shops, charity shops and poundland.

Are you from Cornwall? You're taking the critisism very personally.

People are entitled to their opinions and views, and my opinion/view is that Cornwall is not somewhere I would ever move to, in fact you couldn't pay me to live there. Too many tourists in summer, too drab and grim in winter, dreadful roads, and too far away from everywhere. Lots of people have said this, so it's not 'nonsense.'

If you love Cornwall, then good for you. Others don't. And that is their right. Also, as has been said, there is nothing there for children/teens/young people, and they will move away as soon as they're able to.

@Typingonkeyboard

As some people have said, there's so many other places you could move to that are 'rural' and peaceful, but only a short drive from a town (and with good transport links.) I live in such a place in the North Midlands/Cheshire border. Beautiful rural village near the canal, not far from the river, close to woodlands, no traffic passing through unless they live here (as the road through just leads to farms,) a tiny village primary school (36 pupils/2 classes,) but only 4 miles to the local market town, and 15 miles (25 minutes drive,) to the nearest city. (My 2 DC live there...)

I think something like that would be better than moving to Cornwall! (Especially for your children.)

p.s. the older kids in our village (11+) go to the secondary school in the local market town, and there's a bus that comes for them every school day, at 8.10am, and drops them back off at around 3.30pm.

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Think Bognor Regis on a Saturday in December, in the rain. Cornwall is beautiful, I've lived there but jobs are hard to find and houses can be very expensive. Many shops etc simply shut at least part of the week from September onwards. Small communities can be insular.
There are large areas of both rural and urban poverty. It was a dream of mine once, 40 years ago. No more.

Well this is obviously complete nonsense. The only cities you can get to within two hours of most parts of Cornwall are Bristol and Exeter or smaller cities like Plymouth.

If you live somewhere like the Midlands in around 2 hours you can get to London, Birmingham, Bristol, Manchester, Liverpool, Oxford, Coventry, Nottingham, Sheffield, Cardiff, Cambridge and more.

Its obviously a bit silly to say Cornwall is not further from a lot of places!

If your family is there, that's another story. Homeschooling? Why? Maybe Totnes? Used to have a reputation for a slightly alternative lifestyle. Might well be out of date now.

I live in a wonderful village with great community, very outdoorsy ect. The village school is wonderful… and packed to the rafters everywhere becuase people apply from outside the village and often miles away. I think in this respect you are looking for a unicorn! The good schools are all packed so your ideal of a lovely, good village school with small class sizes is probably unlikely unless you go super rural.

30 yrs ago I took my small DD to Porthleven. Took her to paddle, sanitary towel on the beach . We retreated. Sadly this is not new.

(I wasn't going to get sucked in but couldn't help myself and we haven't had a thread discussing Cornwall for such a long time 😜.)

Yes, in the winter there are no shops, cinemas, theatres or cafes open. We all hunker down in October with 6 months supply of pasties and Doom Bar and don't leave home until April. (To be fair this would have been quite tempting this Winter)!

Children have an Enid Blyton childhood in their primary years but become drug addicts soon after moving up to secondary school because there is sod all else to do.

Everyone resents tourists, foreigners and second home owners. No one can earn a decent living or access any culture beyond singing shanties or surfing.

On a more serious note, there are no shopping malls and I agree that if your main leisure activity is shopping then it's probably not the place for you. There are some lovely independent shops, even my local village has an Artisan bakery and two independent art/makers outlets.

In reality people here are by and large similar to other places. Yes it's not as multicultural as cities but that's probably the same in many British and European rural communities. Newquay is pretty cosmopolitan as Cornwall goes and my DC have friends with parents from all over the world.

It is far away from major cities but that's how many of us like it. And yes the traffic is horrendous in holiday season but whenever we visit family in Oxford traffic there is worse, and that's all year round.

It's just so dependant on circumstances that it's probably not relevant. It depends on where you want to go/have family living/where you like to visit etc. Obviously the midlands being in the middle is equidistant to more places I suppose but is that really the reason why anyone lives there?

If you regularly travel to all those cities then yes it will take you longer from Cornwall. But if you wish you could travel around Cornwall more and see it all then obviously you're better placed to do that in Cornwall.

I just think when someone says that they want to to move to Cornwall presumably because they like it there, it's kind of silly that someone always comes on to say "but have you thought about how far away you will be from London or Sheffield?". Maybe they never go there and have no plans to.

Wherever you are you are probably a long way from lots of thins, but if they are not the things that interest you then it's probably not very relevant.

I would feel terribly cut off from the coast and the sea in the midlands and no amount of transport links and proximity to various cities would make it up to me but we are all different so OP should think about what she and her family want and need.

We went for Rattler for our winter hibernation rations in our house so at least we can't remember any of it!

People really do think we pack up all the beaches and towns and roads when they leave at the end of August don't they? Little do they know the off season is our favourite time for many of us lifers down here.

If you choose to move to St Ives or Padstow then yes you will find that a lot of stuff is closed in the winter because they've been hollowed out by second home owners and no local people can live in the centre any more. Again that's why we like Newquay because it has loads of beaches but is still just a bit grubby/overlooked enough to still have enough ordinary, full time people actually living here and making a community and keeping stuff open and going in the winter.

Employment and housing are difficult down here no doubt but not impossible and if you can get them sorted (and I wouldn't move without them unless I was happy to move back at short notice) then in my opinion there's no place I'd rather be.

My DH grew up in south west countryside. Loved it as a young child, absolutely despised it as a teenager. Wasn't prepared when he went to uni (naive, no city smarts, less developed social skills) and learnt a few lessons the hard way. He went to a private boys school - bus to school was from 2 villages over and left at 7:30 am. Bus dropped him back there 5pm. That's without any extra curriculars. Couldn't get anywhere independently. His gift at 17 was a car and a weeks intensive pass your test course to try get some independence.

Only one friend from school remains down there and thats to be a live in carer for their mum and knows they'll be moving away when she's gone. All live in more built up areas around the country. DH wanted to have kids somewhere they could walk to school and play out with friends.

Cornwall is a poverty stricken county. Employment is a struggle, with lots of it being seasonal, with very little prospect for children as they hit working age. We get about 3 weeks a year where it isn't raining, and it can be very isolating. There are very limited things to do inside. Home ed wise, there are a few areas where the scene is quite established, but it's limited and travelling for a good period of time is a must for the most part.

There are a lot of academys down here if you were to go down that route, and there are a lot of issues being brought to light at the moment.

Newquay is a tourist hot-spot, and has become fairly run down, though does have an active home ed community. We would hibernate for the summer months as it is so heaving and traffic is a nightmare to get anywhere.

Ultimately, I'd say definitely go for it on the slowing down and living more intentionally and traditionally if that's what you feel is right for your family, but I'd avoid Cornwall. We've been trying to leave for a few years now. North Yorkshire is where I'd go if it were up to me, and there are sone great home ed areas, and it's so much easier to get to different places.

We don't really have seasons here, it's a few weeks of sun if we're luncky, and then the rest of the time it just rains. When we lived in the North, we had beautiful Autumn's, lovely crisp snowy Winters etc. That doesn't happen down here.

Gosh you sound quite negative, what brought you to Cornwall and where in Cornwall do you live if you don't mind me asking?

Why wouldn’t you aim to live where sister lives? As pp suggested, try it for a year?

How old is your DC and how are they getting on at school socially and academically currently? Are you choosing / considering to home-ed where you are now?

The grass can always seem greener.
Cornwall. The upsides, when it is beautiful, sunny, before the tourists arrive. Very lovely.
Cornwall. The weather. You are on the West coast. It will take a battering a lot during the year. The tourists are not to be underestimated. It will be like living in a theme park.

Home schooling. Unless you are a teacher yourself, I suspect very hard to do very well.

Bloody hell, where do you live? If course there are seasons in Cornwall. You don't get crisp winters as there is very little frost and you don't get balmy summer nights much but otherwise the seasons are the same.

@ConfessionsOfAMumDramaQueen I recognise this for someone living in the Cornish countryside but where I am (a Cornish town), my kids walk to school and can walk to their friends houses. I agree choosing to live in a little village is isolating for kids.

I live in the northern Home Counties and we haven’t had much by way of seasons either for years-not any more or less than anyone else in Britain at least. I don’t think anyone has (unless you live in the far North where you might get winter and autumn, but not much summer to speak of). That doesn’t just apply to Cornwall.

I only speak of our experience as a family. We moved to Cornwall for my husbands work originally, we lived by the coast to begin with, which was certainly better than where we live now which is pretty much in the middle, by the Devon border.

Well said.

Where are you please? Inbox me if you don’t want to say! Are houses affordable there?