to think I will never be able to live in Cornwall again unless we live in a tent and clean toilets for a living?

[livethedream]

(Have name changed for this one as am currently bleating on a lot about this in real life.)

I used to live in Cornwall when I was in my twenties but I accidentally moved away, met DH, had children and am now stranded in the town I grew up in anD I hate it.

I dream of going back to Cornwall and bringing up the DSs there, and decided to focus on making it happen and we have been looking for a job there for DH who does IT support. There is nothing advertised, ever and we've been looking for nearly two years.

He could take a lesser job and pay he was on 15 years ago, which would then put us in a rubbish position to get a mortgage, or we could resign ourselves to never buying and rent something very cheap whilst we both do random minimum wage work to make ends meet.

I dunno, on the one hand I feel like if we want it enough we could make it happen, but then in reality I just don't see how. Shoudl I just accept this and go and live somewhere I like much less but where employment isn't nigh on impossible?

But what do you class as amenities Bonsoir? Having lived in in Devon and Cornwall for 20 years until I moved to just outside Brussels, my life is much the same. I can't say that the drive to the cinema is any less time - probably more here as the Ring gets blocked. The amenities are much the same - I can eat in excellent restaurants 10 minutes from my door here and where my house is in Cornwall. The supermarkets are far better in the UK for their range of products than they are here, and I use the Irish butcher in the EU district for meat most of the time anyway.

I loathe it when we go back to Hampshire to see dh's parents as the area is all now heavily built up and you have to go north of Winchester to find what I would call countryside, whereas go to the top of Kit Hill on a clear day and you can see for miles - right over to the Sound and Plymouth, and all the pretty patchwork of fields.

Live, investigate places like the Tamar Valley for housing - you are within 25 minutes of Plymouth, Launceston, Liskeard and Tavistock, which are all places I'd be looking for jobs, and you can get to Exeter in 45 minutes from there as well. Excellent primaries there as well, I can think of 4 within 10 minutes of my house.

I'm not sure why everyone's so bothered about supermarkets, Devon is stuffed full of little organic food producers, I think it's got more than the rest of the country put together, and that's one of the things I really like about it - all that excellent fresh food from little local outlets. we moved here from a big city and the local fresh food is one of the nice surprises.

(I do miss the Manchester curry houses, however).

I agree about most people here having to accept a lower income/less career progression for better quality of life, we did that and so have many of our friends here. But for us it's worth it, and some things are cheaper. we no longer feel the need for so many holidays given that we live in holiday country, and especially we no longer have that desperate urge for winter sun we used to get in gloomy Manchester.

ah patchwork fields! looking at some right now!

me and dd get our city fix about once a week, then tbh i am quite relieved to get in the car and go home for some peace.

Saying that, for me personally, and i live in a very rural town, ammenites such as clubs, theatre, social groups etc... are something i miss. Yet depends what you think you will miss op. I am single now, as the dh left, so lack of men here is No 1 downfall imo!!

I agree with other posters that you have to think very flexibly workwise. We have friends living in Cornwall and one works in London two days a week and one in Bristol. They stay the night with friends on a formal arrangement where they pay them a small rent.

I work freelance from home and my DH commutes a very long way to allow us to live in our rural beautiful location.

But I agree with the others, winters out of big towns are hard. Especially with small children. It's all very well you wanting to go for walk on windy beach etc but if you're dragging small children who don't want to be there and it's an hour down slow lanes to get to the nearest big town- it's not so great.

However we do have the advantage of lovely scenery, fantastic under-subscribed state schools, cheaper housing etc.

oh scarey you are making my heart melt with mentions of kit hill.
dream thanks for answering my q's. but agree with hatwoman. there are plenty of places in the uk that can offer what you want. bigger village, nice little primary school. bless, it sounds so sweet, doesn't it. walking to schools with the childrens satchels. ( i walk to ds's school, on my 2.5 non working days)but within few miles of HUGE Asda/waitrose/what-ever-you-want.
in surrey we are 45 mins from london. not that i hardly ever go. and yet we are a few minutes from virginia water lake and we can get to box hill, like kit hill memories, and be in what feels like total countryside.

are you sure dream that you are REALLY questioning what it is thta you want ?

not that we could afford to move to the nice area's of bristol or spa bath. always fancied living in bath. tis lovely. but we have to all be realistic here.

Ok, I'm going to be super specific and write a wish list:

1. Near the sea. Proper good sea, not the grotty NW coast that is closest to us now.

2. Want to live in a house with a garden where I can grow stuff and keep chickens. Ideally ramshackle very old cottage with a ghost and roses on the walls. Want to be able to afford said house.

3. Ideally want to be in a pretty village or market town, somwhere quaint with a sense of community or somewhere a bit bohemian where people aren't being shot a mile up the road or hanging themselves in the local park.

4. Would be nice to be within striking distance of a city/big town for culture/shopping fixes although am not particularly a shopping enthusiast and can do it online if I have to.

5. Woudl liek to live somwehere that feels less populated. where you can get out into lovely countryside and let the kids run wild without havign to contend with 3 million other people all converging on the local beauty spot and it all feeling very crowded.

I'm sure there's more...will think...and I'm sure it all sounds very idyllic and I will probably have to compromise on something somewhere.

But this place has to exist near IT desktop support jobs unfortunately. Tall order, much?

oooh, have just got an email from DH saying he's just applied for a job in St Austell. If they pay him at the top of the bracket they've specified he'd be on £8k less per year than now. But still, it could maybe be worked around...

I want to live in Fowey. Won't happen but it's my idea of heaven. But then I can happily live without multiplexes, monster supermarkets and motorways.

livethedream!!! you're putting your hopes out in the open, maybe you will get some good luck now.

good luck! i'll meet you for a coffee in plymouth!!

I think a slight problem will be combining pretty village/near Bohemian town/pretty cottage with room and land. Anywhere in the countryside I'd say that's where the majority of competition for housing is..round us any pretty village/house with land/location near somewhere funky makes the prices shoot up.

We compromised for bigger cottage with more land, but a good 20 minutes drive from nearest not very exciting town. In retrospect I'd have forgotten the chickens and veggie patch and moved nearer somewhere more exciting. But once you've fallen for the idea of space and peace in a house it's hard to move somewhere where its busier!

where I am ticks all those boxes. except the sea. I don't think it's possible to get further from the sea in the UK than where we are. (not big on the sea myself. it smells funny).

£500pcm
We pay treble that.

Cornwall is lovely, DP folks are there (yes they are wedged, big house own boat and so on)

we go down every year and sail and it is lovely, but I don't think I could live there.

I think you need to weigh up what is more important to you,

Can you prioritise the points on your wish list and I will make some suggestions of places.

Property in a good area is eye wateringly expensive relative to the wages down here. Families I know with decent houses in good areas put up with a long commute to a job with decent pay, work in higher ranking public sector jobs more locally, or have their own businesses locally. I have my own business.

I've just moved away from Plymouth because I was made redundant from a helpdesk. In the last ten years so many large employers in the city have left, gone bust or made cutbacks... so many of the people I used to work for are still unemployed.

I'm desperate to move back down to Devon or Cornwall but I can't see a way either. I want to buy a campsite eventually. OP wanna go twosies?

Bristol is fantastic for jobs (well, it is for my industry) but bloody expensive housing wise, and the schools can be shocking. Loads of people commute from miles away to Bristol though - when I worked at Airbus people came from the valleys in Wales, Worcester and just outsied Exeter. But sod that for a commute.

Kids in areas like this do move away. Theer are so little prospects. And if you have grown up in a seaside town most people want to hightail it to a city as soon as they are old enough.

Out of my tutor group at school, in 2006 only 1 lived in Devon. All the rest of us had buggered orf.

we are trying to move from the south east to the north west. We rent and actually its the same price to rent there as it is here BUT there are far fewer houses to rent and those that are around are a bit grotty in genral. Two lovely ones came up that we phoned about today but they have both gone already!. Houses to buy are very cheap and there are loads - we could easily afford the mortgage but no where we have asked will give us a mortgage because we have been self employed for less then either 1 year or 2 years - i feel like just buying a tent and going anyway at this point.

Your wish list is pretty much what we've got bar the old house with a huge garden(sigh).

We had to move away from the South West to Nottingshite(sorry but it was compared to Devon). I have never ever been so miserable in my entire life.I had a piece of Dartmoor granite in front of my desk I used to sniff it was that bad. This taught us a big,big lesson.It's the old cliche money really isn't everything.

Soooo we gave up 1 1/2 well paid jobs for one crap paid job. DP is IT and commuted from Devon to Cornwall for a year. I had 6 month old twins,was pg with another and living with my parents. Dp then found a job in Devon,swooped in and the rest is history. We have a house half the size we could have and earn a fraction of what we could do(dp's job pays very,very well in London) but....

-we are 15 mins from the sea and Dartmoor
-we are surrounded by beauty
-we spend little as there is masses to do for free
-we live in a real community
-the schools are excellent
-people down here are very like minded,materialism is low
-my dc are growing up near their grandparents
-Bristol is near enough for a city fix
-WE ARE IN DEVON

You need to want it bad enough and you really need to except you will have to make compromises.

You will NOT get a dream cottage so except that now. You'll have a smaller house but you poke up with it as the alternative is living somewhere you hate.

You probably will only get a tiny garden but you could get an allotment and your kids will grow up on farms,the moor and by the sea so you don't need a huge plot just enough for 1 raised bed. You won't have the time to spend hours gardening as you'll be out and about.

You'll have waaaaay less money but so has everybody else and bbqs on the beach,camping,exploring the moor etc costs zilch. Once you've made friends you get very clever at finding out free/low cost stuff.You'd be amazed at what is out there.

So really,decide do you want it badly enough?????

Dps company is recruiting,if you can be more specific I'll ask him what's going.

dream i think your expectations are unrealistic. roses round the door and enough room for chickens ? have you got 300k of equity when you sell then ? me neither

OP email me on myusername @ yahoo . com if you need any more advice esp re location

and info on companies

milamae, glad you're happy now back in Devon. what sort of area, as i am in south. x

GetOrf- the commute varies: DH worked at Filton and here to tehre (we're in Caerleon, a lovely small town / village) took 30 minutes. Not bad at all tbh.

Plus, Brizzle wages can buy you ++++ here. We ahd an ex council house on the A38 in Bridgwater, we have a lovely white cottage in a conservation area now for same £.

scaryteacher - did you mean me? I went to school in Redruth, left in 1996

I'm really glad I started this thread now because you are all fabulous and being very helpful.

Piratecat - I would love to meet you for coffee in Plymouth, here's hoping it's soon!

hatwoman - sounds lovely, where are you?

BigHairyLeggedSpider - I am definitely up for going two's on a campsite, I reckon that's the way forward!

Oblomov - yup, very much a wishlist, sigh. We have only a teeny tiny bit of equity to put down and I know there will have to be compromise. I'm not sure which bits to compromise on though. The house does need to be big enough for the four of us or I'll go nuts. Unless the garden is big enough to make up for it. And even then...Deffo need a garden though, that's non-negotiable, we just left a house with a teeny tiny yard and it was very oppressive. We could buy a tumble down shack as a long term fixer upper? I wouldn't be opposed to making a house out of straw bales, to be honest, if it worked out cheaper. (Have watched too much Grand Designs!)

Milamae I like your story, it goes to show, it's all about what's important. We're skint here and fed up and spend all our time/energy/money on escaping away to nicer places at the weekend. It would be nice to live somewhere where you actually want to stay at the weekend. We're used to be skint so it won't be too shocking. DH does 1st/2nd line IT dsektop support, is your DP looking for that kind of thing? I can get him to be more specific re skills when he gets in - thanks for asking!

dietcokebreak - thank you - I will email you later to pick your brains!

Anyway, the good news is that DH has found about 3 things today worth applyign for and one job which is in St Austell and the same money he's on here which would be the absolute dream. Am a bit heartened to see that he's found one or two things to apply for today - I was getting very disillusioned that there was absolutely nothing in two whole counties!

He's also been asked to apply for a permanent job where we are now. Which is ironic, because he's just had a hell of a time finding a job after he was made redundant. But really don't want to stay here.