Rural living with children

[rach3y]

I have grown up in a rural county but lived in the main town , went to a town primary and secondary school , had good acces to the town as a teenager without needing to be dropped off , my husband was from the country , country schools and needed lifts everywhere , we are currently moving house and the house we love is countryside , 20 mins from town not on a bus route , my biggest concern is for my children being in a more rural community than I experienced , I wanted to get others options on country schools v town schools and opportunities in country v town for kids thanks all

I suspect it isn't a black and white argument. All towns are not the same, as are not all villages. It also depends on whether both you and your DH work full time.

I love that DD is growing up in a suburb with good transport and can get herself to friends houses, go to museums, events and the like.

A friend moved the country in the belief it would be healthy for them. There are no pavements so they drive everywhere. Her cat got run over as the rural roads are 60mph, her eldest daughter was found with drugs as 'there's nothing to do mum'. Another friend moved to the edge of a village and they are loving it and the family are thriving, but the mum doesn't work, they only have one child and the village has lots going on in it.

Do you like driving? I love living in the countryside proper, with no direct neighbours - 10 min walk to the next house. But it means driving everywhere (and luckily I like driving, most of the time at least). No pizza or curry delivery available, only Waitrose delivers to where we live. No mobile phone reception (albeit fast broadband, otherwise it would be impossible). No streetlights, no pavements. Small country lanes, so tricky when one has to drive backwards for half a mile to let another SUV or real tractor pass. Too dangerous to walk anywhere as locals are speeding crazily. My dh grew up where we live now. He ended up with very good grades as there was nothing to do apart from revising. We now live during term time in town. We are thinking about living full time again in the countryside (with hotel stints only in London for dh's work) but DCs would then probably have to weekly board as daily school run is just too long and it is too isolated. But this is in the Westcountry, so not sure what you mean by countryside. Some people call a large Surrey commuter village 'countryside'.

I grew up in small rural villages with only a couple of buses each day and I can't say I would go back to be honest. For me it meant lifts everywhere and a nightmare if there were problems with the bus to school. Also it meant when I had a job I needed my dad to drive me there in the years before I learned to drive.

We are now in a different village but it's on the edge of a big town with a supermarket and the village has its own train station on the mainline to London/Penzance. It would still be classed as rural but the difference are huge.

A lot of people who live very rurally send their children to board. Obviously there are a lot of boarding options in towns/cities. In theory you could have the best of both.

We live in a village if about 300 people, 2 pubs, church, shop and primary school with less than 100 children. When we arrived we had 1 baby. We have a pavement to walk to the 'amenities' and 2 buses a week. It's true you drive every where and we've discovered over the 8 years that the village school isn't big enough for us as it has no choir, sports teams etc. So the downside is our eldest travels an hour each way to school.
However we love it. We feel part of the community. We let our eldest walk around the village on her own. The view is beautiful and it's very friendly.
DH has lived in London all his life and now resents going for a weekend. We do think about moving to the county town but I can't face having neighbours and traffic noise and leaving our idyllic village behind.

I should add we are 15 minutes from a railway station. My advice would be walking distance to a pub and have a pavement.

I grew up in a village with no public transport and it was great when I was primary school aged but I hated it from the ages of 11 to 17 (when it became just about bearable because I could drive and my parents bought me a car). My parents were very generous with lifts but I hated having to constantly ask so it still felt really restrictive. DH would like us to move from town to country and I absolutely refuse to do so because the thought of going back to somewhere where you have to drive to get milk makes me feel panicky.

We live rurally, a tiny village with 100 people, few children, no amenities. But we can walk down a bridleway to a pub which is a couple of miles away.

Nearest very small town (like a large village) is 2 mile drive, nearest medium town is 10 min drive.

Children both at private school, one gets a bus for an hour each way, other child gets driven 30 mins in the other direction. I spend my life in the car, collecting from bus stop or driving to other school.

And then when it is parents evening at distant school, or child stays late, then drive to far rural school to collect.

But you can't beat the silence, the fresh air and the sense of belonging you get from having so much space that feels like 'yours'.

I'm in the country but close to very small town. I do a lot of dropping off & collecting. My son did miss having kids locally, he always said he'd love neighbours. I don't mind as it's worth it to me. I love the space & peace.

We live in a small town - which to me having moved from London seems more like a village but they say it’s a town! No public transport etc. Dd goes to the local school and walks there (she’s now 16 but have lived here since she was 4). All her friends are local and they all go to each other’s houses or rely on taxi of mum to get anywhere else. I love it, it’s peaceful and quiet, everyone is nice to everyone and after living in south London the sense of freedom and better living standards is amazing. If I really want to go anywhere “big” I am only an hour and a half away. Our nearest proper shopping centre is an hour away. You get used to it. We live 5 mins away from open fields. Dd is happy here, sometimes she says it’s a bit boring but she says she wouldn’t want to live in a city.

I don’t think it suits everyone though. Depends what you want / like.

I grew up in a decent sized village, bus every 2 hours into town but as I got older and wanted to go into town in the evenings I relied on mum for lifts and we would argue about it constantly. I ended up moving out at 17 so I could have a better social life. I hadn't been sent to the village school so didn't really know kids in the village. There was a lot of drug use, statting at about 13 with magic mushrooms picked from the fields and weed as all the kids were so bored in the evenings. It depends on the child I suppose.

I grew up a few miles from a town but without any form of public transport and it was very limiting. I hates it to be honest as I got older. I loved being g in the country erc but having to stay home all the time while your friends all meet up and go to the cinema etc is miserable. No going out without one of your parents to drop off or pick up so very little socialising if they work shifts or are tired etc.

We live in a tiny place, the dcs bus to school and in winter can't always get to school the community is lovely but tiny so we are moving to the nearest town (the only town) after Xmas.
I wouldn't live really rurally again, great when they are younger but not with teens

My DC grew up in a city and I’m so incredibly glad we stayed - we did think about moving out. Their lives, and ours, have been enhanced by city living.

Surely it depends on the type of teen you have though... my dd and her friends aren’t bothered about going out much, that might change as they get even older I guess (they’re 16/17 now). They seem to come home early even when they go to the nearest city and been told I’m happy to pick them up whenever! They all mooch about in the local costa and enjoy going to each other’s houses and still all like to do stuff as a family - we have a lot of family days out to the country parks / zoos / cinema to the next town etc. None of them are getting drunk or taking drugs or staying out all night in fields etc. They’re all shockingly boring compared to how I was when I was young!

I grew up in the burbs of a large town but we were far from any pub/shops. The best thing was a 30min walk to the beach but it was still pretty dull as a teenager..

We have 43 people here. We’re close to another slightly larger (150) village. Our children loved growing up rurally generally and had a fantastic and safe childhood which avoided much of the teenage angst and arguments.
Downside was lots of planning and driving to activities.
Plus side was no opportunity for being anywhere we didn’t know where they were. No ‘chilling’ or ‘hanging’ in gangs or unsupervised groups. Plenty of social life and time with other teenagers or children but these were the children of friends generally. Difficult to get into serious trouble if everyone knows you.
Our children grew up with a very strong sense of community, learning to care for elderly neighbours, learning to make conversation at drinks parties and learning the social skills necessary to mix with all ages.
They had greater freedom in many ways. They learned to take risks from tobogganing down local hills on days when the school bus didn’t get through and swimming in rivers in the summer. They played tennis and cricket on the recreation ground where courts/pitch was usually available and free.
They’d love to live locally still but couldn’t afford property hereabouts.

We live in a large, safe town with all amenities and 10/5 minutes bus ride to a great city. I grew up rurally and fantasise about moving back to the middle of nowhere but everything is so convenient now the children are growing up, we have no school run as we live almost next door to the primary school, they can get a bus to the city (every 10 mins) and they walk to friend’s houses and all activities are local. The city has amazing theatre and events, and we can get home within 15 mins of being seated in the theatre. If we want to nip out for bread/milk, it’s a few mins walk. My work is 15 mins walk from our house. I watch the traffic getting in and out of town every evening and think that my rural dream may have to wait until we’re retired and the children have left home or are independent.

I think my parents would say I was happy as a teen living in the country, and I suppose I was, more or less, but I certainly felt I'd have been much happier living somewhere where I could be a bit more independent, and I was so jealous of friends who could walk home from school or town.

I grew up in a very rural area - happily I had siblings and my parents sent us all to boarding school. It was beyond dull.

DH (life-long city boy) decided he wanted to move out of London to somewhere rural-ish a few years back, and my one rule was that we had to live no more than 10 minutes walk from a main-line railway station so that poor DD can escape from us when the teen years hit and we are not a permanent taxi service.