Stay in town close to schools or move to village?

[Birchwoods]

We’ve been to see a house today in a village that’s about 15-20 mins from where we live now. DD1 will start secondary school in Sept, which is a ten minute walk from us now, DD2 will start primary school in September, we haven’t applied for her place yet as still undecided on schools.

We want a bigger garden and would love to live more rurally, but if we move to this village it’ll mean school drop offs and picks ups - a journey of nearly 20 mins each way - potentially for the next fourteen years, plus giving lifts to and from town to visit friends etc. I’m thinking that if the age gap was smaller it might be better, but as my DDs will never overlap at the same school it’s probably a bad idea, which is a shame as the house is perfect.

Has anyone else moved to a less convenient location and found it was worth the extra inconvenience? Or has anyone regretted it?

Stay where you are. At the moment your kids (especially your new teenager) will be able to maintain friendships and hang out with their mates easily. If you move all of that freedom and independence goes, just when they need to start developing it safely.

Stay in town for your secondary school daughter's sake - it will make a huge difference to her, and a bigger garden won't make any difference at all to her (though granted dd2 has a few playing in the garden years, but the disadvantages of not being near school friends will hit her before the end of primary too).

My parents moved us from an ordinary semi in a town where I could walk to school with my friends, play with them after school etc. to a huge house with a big garden in a village where I had to ask for lifts for absolutely everything and suddenly had far less freedom and far less social life and my parents were always annoyed about being asked to drive and said no a lot, which in itself is fair enough except that they'd just moved me away from all my friends!

Hypocritically I've also brought my kids up in a village, but at least they were born here and therefore have friends in the village (we moved here intending it to be temporary just before the eldest was born and trapped ourselves after a fashion by getting complacent and lingering, as we'd have to downsize and the children would have to share bedrooms, to move to the very expensive nearest town, where the school is, now) .

Editing to add - I meant to say that not moving to the town where the nearest secondary school is before the children started school is a big regret because it has caused logistical problems in their teen and preteen years and they all would have preferred it.

It's really hard to make new friends in a lot of villages as they can be very stable populations in which all the children have known one another since they were babies and most of them are some type of cousins .

Thanks. That’s what I thought would be the answer. We know a few people in the village and there are other children that go to the same secondary school that DD1 will attend, but I think you’re right, our rural dreams might have to wait!

My parents did this move when I was at the end of year 7. I got one school year at secondary where I could walk in and home with friends. Could walk round the corner to friends houses. We then moved and they had to drop me off and pick me up every day and whenever I wanted to socialise. Missing out on that walk home with friends, I missed out on so much social stuff that happened it really affected my friendships in that I felt left out. It also really affected my confidence, being driven by my parents everywhere from 11 until 17 when I could drive, I never developed that sense of confident independence as a teenager and had to wait until I had a car to find it. It was also a bummer constantly being picked up by your parents in front of your friends when they’re all independently walking everywhere.

As someone who grew up somewhere where I was reliant on lifts (or hitchhiking, or 5 mile walks) throughout their teenage years, please don’t! I felt so disconnected from friends at secondary and developed friendships with older, car driving people and ended up taking far more risks and staying out more than I might have done had I been able to get home easily.
My ideal would be living in or near a city with a decent tram/bus/night bus network but DH likes rural living, so we have compromised with a reasonably well-connected village. It has a shop, a bus route to town (then train to city), primary school within walking distance - with the secondary served by a school bus.
Yes, I sometimes have to pick up from the station, but at least my children all have friends within easy walking distance.
I still fantasise about retiring to a city with theatres, an Everyman cinema and lots of decent restaurants though!

I think that you're making the right decision OP. I grew up in a small town/ large village with no public transport and a secondary school with a huge catchment area. Utterly reliant on parents for lifts. We chose to bring up DC in a small city and don't regret it. It did force me to learn to drive at 17 though, not sure if you'd view that as a good or bad thing...

I grew up somewhere with poor public transport. My mum gave me lifts whenever I needed it, including to school. I didn't mind. I was happy enough to be picked up rather than getting the bus. However it was a commitment for her and restricted her work options. We did lift share at times, but it fizzled out.

Is there a school bus?

Thank you everyone, this has really helped me make up my mind to rule out that particular village and stop thinking about that house! It’s just too far unfortunately. We live in quite a rural town will quite a few villages nearby that are better connected by public transport, so maybe something will come up closer to school that suits us more.

I grew up rurally and hated it. Everything had to be pre-arranged, could never just call to friends, I was always so jealous of friends who lived in the suburbs.
I live in a town now where my kids can walk to everything and I wouldn't change it for anything.

No, no school bus. Apparently people do lift share, and while that might work well, it might also be unreliable at times and I wouldn’t want to bank on it happening.

Being a teen rurally is absolutely shit. My teens have a way better quality of life than I had at their ages. I love that they can be independent and jet about on buses doing fun things. We had a park bench.

We did this and although I have always loved where we live and our village and our home for the kids it was miserable as teens. All their friends lived in the town and they constantly felt like they were missing out.

We always had to constantly give lifts and as they got older and wanted to be with their friends more, we were playing taxi every day at one point. All well and good in the summer months but in the winter with dark rural roads, rain, wind, snow and ice it was bloody tough.

In hindsight we wouldn't have moved where we did if we knew it was going to have such an impact.

My advice? Park that dream until the kids are older and make the most of the home you have now. Once they are driving themselves or have left home, you can move where you like.

Going against the grain we moved rurally 4 years ago when DC was 6 and we all love it! But we knew what we were signing up for with having to drive everywhere in all weathers, if you are someone who doesn’t like driving or is a nervous driver rural life isn’t for you!
It was tricker until she moved schools from a primary where most kids lived within walking distance so she was left out a bit, to the all through school she’s at now where lots of kids travel a significant distance and much more of the social life is centred around school activities. There is also a school bus from the end of the road which she’ll use in yr 7 and a sporadic local bus service which can get her to and from the nearest big city when the time comes.
I think it depends on whether, like a lot of posters on here, you think teens being able to go to places without you being involved is high priority or not. If you do, again I’d say rural life isn’t for you. It’s not a priority at all for me, I grew up rurally with no public transport and am one of the most independent people I know so it didn’t hamper me developing life skills 🤣 Learning to drive as soon as possible is pretty much a given for rural kids though but it’s such a necessity that why wouldn’t they unless medically not allowed?

I don't want to dismiss your experience... but a child is very different to a teenager.

We moved to the village in this scenario and love the country life, but DD is still in primary so not having the teenage issues people are talking about yet. I'd say it does depend on the village. There's lots of children in our village and no secondary school so all of the children will be going to one of the 2 secondary schools in the nearby town. So there's a good chance some of her secondary school friends will live in our village.

@TheNightingalesStarling And all teenagers are different, so I guess we’ll see. As a teenager I had no desire to freeze my arse off waiting for buses and was quite happy to be driven everywhere 🤣 I think one of the most important things for children and teenagers is that their experience is common with their peers and they are not an outlier and DC’s teen experience will be in line with a lot of her peers so hopefully we’ll get through relatively unscathed

Half my family live rurally and the whole ‘Mum and Dad Taxi’ situation is very restrictive. On teens, on parents, the constant driving and petrol costs and reliance on cars, I feel it has infantilised my nieces and nephews, too. They are much less able to be independent and one refused to contemplate going to Uni without taking a car as they had never used buses etc.

Meanwhile the quality of all our lives was improved by having a close network within walking distance. Teens friends all within walking distance. And loads for them to do.

I couldn’t think of anything worse

I feel sorry for rural teens. Unless they are the horse riding country sports types I suppose. Mine have so much more independence - hopping on buses and walking to friend houses or an uber home is £6. We were entirely reliant on the mood of our parents 🙄. Then everyone takes their test really early and you get driven home fast down country lanes by pissed 17 year old lads.

I can tell you I feel rubbish having to say No to my teen for lifts, usually because I can't be in two places at the same time. If the bus was more regular (and didn't take an hour to get into town) it would make their lives a lot easier.

Pretty common issue here in the summer holidays especially

@TheNightingalesStarling I can see that would be challenging but if you’re out at work or whatever then that’s just life isn’t it? I certainly wouldn’t feel guilty that I couldn’t take my child somewhere if I was out earning the money that pays for activities etc.
Regardless it sounds like the majority feel that moving teens to live rurally where they can’t walk to absolutely everything and get to everywhere at the drop of a hat without any parental involvement is akin to neglect 🤣

Stop being so dramatic. No one said it is neglect 🙄 it just means your teen years are pretty dull and the parents have to limit their own social lives to drive teens around. I still get a thrill from not living in a village.

I was joking but clearly I’ve triggered something for you from your ‘very dull’ teen years.
Given we are all individuals and experience things very differently hopefully mine won’t find their teen years very dull and I won’t begrudge limiting my fabulous and jam packed social life to give them lifts 🤣

Absolutely agree with all of this. We live in a village and DS's social life is definitely restricted as a result. As a sixth former he has far less independence than his friends who live in the town and his opportunities for part time work are also hugely limited. I feel guilty about it but it's too late now. We never complain about taxiing him and his GF around and yes that does limit our own social lives but it was our choice to live here, not DS's.