And do you like it?
I grew up in the Scottish Highlands and came back here after just a few years break age 17. I'm now in my 40s and raising my 3 children here. I think I like it. We have 4 acres of garden- tonight we were out on the quad, feeding our animals (a few sheep, a pig, 2 goats), it's lovely when the weather's lovely. We have no-one overlooking our garden but I do have lovely neighbours 400 yards away. My living room window looks out to the Minch and across to the Outer Hebrides. Our primary school has less than 70 kids in it- everyone know everyone. The high school has 120 and most kids know each other. All the teachers know the kids by name.
But my husband works away 5 days per week, so it's hard when one of the kids has an evening club as the younger (5) one has to come everywhere with me. He travels for work so that will never change but even once he's finished his week's work it's another hour and a half home. Sometimes the kids cannot go to something as I cannot drive over to the main village (12 miles) after bedtime etc. I can't always make meetings as there's not a massive amount of babysitters! I need to book Tesco slots 3 weeks in advance. Hairdresser, decent swimming pool, optician etc is an hour and a half's drive away. We do have a good selection of clubs for the kids but not a massive range like you would in a town.
We live here because it just evolved that way, and for the most part I do love it but we've never made that conscious decision to live anywhere, it just happened. But just about everyone says they would give their right arm to live where I live so maybe I should be more grateful and appreciate it more 