Where to go to escape gentrification/‘daaarrrling’ brigade?

[Warrick23]

Currently south east, finance-working Waterloo commuter - but not for much longer!

Taking Vol. Redundancy and will be retraining (maths teacher training) in Sept 26. Want to then look for secondary schools somewhere rural (I love walking and lived in a Devon village as a kid) in England (elderly parents down south so need to stay in England/Wales I think). Know I’m swapping one set of long hours (8.00 - 20/22.00)for another but looking forward to doing something less robotic/grey.

Not interested in ‘naice’/‘it’s just like London/south east’ type places and got no kids so schools (other than working in one) not an issue. I don’t drink coffee either so no ‘cafe culture’ required!

Just had enough of long hours, soul
less work/how busy it all is and the way people talk endlessly (just endured a fortnight of Xmas parties) about their “role/career” as though it’s something far more than a job; final straw was when someone introduced a friend last week (with what seemed like genuine sincerity) as ‘one of the leading online marketing experts of his generation’ last week.

I’d also like a pub that just serves beer without a fuss/a back story/an autobiography about the landlord and landlady etc. In short, I’m out of patience with all the braying south east BS and noisy self-importance.

If you live in the south east are are not like this (or I’ve got it all wrong and everyone is really actually modest and softly spoken but just comes across lile this sometimes) then I apologise - perhaps it’s simply my town/line of work - but it does feel pretty pervasive.

So, do you live in a rural place where there isn’t a Waitrose, where no one puts their hands on their hips/in their belt when they talk, no one wears red trousers, where people use their voice at a moderate volume in public/on their phone and can discuss something other than themselves/how important their work is or skiing - and there’s a normal (ungastro-ed) pub?

Thanks.

GS

I second this. Great place to live, Sheffield and Manchester on the doorstep if you need them, but rural, beautiful and not at all pretentious. Try the Hope Valley.

If you're a Reform voter

Congrats on the career change! I moved from City finance to secondary teaching about 5 years ago and have not looked back.
Are you doing your training in London or rural area? You might end up staying at the school you train in - quite a few of my fellow trainees did.
Like any job, the school you teach in will have a huge impact on your enjoyment of your role. It sounds like you could move anywhere, so do your research into schools during your training period and interview for the school rather than the area.
I teach in the South East, in a boarding school, but my colleagues (and students) are nothing like the picture you paint of SE life! My old London life sounds like your current one, so I totally get where you are coming from. But you could definitely find what you’re looking for in the SE. (And I do lots of walking around here at weekends).
Good luck with your training and job hunting when the time comes.

🤣. Spot on description. I’d move up North if I were you to Gods own country. Totally unpretentious. Also Sheffield and round the Peak District.

Thanks everyone - will follow up on Peaks or the south Somerset/West Dorset suggestions and glad to hear some have enjoyed this type of move and found the career change worthwhile. Lots of footpaths and lovely walks it seems in both areas!

Glad to hear there are plenty of normal non rah people and places still!

Now if I can just find somewhere where they don’t talk loudly and all macho about cycling….

That did make me laugh. Lived in Cambridgeshire for years and wouldn't suggest moving to the Fens!

Agree with the Peak District, or Derbyshire Dales. Both are normal with just the odd pretentious village.

The school you work in will be the key thing in making you happy ime. If I were you I’d train and then apply for jobs, and then move once you’ve found a nice school in a nice place, then you have many more options. Your risk in going to less prosperous places is that the schools will be tougher. How far are you prepared to commute?

There are some beautiful places in Durham and there’s definitely no Waitrose… the north Pennines AONB is gorgeous, truly rural and very few red trousers to be seen (stray into Northumberland though and they’re everywhere, ditto Waitrose). Downsides are the weather, the bigger towns have large areas of deprivation and the new reform council is making a predictable hash of administration

As you have 'elderly parents' I would suggest you start looking within a 1hr distance from them and then work outwards.

Pennines - Just outside Bolton/Bury etc. You can live in a country village with lovely walks (stunning scenery) and friendly pubs. There are a number of secondary schools relatively nearby, and Manchester is a great city if you do get the urge for the occasional shopping/museum/theatre trip

HD7/8/9 and S36 Areaa of S/W Yorkshire - Penistone, Denby Dale, Holmfirth, Meltham, Marsden, Slaithwaite. Basically the hinterland of the Peak District between Huddersfield, Manchester and Sheffield.

Thanks also for those who seem to get what I’m trying to describe - each to their own I suppose - but there does seem to be a lot of “high performance living” going on around me/where I am.

The unnecessary amping-up of basic life things (work, leisure, cars ,food, houses etc) and, I don’t know, just this tone or manner in which people seem to want you to know that their life is so much more important/heightened/critical than other people’s - normal people go on holiday - they travel, we have hobbies they have important pursuits, I have stuff to do - they take on projects. Most people are surely just living a life, but they, they are carving out a way forward with something close to almost superhuman brilliance.
It’s something more/different to snobbery - like an unabashed tone-deaf signalling or vain earnestness. I see it in parents (which is great) when they are so proud and excited about their toddlers first steps or first words - we can all share in that - it’s amazing but the thing that makes it amazing is the love they have for their child growing not that they actually think no one has ever learned to walk/speak before. But to see this pride/hubris come out of the mouths of grown adults (often when talking about themselves!) just feels so off to me. The Romans had a thing called Res Gestae where you chalked up all you life’s great achievements before you died (conquered Gaul, became Consul etc etc) and it seems people want to do this as they are going along - but instead of ‘I conquered Gaul’ it’s “I set up a website”.

I live as far south as you can (literally Sussex coast) and have never experienced this. I’m not even trying to be contrary here why would people be more proud of their kids first steps because they live in the south east?

I agree but there's still little pockets of what the OP wishes to avoid

Peak district, very rural parts of East Midlands (keep clear of the Lincolnshire fens though, they're utterly bleak!!) Cumbria, parts of Yorkshire.
I lived in the south east many, many eons ago...it was awful. And crowded, and expensive. My current, very rural home is wonderful, I absolutely love it. I can quite sympathise OP.

I don’t agree. The area around Blandford is like South London transferred wholesale to the country

You really have to do this.

I live in East Yorkshire and it’s basically like this. Minimal gentrification, lots of “normal” people, no Waitrose! Everyone shops in Lidl but there are some nice independent shops on the high street - and the sensible kind, not the bougie kind. Schools are fine. Not great, not terrible. Everyone will tell you the schools are awful, the driving is atrocious and the town is on its arse, but if you’ve lived literally anywhere else you can see none of this is actually true!

I live near Bournemouth & me & my friends are nothing like you describe. We are working class and down to earth, I’m sure there are people around like that here but it’s not necessary to mix with them.

I was going to suggest similar but South Devon too.
There are secondary schools in both Kingsbridge (which might be a bit 'rah' now but it was mostly generations of farming families when I lived nearby) & Ivybridge. Then lots of secondaries in Plymouth and other surrounding areas.
Notre Dame RC girls always had a good reputation and near to Tamerton Foliet.
Plympton & Plymstock also have secondaries.
You also have the Moors (Dartmoor) nearby with South Dartmoor Community College in Ashburton.

Herefordshire.

Why avoid Harrogate 🤦🏼‍♀️ as that's my planned destination?!

@Paperwhite209, Harrogate, lovely as it is, is not the place to go if you want to avoid gentrification, cafe culture and red trousered rahs.

Ah, I though that's what you meant.

I know it's not as down to earth as other parts of Yorkshire but I've spent a fair bit of time there over the last few years and really like it - although am looking at the NE of the town (Bilton and possibly out towards Knaresborough and Ripon) rather than the SW which is ostensibly posher.

Currenty outskirts of Brighton so it's all relative 😂

I would say you are perhaps mixing with the wrong sort of people rather than living in the wrong part of the country. I currently live within an hour’s travel of London, and you get all sorts of people. In my village we have the housing estate of 5 bed exec homes full of gym bunny mummies who spend their lives having coffee mornings in aid of the PTA as their husbands who work in The City are out at work so much, and we also have the housing estate of council houses with a crack den in it and all the stolen goods in the area pass through there. Our town has a Waitrose and a Co-Op, we even have farm shops that are way more expensive and fancy than Waitrose could ever be! We have local village pubs where you can go for a pint and nothing more, and we’ve got Michelin starred gastropubs you can’t book a table at for months. If braying around the countryside in your red trousers is your thing we’ve got lots of shoots, but if your idea of countryside fun is hiking on your own, we’ve also got lots of footpaths and bridleways and a few National Trails you can hike.

We’ve got both ends of all the things you are describing. You get to choose what your hobbies are though, and which pub you go to, and which supermarket you want to shop at. Your choices will put you firmly in the social circle you want to be in, wherever you decide to live. And having grown up in the North East, spent my late teens and twenties in the North West, and moving South for work, I can tell you that loud posh career driven twats, ‘frou-frou shops’ and garden centres with massive coffee shops attached, gastropubs you can’t just drop in for a pint in, mummies who don’t have a life outside the circle of their children's lives, and hordes of blokes on bikes - they exist everywhere.