Rural living - advice and experiences?

I am considering moving to the sticks. 

Have seen a house that I love, it's 5 miles from the nearest town and there are another 3 towns about 10 miles away.  There is a community of about 20 houses nearby and around (including 3 houses within 200 yards), but no shops, pubs, garage, etc.  It is within easy reach of a main road, so I am not worried about being cut off due to weather (or no more so than anywhere else really).  Supermarkets will deliver, and it has broadband.   Nearest big city with airport is 50 miles away.    Drive to parents and other family is around an hour and 20 minutes (much less than currently).

My parents think it is too remote. 

Does anyone live a drive away from facilities?  Are there any potential difficulties apart from the obvious?   A social life might take a bit more work, but I am fairly comfortable with that...

 

As nex says it would drive me up the fckng spout (I may be paraphrasing her soz nex) to have to drive 5 miles to get eggs or milk or bread or whatever.

I need a walkable shop even if it's a quickie

Was doing it for a number of years - the awkwardness of having a designated driver every time you want to go out for dinner is undeniably tedious.

Also, should you use the internet, it will be regularly poor, as will mobile phone reception.  I have lived in remote areas with "great" broadband, which is in fact poor.  Sky, etc is also often hit and miss.

Supermarkets may deliver, but not all delivery services will be able to find you; I suffered this problem despite being 2 minutes from a well used, well known A -road and good connecting roads.

If for some reason you are buying in the north, be aware that any issues with snow and ice will likely not be dealt with in a timely fashion.  If you use the trains, trains are more often than not late and unreliable and replacement services can be truly shocking.

Fast food places are unlikely to deliver to you.  I don't order much delivery food myself, but most places have a small coverage that generally does not include small collections of houses in the middle of no-where.

In my experience as well, neighbours in remote areas are more likely to take the piss/behave like flaccid cocks.

So in short, can be fun - but can be a crock of shite.

Is it on a bus route to any of the towns? Probably, if its on a main road, but check the schedules for frequency and route ( round the houses probably).

broadband might not be a problem if it is up a hill.

i think there is a massive difference between just living somewhere rual and living somewhere rural with no neighbours either.

I grew up somewhere where the nearest neighbour is several hundred yards up the road and you can only see a couple of sets of lights across the valley at night.  I’m heading back there soon as I hate having to deal with neighbours and looking forward to it.

The broadband is slow compared to London but works fine.  Some times have to go upstairs to get a decent mobile signal but that’s no big deal especially now you can use WhatsApp to call over your internet connection instead.  Hermes will struggle to deliver stuff but everyone else finds the place just fine.  Yes someone has to drive if you go out but not a major issue.  The bigger problem is farmers and the over 70’s who think it’s fine to drive after a bottle or three of wine.

Half heartedly looking and to be honest I find more interesting people on dating apps in the country than I do in London and considering just dating rurally these days.

Thanks for the various opinions; it's horses for courses, clearly.

I like driving, so driving everywhere doesn't bother me.  The broadband and mobile signal are fine.  The house backs on to a footpath with a gate in the fence to access it, so can have great walks straight from the door (worst case scenario is living in a rural place where you have to drive somewhere to have a decent country walk).  My main priorities are peace and quiet.

Driving everywhere might begin to bother you if your locale is populated by doddery oldsters driving everywhere at 10mph. You'd think they would want to get to their destination in more of a hurry - you know,  with time not being on their side and everything, but apparently not. I suppose they are worried about wrapping their KIA round a lamppost.  

I used to stay somewhere like this for a few weeks as a time when house (and animal) sitting as a student. I loved it then but very different to do it full time I think. Key issue is whether you are happy to spend most evenings at home. If you are then it's ace. if you aren't then it will be sh1t basically.

I think personally I'd prefer a village with a pub and a shop at least.

If you have kids don't underestimate how much of a pain in the arse driving them about will be.

Isolation is a really tough gig.  I didn't realise how badly it was affecting me until recently, hence my purchase of a place in the centre of a small village by a beach.  Being cut off from everything other than by car does tend to make one go a bit (more) doolally.

Yeah outside of London the kids get driven about whatever.

I could personally hack it (I think) if it was rural and near/on the coast - there's something about the sea in good and bad weather.

What I could not hack is living in the kind of place one of my brothers lived for a while which was in a small new build development of about 6 houses, accessibly only by 15 mins on single track roads with bushes 15 foot high up each side, and the houses surrounded by tall trees. It was like driving into Mordor. Very slowly.

Love it. 

I am not on mains water (borehole) or drainage (septic tank and soakaway) and have solar panels for electricity (although admittedly mains as well). The nearest village is 1.5 miles.

Yes the internet is slow via however much copper cable but it's nice to be (almost) off grid.

 

We did it, to an old farmhouse.  It is 20 minutes to the edge of civilisation, and an hour or so to work... in the car.  The nearest bus stop is 4 miles away, no train station worth mentioning. We are 2 miles from the nearest (very small) village, but it has no shops.  There are some farms near us though.

 

We rented first in the next village to see if we liked it, before buying the farm.

 

Driving isnt a problem mostly, but with children it means they are not near friends (or any other children) and so some evenings there is a LOT of driving back and forth - it is difficult to ferry them.  Things need to be organised much better, and people do not 'drop by'.

 

It is great though.  If you will be relying on a borehole check carefully for future issues that may affect it - such as planning applications for a windfarm or other development that would disturb the groundwater flows.  But a borehole is fine, and there are grants so you can get yourself a good filtration system.   Septic tanks are also not a problem.  But the internet is hopeless - and nobody cares about people out in the countryside!  You can always get satellite internet or use a 4g mifi type box which is fine.

 

We are somewhere that gets cut off if you don't have a 4x4, but only when the snow is really bad.  

 

It has been great, I don't think I'd like to move back to the city/suburbs, noise, traffic, street lights, or other buildings.

Oh and nights out are a nightmare.  Having a drink means a palaver to get home, at xmas an uber is £100+++; or I can get a train/bus to the nearest town and then a taxi, so always need to add £40+ to the night out budget!

I live in the South Downs national park, where Sussex, Hampshire and Surrey meet. I'm in Sussex, near Midhurst.

We are a 10/15 min drive from two towns, one of which gives me my morning commuter train to London.

I drive a lot more than I would if I lived in town, obviously.  The pubs are nicer but restaurants fewer and further between.  Shops are a drive.

Neighbours are not in view.  This is mainly a positive (there is nobody telling me how to cut my hedge and trees, nobody you need to keep quiet for etc) but it also presents a concern re emergencies etc and is worth thinking about. 

Really remote places also don't have mains gas, may have private water pipe arrangements from the mains supply and won't have mains sewage (so you'll have a septic tank and/or a digester plant and these can be problematic). The water thing can mean your liability when pipes go and a massive arse ache to sort.

Electricity tends to be provided on overhead lines through woodland round us. There is no underground supply. This can cause outages especially at this time of year when trees are still in leaf and the gales/rainwater levels are in full swing. Branches and trees falling can take lines out. you can lose power and phone.  That may really piss you off.  We installed an 8KvA generator on an ATS circuit to stop everything packing up (fridges, freezers, oil pump for boiler etc).

Fibre broadband. Don't get me started on this issue.

Mobile phone signals can be troublesome.

Train commuting in the wrong mindset can do your head in. If you just treat it as quiet work time and don't think of it as travel, it doesn't matter how long it takes, or whether it is too full, delayed etc.

Those are the downers. Here are the uppers:

Space and air. You crave that more than anything when rabbit hutched in town. We work days in cramped office environments and arriving home even on a long commute, and strolling in the garden, taking a dog walk and a big lungful of air.

People. There are aunts everywhere in life but people are less khunty and keep themselves to themselves round us.

Health (mental and physical). Do not underestimate the drudge and long-term impact on you of coming out of your shoebox, shuffling onto the tube to be snotted on while you sniff someone's pits involuntarily, shuffling on the pavement to the office, sitting in the office and repeating that in reverse to have a meal, try to sleep while the neighbour in the terrace is playing Lethal Bastard Battlestar Grand Tour Soldier of Death Zombie HD through his Wang-level TV with surround sound that wakes up all the SW post codes, then waking to do it all again, then weekends where everyone in town wants access to the fun stuff so it is equally stressful.  Rural life does not cause your skin to gather a black oily smear every day. Your lungs will not be choked with a sort of permanent goo. Your eczema and headache will abate. Your eyes will feast on glorious autumnal colours, cool nights in the summer, warm days mid summer season which don't boil your house to bits, and your garden will look lovely. Sitting in it and feeling at ease will pay huge dividends.

Schools. If you have children in London then you can manage up until secondary then it all gets entirely fecked up to the max, especially for boys. State lottery or absurdly competitive alternatives. Either they get into elite schools or they trudge miles for poor alternatives.  There are just too many people and not enough options. Do you want your kids doing bus journeys, tube journeys or car commutes of over an hour?  In rural areas there is just less pressure on places.

Rubbish and recycling actually works in rural areas and they aren't fascist about it. You don't have to have twenty seven different boxes and bags and a spreadsheet setting out the days. ONe week you put out your black bag wheelie bin. The other you put out mixed recycling.  Your greatest risk is a fox gets involved with an overfull bin.

Somewhere in between up and down are the house price issue and planning. You might buy well with your town money but you won't see it grow exponentially and you may be the first to feel a cooling off in the market. As far as planning and development is concerned, there is much more prospect to do things to houses in rural locations provided (a) they aren't listed (b) they aren't in conservation areas or national parks.  The planners are either relaxed or Nazis depending on what you have, where, but in town it's all massive arse ache.

Above all, you won't have some aunt digging a basement out for 18 months and making your life hell, you can drive and park, you don't need residents' parking badges and you can keep shotguns pour encourager les autres.

 

I love it.  I like driving so that part doesn't bother me.  And I hate people, so being near nobody at all when the working day is over is just up my street.

I have to separate the recycling and I currently live virtually in the Atlantic.  Mileage may vary between local authorities on that one.

sometimes it feels like living on an island, especially days like today where the single artery of rail connection through Dawlish is closed due to storms so the entire county is cut off from the rest of the country...

Tecco

if you live on the edge of the Atlantic, just bung your plastics into the ocean like everyone, safe in the knowledge that the whales, dolphins and turtles will collect and sort. Here are some at work doing just that.

 

Image result for turtle with plastic bagImage result for dolphin plastic bagImage result for whale plastic bag

Oh and here's a thing we have found out - field drains!  We had no idea that there is a network of pipes under farm fields to drain them.  Parts of our fields started to flood after last winter - turns out the drains were blocked and needed maintenance.  

 

And horses - they make a terrible mess of your land!

@Hargreaves: me.  I like to be within walking distance of a shop and a pub and part of an actual community.  and walking distance to the local school also helpful.

don't get me wrong I wouldnt want to live in london again

To be clear:

Morden is the centre of Middle Earth, with fire everywhere, Auks a-plenty and a lot of dwarves.

Mordor is a suburb on the A3 near Wimbledon and Kingston of no real note save for the huge number of Edwardian pebble-dashed semi-detached properties.

Sodor is the fictional island where Thomas the Tank Engine did his stuff. The town is small, there are trains everywhere, people seem happy and it is entirely fake. See also Dorking, Leatherhead and "Seahaven" in the Truman Show (Seaside, Panama City Beach, Florida).

My mother who is 80 has no shop in walking distance but she is still driving.

you can get papers delivered and the milkman these days can bring food too. Or just get in habit of lots of bread and milk in the freezer. Mum is now actually looking at going into a returement village with nursing home attached as the house is too much for her but the problems arent really rural,ones, they could happen anywehere, prob more so cos neighbours etc. There has been quite a lot of crime and she feels scared on her own but security/cctv helps.

getting a cleaner is an issue, there just isnt a market for low cost labour, she pays her cleaner about £16 an hour plus pension and hols and the poor cleaner only has one eye and is hopeless but thats all there is.

Getting a cleaner is a pain.  In fact getting any people in to do any work is a pain.  And as soon as they see the place, they instantly assume you are minted and hike up the price...

I think i like the idea of living in the country but in reality it would bore and frustrate me silly. I spent countless holidays at folks “holiday “ house in south west village and first week or so was great. Things that did/would piss me off:

1) neatest mainline station 20 minutes drive

2) nerest “supermarkets “ 20 min drive , all of which close at 6 ish

3) the amount of local social activities one felt compelled to attend

4) gossip, everyone knows your business or makes it up 

5) the schools seem to very poor quality in villages 

6) the local corner shop opens when they want

7) it is pitch black with little street lights 

8) a car is a must as is the need to have military levels of organisation generally.

9) the bus may or may not come and the next one is an hour away. Friend lived in a village 30 miles from Exeter -buses every 2/3 hours 

10) parents house were always having power cuts

11) the local pub or eatarie gave up years ago there is no competition 

12) a car is a must

13) taxi service is shite.

each to their own I guess

Some of those are fair ebitda.  No street lights.  Come rural places do have a choice of 24h 'out of town' big supermarkets only 20mins away in the car.  But no local corner shops.  

Amused and agree at (3) and (4).  (5) true too, so the kids dont go to the local school.  

Forgot to mention the power cuts.  Yes, that too.

Oh and there was always one of us having to wait for the fooking oil man to arrive . He never gave a time , mum would say “ he is coming sometime tomorrow who is going to be in all day “ WTF

Thanks again for the info. 

The only "downsides" people have mentioned that would bother me are power cuts and the possible difficulty in selling the place in the future.  

I want to live in peace and quiet and not be impacted by twottish neighbours and their khunty parking.  I want to be able to spend time in my own garden without hearing other people's screaming kids.  I make my own bread and don't drink milk - there seems to be a lot of anxiety about those on here!

 

 

My sis has worked out a good wheeze to make rural life very comfortable. It wont work for everyone but,:

if you have the space/available outhouse, create a flat.

get an agency to supply an eastern european couple to live in it for free, their duties being housekeeper (usually her) and outdoor man (usually him).you set specific working hours and the rate/hour. Sis pays £10/hr or less - remember the flat is free. The rest of the time they are free to work for other people in the area. Make it a thing that they can only take holidays when you are home, ie they also look after your gaff when you’re away.

You wont have to lift a finger. The other villagers will love it. The couple will improve their English, save money amd move on after a couple of years then you start again. In the past this has enabled couples variously to build a house back home, start a family, send money to aged relatives etc etc

my sis has been doing this for years and the people who come are always v happy and brilliant. She has immaculate house/garden/land and never ever waits in for anything. They also keep an eye on stepmum who lives next door.

Kimmy you can do /have all those things with out having to live in such a rurual area. Moving children from London to a tiny village can also be very damaging. I know from back in the day a fair few people whose parents upped and moved to the country and hated it . Many became junkies of one description or another. 

I don't have kids, ebitda, or wouldn't be considering such a move!

It isn't really that isolated in my view (see OP) and I will see far more of my parents and other family than I do now - prob at least once every 2-3 weeks instead of once every 4-5 months. 

The particular house I have seen is lovely, with a gorgeous garden which is not too big in itself but backs on to woodland.  There is another house next door (about 30 feet away) and another about 30 yards from that.  Its been on the market for ages (see concern about a resale) and is a good price.

Most houses actually in a town/village are susceptible to neighbour hassle, ime, unless one has £££ to spend on a property (which I don't).  

i'm moving to Madrid. Great weather, 2 hour flight to london, can have a McMansion with a pool and stuff thats vomitting distance from the centre for about a bar and a half. School fees are a third of the price

#ballin'

....hopefully

Kimmy, all joking aside i kind of tried this a while back. it was back in my polo days where i had dreams of playing every evening, driving my car around the awesome country lanes, and of course the friendly country girls that gravitate towards well-to-do city gents like flies around sh*t.

thats mostly what happened during the months of June to September, and then winter rolled around. there was no polo, i would get home when it was dark and have fook all to do but vvank and eat pizza. If i went for beers in town then i would invariably get on the stopping train home which made me commute about 90 minutes. it really was turbo fvcking depressing, so i moved back to town.

all in all, the countryside is lovely, but in my experience you NEED a reason to be there (i.e. kids, schools, space). Pitching up as a young singleton might not be all you dreamed of. So, go for it, but dont paint yourself into a corner (i.e. rent)

When I stayed for school and uni holidays with my brothers, I just founder after a week I was suffocating. You can’t walk to a range of different pubs or eateries, the friends you have made live 10/20 miles away and you see them less and less over the holidays. And having to rely on a car constantly to go anywhere grinds u down .

i remember one Xmas eve , dad had forgot to buy bread , he spent ages trying to find some ended up going to Gloucester to get it !

Not really. They opened in San Pedro a while back but the link was broken for some reason 

I do have concerns with children education abroad that they end up not knowing who they are and where they belong 

Never had problems getting cleaners or the like down here in the Sussex shire but as my family have been here for two generations we know most locals and when one cleaner gets to the retirement she simply puts us in touch with a friend’s daughter or granddaughter who then takes over.  Similarly we’ve been customers of the oil company for decades so they’ll prioritise our delivery over someone who’s just moved down from London.  Afraid it will take twenty years for you to be accepted as local if you move to somewhere rural you have no prior connnection to.

Does anyone live a drive away from facilities?  Yes... ...it isn't a problem, just get your sh*t organised.

Are there any potential difficulties apart from the obvious?  For the first few days every creak, bump or rattle in the house snapped me awake straining to hear and peering into the shadows imagining all sorts of horrors... ...the upside is that you can wander out to the bin naked and no one will know... ...you can give deliberately vague directions to people you don't really want to see... ...you start to become feral :)

A social life might take a bit more work, but I am fairly comfortable with that. You will find that people who live near you have the same mindset... ...you will get on with them just fine, unless they capture you and keep you in the basement for years.

I love it but Mrs J wants to move back in so we'll sell and get a townhouse in or near Oxford. ? 

It's fair enough because the current place is an equestrian property and I had a bit of a riding accident a little while back which means I can't justify keeping it. 

You’ll soon learn not to be scared of noises and will assume that if your dog is barking it must be able to hear a fox outside.  A lifetime in the country has taught me that most people up to no good will disappear if they hear or see someone coming and certainly won’t bother hanging about to try and stab you.

What muttley said.

I'm in a national park in the north and have a twenty minute drive to a small town.

Upsides: Quiet. Owls. Lovely neighbours. Massive garden plus 1000s of acres of moorland. Trees.  Sky. etc.  When working from home I have a ten second commute.

Downsides: No mobile and awful telephone so I am dependent on odd radio internet connection - which is expensive but pretty fast, if sometimes flakey but good for skype calling.  Lots of money on diesel up and down to town.  Oil for heating and cooking.

I love the remoteness, but whilst I wonder how long it would take to find me if I chopped a tree on top of my head one day I think that (as Mutters says) the health benefit of not being on a sodding tube outweighs that risk.