A question for rural living OS members

shegar

Ive always lived in the outskirts of villages and wouldnt move anywhere else, I couldnt bear the thought of living in a polluted town with people and too much traffic everyday......

I live quite close to the sea , and got woods and countryside all around, yes village life is very much Miss Marple style, we see more people on theirs push bikes than see cars, also you do get , village Halls, WI meetings, crafts classes, bingo nights, summer fetes.......etc.....

And fresh air too......Yea we get farm smells about if the farmers are muck spreading, ive got hens to so im use to a bit of muck smell.....

And loads of lovely old looking houses with garden cottages........

HariboJunkie

dandy-candy wrote: »

Part of my on going plan to be more frugal and old style is to eventually move to the countryside and have a smallholding. It isn't just to have the space to grow my own veg and keep livestock, but to be in a like minded community. I don't want to be anywhere to remote, but on the edge of village seems a perfect idea.
When we do countryside drives we see lots of pretty "Miss Marple" type villages and I would love to live in them. I imagine everyone being quaint and old fashioned, and having village fete's, joining the W.I. etc etc. Is that what village life is really like or did that die out in the 1950's? Have I been watching to many period dramas?

Miss Marple villages tend to be quite expensive. And you won't get much livestock in the garden of a village centre cottage.

It's hard to advise you without knowing where in the country you are thinking about living. You would have to do your own research on your chosen area I think.

Patchwork_Quilt

I'm with thriftwizard. We live in a small town on the edge of the countryside, so we have all the amenities - doctors, library, coffee shops, church and theatre - as well as amazing walks and views just up the hill. We have a big garden and I grow a lot of veg. We have fruit trees. We can certainly have bees and although it's banned in the deeds, people do keep chickens around here. I make all our jam, chutney and pickles. We do have an allotment, though a friend is looking after it for now. I would humbly advise you try this kind of half and half life until you know for sure that you want to live in the countryside. You will be able to see what kind of work is involved without having to commit yourself and your life savings. Furthermore, you will have enough people around you to choose your friends rather than being forced to socialise with the same few. You won't spend as much on transport and if you have a family your children will have a good mix of friends and something to do on an evening.

[Deleted User]

I live in the Garden of England (Kent) but I am near enough to the local shops for it not to be a problem I'm lucky that that it is a 15 minute bus ride to Hempstead Valley shopping precinct, with a pretty good local service I am also half an hour to Whitstable for fresh fish straight off the boat and a five minute walk to the nearest station with a fast train to Victoria 50 minute ride.So I have the best of all worlds really.Its busy enough not to feel isolated yet quiet enough for there to be very little crime (fingers crossed) .Ten minutes from the country park by the River Medway by car.and I have a library,shops ,Drs virually everything I could want.When my late OH and I downsized to move here 17 years ago we did a lot of research first to get what we thought we may need as we got older and maybe less inclined to drive .He at first wanted to go back to live on the Isle of Wight where he came from, but with both our daughters living in the Medway it would have meant we wouldn't have seen much of them.As it turned out moving here was the best thing we ever did as the grandchildren came along over the years and we got to see them growing up(well I did more than him sadly) .I sometimes wonder how I would have coped living miles away from my DDs and DGC when I was sadly widowed just over 9 years ago.It made all the differance having my family near enough by so I am never lonely, yet also have enough independance.
Village life sound great but it does have its drawbacks .Years ago we lived for a couple of years before we had a family in a small cottage on Mersea Island off the coast of Essex ,wonderful in the summer but very cold in the winter and quite cut off at times.
, literally by the sea:)Plus the biggest spiders I have ever seen in my life live on the marshes (and in the houses as well) No I am very happy having the best of both worlds with a little bit of shops locally yet the countryside not too far from here.

[Deleted User]

my village has a population of about 250. One bus every 2 hours between 8 and 5 on six days a week. No shop for miles, no pub for miles. There is no village green but we have a hall and some very dedicated people who are always arranging functions in the hall. Many people are commuters and want no active part in anything but they will pass the time of day. Activity is focused around the church and the hall and a small group of us have allotments. No lights here and we all have torches hanging by the door. No gas either but we do have mains drainage

I do feel that we need to be pretty self sufficient and we could survive a long period of being cut off in winter. It is very peaceful here and my view from the south facing back, with the big windows and verandah, is of sheep grazing under apple trees in an orchard. It is a working village not a picture postcard but it is pretty idyllic if you want peace and quiet. It wouldn`t suit everybody but it suits us for now, whilst we can still drive or as long as we can afford taxis

mummyyof5

I live in a small village between 2 towns in Derbyshire..luckily our bus service is pretty good 3 an hour each way although they stop totally at 10pm.
Doctors is 20 mins away on bus
We have no shops at all...30mins on bus to nearest ones....infant,nusery schools,church and community centre are all half an hour walk so that takes 3 hours each day doing school runs...I dont drive...junior school is merely 15 mins away lol....BUT I love it...mostly great neighbours...schools are 10 to a class...and 3 teachers in each so great attention per child..luckily we have no trouble at all probably because everyone knows each others children.

I look out of my back window to a field of horses and trees and fields as far as the eye can see...bliss
Thankfully we are connected to mains etc but council have started to turn out the street lights after 9pm xx

ragz_2

I love our village, been here 2 and a half years, it seems to be a good size.
A doctors, 2 pubs, village shop, post office, fire station, school (no preschool). One bus an hour, half an hour drive to secent size supermarkets though town 10 minutes away has small ones, chaorty shops, takeaways etc.
Village has a few council/ex council estates (small ones!) which makes ALL the difference as it's less snobby, not all brand new cars/4X4 and more of a mix in income levels/background. A good many people are not 'local', but lived here 2,5, 10 years and now feel part of the village.

We do have village fetes, village events, panto in the hall and stuff so yes it is lvoely and idillic. I love it, but like I said, having children really helps.

Having children at the local school helps a LOT... I doubt I would have made friends here otherwise unless I went to the pubs (which I don't as I have kids!) but mums are all really fr

tori.k

mud & poop mud & poop and more mud & poop and hard work about sums it up, we live in a hamlet of a dozen houses/smallholding just outside of a small village that host a pub, spar shop/postoffice and butcher&greengrocers, unless you have thousands sitting in the bank it's a hard but not unenjoyable way to make a life, it's pretty quiet as there is always work to do but in true village fashion we all know what our neighbours are up too we have a good community network in the village there is always something going on in the village hall usually aimed at the retired as everyone else is busy but there is always a helping hand if you should need it to be found, very few can manage without finding outside work as altho you maybe able to feed yourself there are still bills to pay so it's 16+ hour days depending on the season, i work in a supermarket in a nearby town most of us working the early shift are farmers/smallholders so we can get home to start the days work at home.

It's a hard life but the little things make it worth it, the cold pint down the pub with friends after a days graft in the summer, being snuggled up in front of a hot stove, food tastes so much better when you are truly hungry after working outside, but best to me it's the peace and quiet and having that true darkness (no streetlights or traffic noise) after years of insomnia from working nightshifts i now sleep like the dead.

lostinrates

There are villages and villages.

Where I used to live, with a few exceptions, you really had to have been born to peoplle born there to be 'local'. Where I am now is in a much more transient community, a lot of MoD who work nearby and often return to retire here, so the villages and local towns have been used to being more open and welcoming.

The rule of thumb is you have to join ion and attend the full gambit of village events and volunteer for one thing.....raising money for the church, or village hall, the least popular stand at the summer fete. If you have an expertise you are welcomed. For example, one of our previous careers is useful to a village event, and so we volunteered to help at that and I am on the commitee.

After a year of doing it all you can drop down to a couple of things.

Being wi ish or church certainly speeds integration. But waiting for people to introduce themselves is the wrong thing. If you have a village shop make a pointof buying an overpriced pint of milk there once a week and a news paper...show willing. Smile, all the time.


IMO, there is no ideal place to be. There are advantages to raising children in busier places...more things like free museums and art gallaries and less expensive access to things like soft play and stuff. Closer to schools and friends for play dates.


I would say running a small holding is a huge lifestyle change and choice. It's not always fun, it's not always popular. There are nights you cry into your pillow at the fox/the buzzards/the rain/ the mud...and that's someone from a Farming family. There is NEVER a morning off. (actually, that's not true, last christmas one of my clients came up in the morning and let the chickens out and did the animals for me and told dh and I to stay in bed, so we got a luxurious lie in till about eight or nine in the morning).

Everything good and everything bad in recieved knowledge is totally possible, what part of it you get depends on the compromises in location and lifestyle you make.

dandy-candy

Thanks for the replies. It's really good to know there are still communities out there!
I live in the same London suburb I was born in and there has been no community here since I was about 15 and the older generation died out. It's all money men now who don't talk to there neighbours and move every 3-5 years anyway - I hate it!
I know we will always be "outsiders" in any village, but to have a village hall, W.I., gardening club, local dramatics etc sounds wonderful.
On the smallholding side of things I have kept ducks and chickens before, but the rest will ba a learning curve!