A question for rural living OS members

littlegreenparrot

Re: Privacy

:rotfl: Tabatha kitten, that happened to me too!
Home from university for the summer one year I walked down to the local shop with my brother.
By the time we got home (less than an hour) someone had already been on the phone to my confused mum asking who my young man was!
It can be very stifling.

lostinrates

tori.k wrote: »

your right that was emotive of me Lost, it's just people and how they interact with the wider community at the end of the day

The problem cuts both ways. Many of us in the country share that emotive reaction, but it's often misplaced and self defeating. We should be embracing those who want to be part, even if only for two days a week, of the rural idyll, who want to keep us employed, and keep our shops funded.

ATM near me there has been a case which has been national news. It's clear to me both sides of the 'row' are handling it very, very poorly. I have seen it in most rural communities I have lived in or been connected too (and that has never been the high pressure Cornwall coast, but has included parts of the Cotswolds, and 'Boden' country in the southwest.

A lot of it is envy....and it's understandable. I long to be able to 'finish' my house and get decent fencing and hedging up everywhere, but cannot, on the otherhand, people seeing me plant weeny hedging plants at the front of my house rather than six foot tall instant hedging, shows that I am not a fly by night here today gone tomorrow kinda resident.

My husband, and before him, my dad, have always worked in cities while the home has been the country one. So I see both sides very close at hand. We could not afford to be here if my dh did not have his 'city income'. And this house was empty for almost three years, and very sorely neglected for decades before that. Lots of people in my village have close affiliation with this house and farm, and we are sensitive to that. Many others just see the outside and think 'money' not realising that depsite the 'city income' we have shivered inside its no heating for two years, that we saved like demons most of our adult life to be in a position to do this.

A

Dark_Star

OK....we live in a village but had a list of requirements when househunting.

Bare minimum:
train station (as we commuted)
village shop (for milk & papers)
&
pub (optional)

I have always lived "rural" apart from when I met the OH & lived in a town. The novelty of being able to walk to Woolies instead of getting on a train soon wore off.

When we first moved in....there were no trains on sundays & it's a single track line so if something gets stuck NOTHING moves up or down until it's fixed. Oh & the last train home was at 8pm. Got me out of many a dreadful xmas event although the rest of the office was convinced I lived in the wilds of scotland! Hmm - you stand on the tube for an hour up against someone's armpit, I sit on a train for an hour looking at sheep/cows/deer etc through the window...& I don't have to socialise with the twerp from accounts at corporate events. Think I'll stick with rural.

Corner shop didnt open sundays either. It does now but the hours are quite erratic & they shut for lunch when they feel like it. Still when the owner says "your other half leaves for work early - I saw them walking down the road with X (neighbour)" - you know you've been there long enough to realise that the owner probably works for MI6 otherwise how would they know who we live next door to...as you can't see our road from the shop!

Pub; there are 2.
1 of which has changed hands every couple of years leaving the previous occupiers skint. Lovely pub but eats money like no tomorrow. We await new owners with interest

Village life is lovely however - if you've never lived in a village, try renting first.

No we are not out of Miss Marple/Midsommer Murders etc

Our narrow roads get clogged up with tractors/steam engines/people lost following satnav :rotfl:actually that's quite entertaining

We have several signs stating "DO NOT FOLLOW SATNAV" as the road layout has changed but satnav info has not...

There is a village website which is run & patrolled by a nazi who insists on your address before allowing you to join & vets EVERY message posted & will not allow any messages he doesn't agree with. Freedom of speech? Not round here! There's a rebel website which allows almost anything. Although all either site gets tends to be news about roadworks in the next town.

Thriving community. Yes if you are over 103 as it's all WI types & run between 10am - 2pm when the old dears are awake.

Churches - lots of 'em.

Fete - there was one but the organisers fell out & no one else dares take it on.

Firework night - our village becomes Baghdad for the evening. Lock up the sheep.

Poultry keeping -you can do that in town but beware foxes wherever you are.

Be prepared to accept rural pursuits - pheasant shoots/rabbit hunting/deer stalking etc. YUM These have been going on far longer than you have been alive so don't complain.

Cable - nope
Gas - maybe if you live in the right road, otherwise its oil or lpg.
Electric - if there are no high winds (to bring the cables down)
Mobile signal - erm....what day is it?

Entertainment....5 miles away in the next town -

Any really large supermarkets are an hour away, along with pound shops/primark etc no bargains round here as the shops we do have are too small to do the "glitches" from the grabbit board.

I recommend country living but it's nothing like on TV :T thankfully.

Oh & we don't have streetlights either; do have fabulous night skies. Confuses non-local friends at night though as they can't read the house numbers


Happy househunting

Wellyboots6

I live in a village and am quite unusual here as I am a youngish (29) woman living on my own. I also work full time.

I have lived here a year and a half now and I love it.

I moved from a city, mainly because I needed a bit of a shock to the system, and I certainly got it, in a good way!

My village is pretty self-sufficient as it is at the top of a big hill which never gets gritted, and so in the winter we are snowed in for weeks at a time. We have a shop, a bakers, post office, butchers, chip shop, craft shop, doctors and various pubs. It used to be a very small town. The bakers also doubles as a coffee shop and one night a week is a restaurant. The post office also doubles as the dry cleaners and florist.

Public transport is awful, with buses running once an hour with the last bus at 6pm so you really do need a car.

When I moved here I had just got my dog who was rather antisocial, so we made quite a few enemies within the first few days! Since then he has improved greatly and we have also made some friends.

We are certainly well known around here (well, he is!) and people either stop to say hello and have a chat, or cross the road quickly and run off!

I have found the neighbours to be so friendly and supportive, and you are considered quite rude here if you do not say hello to everybody you meet when out walking.

After living here a year and a half I would definitely say that I am seen as an outsider, but an interesting outsider that people like to have a nosy at either in a friendly or unfriendly way as they see fit!

I have lost a lot of weight walking the dog and also walking up to the bakers etc as there is no real need to use the car when it is such a nice walk.

I do a lot of baking, jam making etc as it would be rude not to with the amount of fruit growing in the hedgerows! People also swap produce they grow, so you kinda have to grow something to trade with the neigbours.

There is lots of entertainment, fetes, lectures at the church, zumba in the village hall etc and the whole village is out on Halloween and Bonfire Night.

You will never get a lie in due to milk floats, tractors and cows hurtling down the road at all hours.

Expect to bring your washing in smelling of cow muck on a regular occasion.

You will have no private life whatsoever! Especially if you have a disastrous love life like mine. I'm sure when the power is out and noone can watch soaps they all just sit watching my front door to see what the latest gossip is!

You will need a large storage space for grit, snow shovels, candles etc.

You will meet some wonderful people.

If you go in to it being friendly with no expectations of instantly becoming a 'local' then I think you will be fine

johnjp

zcrat41 wrote: »

The countryside isn't a theme park. Its a living, breathing, often industrial space. Muck gets spread on an industrial scale, farmers will put in planning applications for wind turnbines/pig sheds/grain sheds that might ruin your view,combines will start to do the field behind your house at 10pm on a summer sunday and may well work all night. The people who live in it aren't all transported from Agatha Christie novels - people have affairs, get drunk and crash their cars....things that have happened in my village in the last 10 years.) They gossip, you will not be treated anything but an outsider until your grandchildren at least are on the scene. It can be a very close minded community. You don't often come across gay people or different races - and it very much shows in the attitudes of some of the older residents. My grandparents for example, who live in a rural scottish village did not appreciate the fact I lived with my DH before we married (and that was after engagement which I thought was quite traditional!) Oh, and the buses are crap and fuel is expensive....
walk in beautiful surroundings, look out our window onto the village church

I definitely agree with most of the above, I have a few VERY unfriendly neighbours who have spread unfounded malicious gossip and sent me to 'coventry' for nothing at all except for perhaps just not knowing enough about me - so they fabricate it!
Also - against HUGE opposition, the county council erected a colossal incinerator in the nearby town which is a hideous eyesore, on the edge of a National Park.
I am fortunate to be Australian born with dual nationality and, now my children have grown, up I will be leaving this village next year.
I do have a lot of very good friends but the disgusting behaviour of the few is very destructive and I am not willing to put up with it any longer than necessary.
One very firm bit of advice would be to act extremely circumspect as the bullying malicious gossips will very soon be spreading gossip, which actually has no grounds.
I think gossip is a problem in England possibly because of historic 'invasions' by 'foreigners' and in a village that can even be someone from nearby!
In Lewes and Brighton I frequently hear people moaning about DFL's - down from Londoners, when in many cases they are also incomers - just an astonishing amount of hypocrisy.

fannyadams

I am typing this having just spent the best part of 2 hours driving round the various roads to get home whilst avoiding the really deep (up to my car doors) localised flooding that occurrs every time it rains loads. It's been raining here torrentially non stop since 5am this morning and only just stopped about an hour ago. All I had to do was collect DS#1 from school at 3pm (20 miles round trip - no he can't get A bus, it's 3 busses) and DS#2 from cross country training at 415 (usually a 5 mile round trip - no bus for him either), AND The Wednesday bus was cancelled as it can't get through the lanes due to the flooding!
Although, it's NOT worth me getting a 4x4 just for the few days a year that it snows (and we get snowed in, because the gritter can't get up the hill to the village) or it rains so hard that the rivers burst and we get flooded IN the village (ours is no the top of a hill).
I'm not looking forward to tomorrow when I have to drive into town to sign on, give blood, buy groceries, collect DS#1, get haircut, etc.

Itismehonest

Hermia wrote: »

That is interesting as my asthma has got worse since I moved to the country. I used to work in Oxford Street and rarely has an attack, but have real problems here. My doctor reckons one of the local crops is the trigger. One of things I was looking forward to doing in the country was walking, but it turned out I was allergic to everything green!

Have you got a lot of trees around, Hermia. There's a similar problem in the area I live (a National Park) & many people have found it's down to leaf mould.


I've lived in the middle of nowhere for more than 25 years & note the OP wants to be somewhere less remote which is wise if you aren't used to your own company.
I have a feeling that the sort of villages many city/town dwellers dream of moving to are mainly populated by other 'incomers' seeking the same sort of place.

It's not that country people are unsociable, far from it, but they are usually very busy - particularly some of the farming folk.
They don't tend to do house-calls in the same way as in town. It's more a case of being there if needed than popping in for coffees.

Yes, they do love to gossip so the more an incomer joins in the more the locals will know about them ...... which can be good or bad :rotfl:
I've known some really wild stories circulate about people based on what probably started as a fairly innocent word or deed &, via the rural Chinese Whisper machine, grew into rumours of "dire goings on".

There's usually a reason why people like to live more remotely & that's because they value their privacy.

Country life is also more expensive than living in town. Lack of public transport, distance to shops & other services means more outlay than for those who live closer to town.
If the village has no mains gas you can't benefit from the good dual fuel deals. If you need to rely on oil it's pay up front in quite large amounts.

There are very few smallholders who can live comfortably without another income of some sort.

It's also a lifestyle for the able. Animals need attention every day (even Christmas :xmassmile) whatever the weather :snow_laug & however you feel _pale_. You still have to drag yourself out.

It can be fun when you're young but you may find it better to move back closer to civilisation before you get too old or too ill to keep up with all the work it entails.

Nixer

I grew up in a large village, as did my partner. I lived in cities for a bit and am now back living up a track in a hamlet, having previously lived in a few other villages. There are 6 houses and a pub here. No buses, railway station 6 miles, nearest shop 3, nearest shop that's open when we actually want to use it, 6 miles. Single track roads in each direction for 3 miles - stopped cleaning the car years ago as it's pointless when it'll be up a bank or in the hedge on its next journey. I have also become quite tetchy about people who park in passing places or drive right past one expecting me to reverse.

As people have said, there's villages and villages. Where I live now is very friendly and we know and say hello to all our neighbours but it isn't suffocating. We used to live just 3 miles up the road in another village and we barely knew anyone.

I love it but it's not everyone's cup of tea and I wholeheartedly agree with the "it's not a theme park" comment. I will be sad to leave, but we need to buy a house at some point and it's unlikely to be here unless our landlady will sell it to us.

madnotstupid

We moved about 2 years ago through a council house exchange, from a big city housing scheme to a small (very) town, in east Scotland. There is a lot going on from Scouts and a youth club, bingo, charity coffee mornings, a choral, am-dram, a photography club and plenty more. People are friendly and nosy by equal measures really, but everyone speaks. I suppose research your destination - look out for community newletters, a village hall notice board, advertising in shop windows, sounds like there are other places with far less going on. This will also give you an idea of what the general demographic is like and whether you'll fit in, like if everything is during the day and has over-50 in the title - well you get the drift.

There are problems of course. While there is less drug use than where we were previously it's here too. Drunk fights and screaming matches still happen on Saturday night but probably fewer - maybe the same ratio for number of people. There are a few 'yoofs' hanging around making noise. On the whole it probably feels a bit safer than in the city, although I never felt threatened where we were.

Buses we have one an hour going one way, one an hour going the other. Improves your time-keeping when you know you can't afford to miss it. Again something that can be checked before you move if public transport matters.

Stinky when they're spreading sh*t on the fields, power cuts, more snow and colder, CORN LICE, midgies, crappy broadband and mobi signal. yeah, yeah

I grew carrots and onions this year and one of these summers it'll be warm enough to sit out now we've got a garden, the dog loves it she can swim in the river every day and I can walk to pretty much all the shops I need. Can't afford to shop in the butchers, but t*sco and a*da both deliver. (so does the nearest chinese and pizza) - research what matters to you, op

glad we moved? - hell, yeah

moo2moo

The view from my bedroom window at 7am.


from the kitchen window the piccie would have been full of sheep, from the kids bedroom window you would have seen cows and from the living room you'd have seen pigs. Delightful to look at but noisy as heck at 3am.

There are as many up sides to negatives. We have no issues with neighbours as the nearest ones are 1/4 mile away. Means theres no one for the postie to leave parcels with. UPS helpfully return their parcels to Warrington which is a two hour round trip.

Village life is entertaining, the locals know everything about everything and everyone. Most of them mean well, although waking up to find a dead phesant hanging from your wing mirror takes a bit of getting used to.

Intermittent electricity, tediously slow broadband and crackly phone lines are all part of the fun. Heating fuel is extortionate whether its LPG, coal or logs. But there are just as many positives.