Moving into the middle of nowhere (England or Wales)?

jaybee said:
I always feel like I'd love to live in a house where there are no neighbours within hearing distance so I can't be disturbed and can also make as much noise as I want too. Fine. But when it's so remote that popping up the shop for some milk is a "get in the car and drive 15 minutes" job, that could get tiresome. Don't know till I've tried it I suppose.
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I guess "remote" is a sliding scale.... as a country bumpkin myself until i moved down south to get a job, what you wish for above i would not consider remote. A bit of hunting and you will be able to find such a pad in most even decent sized villages or edges of small towns in England, and still have all the conveniences you want. That said you may need a fairly fat wallet to afford some of them.
 
TBH i do have a problem with neighbors sometimes, in the summer it can be annoying having the windows open as i always find that they are listening to what your doing

That being said, i dont think i could go full on rural, too quiet for me

Im more of a live on the edge of a city, but not in the city type of person.
 
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jaybee said:
Good thread this! I also would like to live in a more remote place and more away from people, which I think is the crux of the issue. General "people" in the UK are what is ruining the place. A change in attitudes, behaviours, entitlement, selfishness etc.
Define remote though...
I always feel like I'd love to live in a house where there are no neighbours within hearing distance so I can't be disturbed and can also make as much noise as I want too. Fine. But when it's so remote that popping up the shop for some milk is a "get in the car and drive 15 minutes" job, that could get tiresome. Don't know till I've tried it I suppose.
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You get used to it very fast, though you’ll have to plan when to go where around opening times unless you like driving 30 minutes to find the shop you need is closed.

The fun starts when your car won’t or you can’t drive due to illness and there’s no Ocado for your because you live in BFE.
 
bigmike20vt said:
I love wales...... if you can either work remotely or are retired Wales has a huge amount going for it. My dad helped my grandad build a house who owned part of the beach and a large plot of land along Menai straits on Anglesey so i spent a lot of time there as a child. South wales is nice too but North wales is where i would look (but that is just my bias of my childhood i think)
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We'd be looking towards the North, around the middle to top of Cardigan Bay; we went to South Wales (Broad Haven) last weekend and it's just a bit too... civilised (they have a motorway and everything!) Much prefer the ruggedness further North.

bigmike20vt said:
Depending where you go it may take some time to win the locals over however.... A lot of them do not like the English moving in on their turf..... Nothing like walking into a pub where everyone is speaking English and seeing them swap to welsh once they know you are English.
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That doesn't bother me ;)
 
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Terminal_Boy said:
You get used to it very fast, though you’ll have to plan when to go where around opening times unless you like driving 30 minutes to find the shop you need is closed.

The fun starts when your car won’t or you can’t drive due to illness and there’s no Ocado for your because you live in BFE.
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No Avocado!!! How will one survive!
Ooohhh...OCADO. Soz.
;)
 
bigmike20vt said:
Nothing like walking into a pub where everyone is speaking English and seeing them swap to welsh once they know you are English.
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At which point you order your pint in Welsh.

Cromulent said:
Basically I've hit a point where I really want to get away from people.
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Take a gander at NE Scotland. Lots of small villages, cheap housing, and good connections.
 
MissChief said:
When asked how much of the UK was 'developed' most people asked estimated around 20-30%. The actual answer is around 3%. Outside the cities, and especially up north, Scotland and Mid/North Wales there's a whole lot of not much at all.
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Wow. I mean it feels like we're full. But I suppose we think more of where people can actually LIVE, aka housing crisis.
 
Pembrokeshire here, moved in 2019 with my family from the Midlands (My wife is from Pembs originally). It's affectionately known as little England certainly have never felt unwelcome!
Live in a small village always plenty of houses pop up on the market for sale all over Pembs mainly due to the high 2nd home tax that came into effect. Only recently got fibre here so I can in theory have up to 900mb download (Have 500mb which is plenty for me)
 
partycan said:
Pembrokeshire here, moved in 2019 with my family from the Midlands (My wife is from Pembs originally). It's affectionately known as little England certainly have never felt unwelcome!
Live in a small village always plenty of houses pop up on the market for sale all over Pembs mainly due to the high 2nd home tax that came into effect. Only recently got fibre here so I can in theory have up to 900mb download (Have 500mb which is plenty for me)
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I think small village attitudes have started dying out as older, curmudgeonly people have died and younger people have realised that if no one moves to the area then shops, schools, post offices and pubs will close.
 
I've always lived in a town, nothing huge, but several years ago when I moved in with the wife she lived in a small village of maybe 100 people max and it was like a breath of fresh air being rural and quiet in terms of people/traffic. Big downside was the 30min drive to anywhere and also not being on mains gas or sewerage. (Bottled gas and septic tank)
Since then we moved in to a new home about 7 years ago in a slightly bigger village that is about 8-10 miles away in each direction to a town, but still relatively local to where we originally lived and is fully on mains, although it tends to have more power cuts than average, but at least it has a shop, school, doctors, pub and a couple of eateries. :D

Would I go back to town living? Nope, not now, and I think we found a good balance with the slightly larger village that we moved to although my allergies might disagree with that decision as since moving into semi-rural locations I've never sneezed so much in my life, but that's a small downside to having what we've got here.
Plus, the house prices even here, 10 miles away from where I was originally from, gave us so much more for our money. 3-bed semi vs 4-bed detached for example.
 
You have to deal with the night shift animals in the countryside

Foxes which make the most sinister sounds. And nighttime birds which will scare the living crap out of you

Will you be ready for this ?
 
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DJMK4 said:
The roads up to hereford are not bad tbh, although as you say will take around 45 mins to get to a major motorway link.

I guess if your after the quiet life. One thing that would worry me though is commuting to places, and work if i lived in the middle of nowhere, I would also feel alone.
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You are clearly not the OP's target audience.
 
MissChief said:
When asked how much of the UK was 'developed' most people asked estimated around 20-30%. The actual answer is around 3%. Outside the cities, and especially up north, Scotland and Mid/North Wales there's a whole lot of not much at all.
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To be fair, much of Scotland is uninhabitable without great effort.
 
Gazanimal said:
I've always lived in a town, nothing huge, but several years ago when I moved in with the wife she lived in a small village of maybe 100 people max and it was like a breath of fresh air being rural and quiet in terms of people/traffic. Big downside was the 30min drive to anywhere and also not being on mains gas or sewerage. (Bottled gas and septic tank)
Since then we moved in to a new home about 7 years ago in a slightly bigger village that is about 8-10 miles away in each direction to a town, but still relatively local to where we originally lived and is fully on mains, although it tends to have more power cuts than average, but at least it has a shop, school, doctors, pub and a couple of eateries. :D

Would I go back to town living? Nope, not now, and I think we found a good balance with the slightly larger village that we moved to although my allergies might disagree with that decision as since moving into semi-rural locations I've never sneezed so much in my life, but that's a small downside to having what we've got here.
Plus, the house prices even here, 10 miles away from where I was originally from, gave us so much more for our money. 3-bed semi vs 4-bed detached for example.
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I think a good balance is pretty much the answer.

Similarly, I live in a small town on the border of Bedfordshire. Fairly quiet, especially at nighttime. It's not super rural and it's not really "the middle of nowhere", but there's some countryside nearby anyway. Still got all the amenities, like a Co-op and a couple smaller off license/convenience shops, doctors, pub. However, for anything more than that, you'd have to venture out to the closest big town.

Some of our neighbours usually get their food shop delivered by Sainsbury's or Tesco, so that option is very much available here. As OP doesn't drive, the major downside is that travel to other bigger towns if you need anything more than the basic amenities here. Public transport isn't super great, a few buses a day that go to the closest big town and they're only once an hour. It's very much a needing-a-car-to-get-to-other-bigger-places kind of town. We don't have a train station, so the closest mainline train station is a 5 minute drive, or 45 minute walk.

Internet is very good here. We've got BT full fibre here. There's another fibre option too, but I can't remember the name of the ISP.

Our neighbours are friendly and generally quiet - we haven't had any issues. Mostly families and old people live on our street. Some detached houses, some terraced, so a mixture really.
 
As @Nabinium said, finding the balance is the challenge and definitely be aware of potential building plans in the area too (Check the local councils planning). We have a paddock behind us which is rented and has horses and sheep in it, luckily with no potential planning in place as we're really lucky with the vista we have from our garden, but we know that could change as more houses are being built in the village, but luckily at the far end of the main street.

I'm just waiting on FTTP to become available later this year as I'm on limited FTTC (80/20) which is annoying, especially when working from home but I'll go full 1GB when it arrives as BT have started pulling fibre optic cabling through their conduits last week.
 
Reminds of a back lane around here, really nice with open countryside....and was sold off , so those nice 7 bedroom gated detached houses now have 2 bedroom identical looking horrid looking houses opposite.

I'd be livid.
 
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