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Not a house, but a place/ area. A colleague of mine recently said that if he stands still on Dartmoor he is “in danger of taking root”. He’s travelled all over the world, but the sights, sounds & smells of east Devon always make him feel at home.

For me it’s the West Pennine Moors. I know they aren’t much to look at, and the weather is usually damp and dull, but I know I’m home. To some extent the Forest of Bowland, north Pennines and the lakes have the same effect even though I’ve never lived there.

Anyone else get the almost indescribable feeling of being “home”? And do you listen to it, or just plough on living elsewhere for other reasons?


 
Posted : 28/11/2023 9:36 pm
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I’m going to make you all sick and say sitting or standing in the arms of my husband and taking in a view feels like home, wherever we are. Bonus points for a picnic by our side.


 
Posted : 28/11/2023 9:39 pm
ready, lucasshmucas, funkmasterp and 29 people reacted
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Maybe at a push formby beach.

But been away for over 20yrs. I get the pennine moors but I'm away from them now too!

I'm starting to feel like home here mind. But the mtb isn't as good as the moors


 
Posted : 28/11/2023 9:47 pm
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Pretty much anywhere in Northumberland; on/near the coast by preference.
Born in North Shields, grew up in Wallsend, educated in Newcastle.
Definitely miss Newcastle; Wallsend - no.


 
Posted : 28/11/2023 10:00 pm
fazzini, hot_fiat, hot_fiat and 1 people reacted
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https://www.blog.scotroutes.com/2013/10/home-from-home.html


 
Posted : 28/11/2023 10:06 pm
tourismo, fasthaggis, fatmax and 5 people reacted
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Going to The Lake District always feels like going home after spending every childhood holiday there.

Nearly moved there before having kids but glad we didn’t. I don’t think living there would be as good as visiting.

Freshwater West is my grounding point in Pembrokeshire. Always makes me feel content and better - and I’m glad I do live here!


 
Posted : 28/11/2023 10:09 pm
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Where I now live has always been calling me. I left Liverpool at age 18, always wanted to move back but the time was never right. Moved back last year at age 49, this place, the people, this city is my home.

I also have a place that is similar and I did think may one day be my home. But it’s more my place of relaxing my brain. When things get on top of me I head to Eryri, do the same walk, sit on a bench at the top of a hill and look out at the reservoir and the mountains in the distance. But I don’t think it will become home, just my retreat.


 
Posted : 28/11/2023 10:10 pm
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I'm from  Durban, South Africa. I lived in an area called the Bluff. Always feels like home when I go back alway nice just to go down and sit at the beach.

I love it here, especially when you see the problems SA has but The Bluff will always be home!


 
Posted : 28/11/2023 11:33 pm
tourismo, BoardinBob, tourismo and 1 people reacted
 ton
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i reckon i am opposite to most.   never had that feeling of home.

hated growing up with my hateful mother and step dad.

when me and my wife bought our 1st house, i did kind of love it. ideal for everything we needed then, but too small.

so we moved 28 years ago to this house, to be nearer both our jobs, and wifes family.   and i ****ing hate it, always have. and now we have retired, and are still stuck here.  daughter and grandson live with us. she cant afford either rental or to buy.  so we a stuck.

in a shit village, like gods waiting room,where most folk have never left. just outside a shit town.

life eh....................  


 
Posted : 28/11/2023 11:44 pm
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We moved around a lot of the UK as kid, then I did more of the same as an adult. Finally settled and spent 20 years in Hampshire but never felt I belonged. I never had an answer to the "where are you from" question.

In the height of the pandemic we moved to the Highlands and am now a handful of miles from where I was born. Whilst the intervening years mean I don't 'sound' local it is the first time in my life I feel I am at home. I'm not sure if it's the geography (and my love of what you can do in it), the people and community, or just the fact I was born here - but it feels good. I will never leave again - this is it for me.


 
Posted : 28/11/2023 11:53 pm
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Down in Manchester every month at my office. On the drive home, as soon as I see the "Welcome to Scotland" sign, I give a very contented sigh and smile


 
Posted : 29/11/2023 12:01 am
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No. I left 'home' (Chester) at 16 and have moved around loads ever since (I'm 59 pushing 60 now). I've lived all over England (London, Kent, Oxfordshire, Cheshire, Warwickshire, Gloucestershire and now Shropshire). I've lived in Scotland, all over Northern Ireland, Cyprus and Germany all with my wife and kids in tow.  We have lived in ten houses since I got married.  Now retired and kids long since flown the nest, we settled in Shropshire 7 years ago.  We like it here and will stay here for another 2 or 3 years before downsizing and moving on.

Where? No idea. I don't have a geographical place I feel is 'home'.  Our nomadic lifestyle has taught us that there are loads of great places to live, everywhere has pros and cons and I still love the excitement of exploring somewhere new.  We will take great delight in sticking a few pins in the map, doing a few recces then moving somewhere totally new when the time comes. Home is anywhere I share with my wife, where I feel safe and relaxed and where my kids, extended family and friends visit regularly.


 
Posted : 29/11/2023 12:05 am
ton and ton reacted
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I like where I live but it's not home in the OPs sense. My house is nice and we've done loads of work to it but I'd move tomorrow if I could.

I was born in Leicester, moved to Halifax when I was 15, went traveling for a year at 21, moved back to Leicester for a bit, then to Leeds in 2000. Dunno where home is really.


 
Posted : 29/11/2023 12:10 am
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The climbing club hut in Dinorwic.
Feels like a huge load has been taken off, everytime I put the key in the lock.
Same with Newborough on Anglesey.
Been there pretty much every year since I've been born. In the forest, on the beach or the island, walking south inland behind the dunes - it breaks me to leave. I have to be dragged away.
Have been with my family, my friends, my wife, my stepkids and my grandkids.
It never gets old, it just makes me happy.

For me it’s the West Pennine Moors. I know they aren’t much to look at, and the weather is usually damp and dull, but I know I’m home.

God yes.

*Pretentious Bollocks Alert!*

You can tell where you are on this island by the colours of the grass and the soil it's grown on.
The Lakes are a chocolate box, the Peak and the Dales a bit too colourful, Northumberland almost has it, but too perfect. Scotland is overwhelming and the South West is all wrong, like an oversaturated TV picture.
The West Pennines can be as bleak as Ted Hughes, but as bright as Hockney.
They demand effort and commitment, both mentally and physically.


 
Posted : 29/11/2023 12:26 am
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I used to work overseas for 9months of the year and come back for a week after 3months mainly in the middle East/N Africa..

I used to love being in a taxi from Manchester airport driving up from Bury past B&Q and just as you go over the brow of the hill past the Summerseat junction the Rossendale Valley starts with Peel tower to the left. I used to be amazed each time how green and lush it is. Then drive past the church where my grandad is buried on towards home.

With work nowadays I have a walking Wednesday group with work colleagues - they are amazed how many routes and paths I know around Rossendale. A lifetime of riding bikes and nowadays with my faithful hound. It's always been home and probably always will be.


 
Posted : 29/11/2023 12:27 am
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I'm originally from Southport (waves at posh DuncanCallum), but left at 18 and been back to visit a few times. Travelled all over the UK with work, lived in Chester, Anglesey, Norfolk (er no thanks) and currently in Carlisle. My dad lives in Dorset, but that's never been my home. 

It's funny but re-visiting all my old childhood haunts (botanic gardens, churchtown) feels more like home than anywhere, but I don't think I'll ever move back there.


 
Posted : 29/11/2023 8:07 am
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Up until the pandemic, I would have said it was probably where my dad used to live. I grew up round there and, even though I stopped living there when my parents got divorced, university, work, etc, it still was the place my brain remembered as home, even when I had my own place and had been there for seven years.

Now I am in Sweden and the memories are fading. I work from home now and the sheer amount of time I have spent in the house here is making it more and more reinforced as home. Maybe not home yet, but close. Not sure I am dreaming of it yet and part of me will still always think that coastal Suffolk is where I belong.


 
Posted : 29/11/2023 8:55 am
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Snowdonia for me, its always had a special place in my heart!  Since moving to Shrewsbury its now even closer...


 
Posted : 29/11/2023 8:57 am
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It’s a funny one, Brizzle born and bred for 50+ years sat on the campo typing this,surrounded by mountains in a place where I’m not yet fully competent in speaking the lingo and I’m not in a rush to return home after 3 years.

Hmm is it home I don’t know,I think the whole home things a bit of ‘rose tinted’ spectacles as everything changes in the passing of time.


 
Posted : 29/11/2023 8:58 am
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Yes, it starts slightly around Co. Durham, gets more so when getting to around Hexham and other areas of Northumberland then hits me like a sack of bricks once I cross the Scottish border, particularly the west coast of Scotland, no better feeeling than heading up the A74 to Glasgow.<br /><br />Always been the case, funnily found out earlier this year through a family members family tree discoveries that my dads side originally hail from Scotland, through the eons emigrated to ireland then eventually the UK. Similiar story on my mothers side too.<br /><br />


 
Posted : 29/11/2023 9:56 am
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Nowhere really. I'm a forces brat so every couple of years we moved, which means new school, new friends, negotiating the neighbourhood gangs...Downsides, I don't really have anywhere that I'd call home, upsides, seen the world - well, UK armed forces bits of it, brother and I are close. South Northants/North Oxfordshire is I guess the place I've lived the longest in one place and where I bought up my kids, so it's the part of the UK I know the most intimately, but its not "home".

Like @stwhannah, where my wife is


 
Posted : 29/11/2023 10:06 am
 aide
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Glastonbury festival

(Not going home next year)


 
Posted : 29/11/2023 10:11 am
 kilo
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Iveragh, South West Kerry. My father was born there and left there in the early sixties and now we have a house in the next valley to his.
Always feel relaxed and settled when there, much more so than London where I’ve lived fifty plus years.
Ultimate aim is to live there full time


 
Posted : 29/11/2023 10:35 am
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I am a total wanderer. I find it amazing at present that I have been in this job for 11 years and Dunblane for 10 years.

I feel most at home somewhere in a hilly scots pine forest - and mrs_oab and I are having discussions around a Speyside / Moray / Inverness area retirement for many reasons, but primarily the access to nature and adventures.


 
Posted : 29/11/2023 10:37 am
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Surprised nobody has said
"Home is where you park it"

or

"Home is the lay-by you shit in"

both good bumper stickers


 
Posted : 29/11/2023 10:41 am
 IHN
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Having grown in in South Manchester and going to uni in Sheffield, I then spent nearly 25 years living in some really pleasant places in Gloucestershire, including a good chunk of time living in the middle of the Cotswolds. As lovely as it was it was never home.

I used to come up and watch Man U occasionally, and standing in a pub for a pre-match pint there was something about the accents that gave me a slight pang. Whenever we came up to visit friends, I had it then too.

I'm now back in the North West, and, for me, there's something about 'the North' that makes it feel like home. And when I say something, I think it's the people.


 
Posted : 29/11/2023 10:52 am
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South Devon is my home. Has been all my life. I left for Uni in 1985 and not been a permanent resident since. Mrs TiRed hates me referring to it as home. But it is.


 
Posted : 29/11/2023 10:56 am
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I grew up in the Buckinghamshire but moved away when I was 19 and avoid going back that as much as I can. I hate almost everything about the place. Been living in the Scottish Borders for 19 years now and very much feels like home. However, I feel a sense of ease on the Northumberland coast that I don't feel anywhere else. Anywhere from Holy Island down to Amble. It is completely magical and I just feel right when I am there.


 
Posted : 29/11/2023 10:59 am
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I've always felt there's 3 questions you can ask on this topic. Where do you live? Where are you from and where do you call home. It could be the answer is the same for all 3 or a different combination of any of them. I live in Edinburgh and I call it home but when anyone asks I always have to add I'm from Dumfries originally, not sure why. When I go back to visit my parents who still live there it does still feel like home, although not the same as when I was growing up there. There's a definite sense of peace whenever I'm down that way and feeling connected to the place, probably more so the surrounding countryside. Ironic, as I couldn't wait to get away when I was younger!


 
Posted : 29/11/2023 11:19 am
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I did the west kernow way with my wife last October and bloody hell, wasn't ready for those feelings of coming home. I've never lived there but did spend 6 weeks of every summer holiday down there at my grans. There's something about atlantic coastlines that makes my heart relax.

Just riding along the sea front at Marazion with the waves crashing on the beach, recognising random hill tops as we rode past. It was fantastic and can't wait to take the kids down there.


 
Posted : 29/11/2023 12:05 pm
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Home is central Scotland.   Where i come from is a wee hamlet in Shropshire where.y grandmother was born


 
Posted : 29/11/2023 12:41 pm
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My family have owned a house by a beach in N Wales for nearly 45 years and I spend as much of the summer there as I can.
Despite having a really lovely main "home" near Chester that we've been in for 22 years now, nowhere feels more like home than walking the dogs on that beach.  Shame it's so miserable there in the winter!


 
Posted : 29/11/2023 12:50 pm
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Live in a town on the West Pennine Moors but feel more at home in the Lakes or Dales.


 
Posted : 29/11/2023 12:52 pm
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I do not have this feeling and don't know what you're all on about.

Home is somewhere I haven't been yet and definitely can't afford to move to.


 
Posted : 29/11/2023 12:56 pm
silvine, fazzini, roger_mellie and 3 people reacted
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Home is where my laundry pile sits.


 
Posted : 29/11/2023 1:04 pm
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Born in Edinburgh, years 1 - 10 on the Perth/Angus border, then from 10 - 24 in Galloway. Year in Fife, year in Edinburgh, 2 in West Lothian, five in Northants (!) 1 in south Wales, Back to Galloway for two years, a bit of SYHA hostel managing here and there, then upper Calderdale for the last 22 years. I'd say i was FROM Galloway, and I feel  "right" when i'm there. But home has become the South Pennines, and in reality I cant see us moving from here. I think if you live and work in a place, have kids and they grow up and go through school there, with you, you develop a network of friends and acquaintances  that pretty much grounds you....it has for me.


 
Posted : 29/11/2023 1:57 pm
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"Home" isn't quite right, but being in a forest/woods has always given me a feeling that I can only describe as comforting.


 
Posted : 29/11/2023 2:01 pm
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Loch Ordie in Dunkeld. Just feel so much peace whenever I'm there.


 
Posted : 29/11/2023 2:31 pm
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Hard question.

I was born in Winnipeg, Canada, grew up there, and left when I was 21 for Montreal. Montreal very much became my home, and when I left it four years later, I mourned it for many years after.

Then it was the West Indies followed by Canada's Northwest, then Manchester, none of which felt anything like home. But eventually Mrs SR and I decided that Cardiff, Wales, would become our home and I have been relatively happy since. Except...

I continue to live with a sense of longing that living in Britain hasn't satisfied. My love of other languages is at least partially satisfied by Welsh, but not entirely, while my hatred for the British education system and its Anglo-American crypto-Calvinist economic assumptions, together with the rampant classism, tempt me to hate it.

But I don't. I almot do, but I don't. That said, whenever I am in Germany (which has been relatively often), I feel like I have put on a shoe that just fits. Germany is the land of my fathers, and I don't know if it's just pure romanticism, but I love it there and think I could feel quite at home.

But at the end of the day, I am not there, and I love my little house with my family in it. So I guess 'home' is my little end-of-terrace crammed with a whole bunch of Saxons.


 
Posted : 29/11/2023 6:58 pm
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I'm sure everyone will cite their favourite spot for outdoor activities but when I go to Finland, Sweden or Norway I feel very strongly that I want it to be my home. It was, for a while, and like SaxonRider I mourn.


 
Posted : 29/11/2023 7:18 pm
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I grew up in Worcester, moved to Hereford 33 years ago. I sometimes forget how beautiful a county Herefordshire is. 15 minutes on a bike and I’m in countryside that takes a lot of beating.

I love the FOD too. But I wouldn’t like to live there, especially in the winter months. Pembrokeshire is where I’d be if circumstances were different.

Soppy sentimental overload: Jack Johnson’s song Home has a line: “Home is wherever we are if there’s love here too”.


 
Posted : 29/11/2023 7:32 pm
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A few years ago I ended up in a job that had me flying down to Heathrow every Tuesday at 6am, spending 3 days in the dump known as Farnborough, then flying home about 8pm on the Thursday night back to Glasgow 

It made me realise how much I love my "home" and more importantly the people and things that are there that I love


 
Posted : 29/11/2023 7:46 pm
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Anyone else get the almost indescribable feeling of being “home”? And do you listen to it, or just plough on living elsewhere for other reasons?

Home for me is the town I grew up in despite my childhood being on the whole pretty shit thanks to bullies: Crickhowell on the edge of the Brecon Beacons. It's where I escape to if I'm feeling down, claustrophobic or just need time to think. The place never really changes, has the same people in it and is generally an oasis of normality I don't get where I live now (Cardiff). I grew up surrounded by green hills, sheep and not much in the way of facilities and I miss that lifestyle on occasion. Growing up there shaped me as a person, from my outlook in life to my hobbies. Despite living near almost everything I could need I don't use a lot of it but do miss having my own green space and being able to disappear in my own home, something that is near-impossible in a block of flats in a city. It could be because I've always rented so never put down any permanent roots but could also be because I'm a country bumpkin at heart. I could see myself finding a similar feeling in Snowdonia or if looking internationally in the rural parts of New Zealand but my personal circumstances mean I'm most likely stuck in City life for the foreseeable future and that makes me a bit sad.

Even though I'm starting to lose the physical connections with my home town it will always be Home regardless.


 
Posted : 29/11/2023 7:54 pm
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I have not lived there for over 30yrs, but every time I step off the train in Edinburgh,I have this enormous feeling of 'I am home'.
I love that city and what it gave me while I was growing up,but I wouldn't live there now,that time has passed.
A bit like London,I really enjoy all my visits,as a tourist with some extra knowledge.
👍😉


 
Posted : 29/11/2023 8:10 pm
leffeboy and leffeboy reacted
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I do not have this feeling and don’t know what you’re all on about.

Same here. I have no particular connection to anywhere.


 
Posted : 29/11/2023 9:00 pm
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