Wife and I are contemplating our next house move – to afford the ‘family’ sized house we would like we need to move out of the city. We are looking at some of the villages between Southampton and Salisbury which are lovely but very small.

Wife says she will be fine with it but I’m concerned moving from a city where we can walk to supermarket/pub/coffeeshop/highstreet/trainstation all relatively quickly to a village which has a couple of pubs and a shop will be too big a culture shock.

Have you moved out of town? Any regrets?

Re riding wise, road will be much better, offroad much worse

We moved from a busy SE commuter town to a house on its own in the Scottish Borders.

Only difference is now you really need to use the car to go anywhere, rather then choosing the car.

Oh, and now the only job of curtains are to ‘frame’ the windows 🙂

Do it, except move somewhere with good road and offroad from the doorstep…if poss.

Pros:
You’ll talk to you neighbours.
People look out for each other.
Getting involved in community stuff.
You can join woodburnertrackworld and thereafter talk about flues and chainsaws.
Not everywhere is Royston Vasey.

Cons:
It might be Royston Vasey 🙂

Other:
Think about transport/ commutes. Any villages near stations etc?

I’ve not found neighbours more or less talkative in city or village. It depends more on the individuals than anything else. Our neighbours (in the city) are all chatty and we know them all.

There was a link on here a few months ago to a blog about moving to the country. Having done it myself, main thing to remember is that the country has operated in it’s own way quite well without you for many years, there will be strange smells and noises, you may lose your electricity, and water in the event of bad weather, but you just need to mtfu as it is part of living in the country.

Have moved from country to town and back again a few times, one of the main things I found you need to cope with is shopping. Especially if there isn’t a local shop for day to day stuff.
In the country it’s all about planning. You need to know what to buy for your shop and how long it will last. Get yourself a chest freezer, or the biggest you can fit into your house.
The last thing you want when you return from a shopping trip is that to realise you have forgotton the milk.

Do you like soft fruit?
[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvcohzJvviQ[/video]

Think before you drive otherwise you’ll be filling up twice a week! I went from having a supermarket within 10 minutes drive to a 20 mile round trip, same as for DIY store etc etc.

Edit: this was in New Alresford.

I’ve moved from something like a “village which has a couple of pubs and a shop” to the middle of nowhere. Wish I’d done it years ago.

New Alresford is a town isn’t it? There’s really no closer supermarkets?

Yak – Tesco Express and a Co-Op otherwise Winchester or Alton. I’d move back there like a shot if I could!

Its got a steam railway though. Always a winner, but not useful on a day to day basis.

losses are cultural stuff, the kind of closed community (‘small minded’) aspect. And we’re in a town, not village or hamlet. To be honest that doesn’t bother me too much but wife suffers sometimes from hankering to city life, and kids are also feeling the small-ness of country towns.

I like it !!

We moved nearly 6 years ago from the packed urban SE to the edge of a small village in the middle of nowhere in Suffolk. I have been itinerant most of my life, and lived in city, town and country before, but for my wife this was the first time out of her comfort zone. She loved the look of it as we were planning the move, but I have to say that the adjustment took her a couple of months or so. For exactly the same reason that others mention – absence of immediate shops, fuel stations, and just……..urban people proximity. But now she hates London when she returns! Neither of us want to live anywhere else.

And yes, having off-road rides from the doorstep is a bonus, though she perhaps sensibly draws the line at my daily dousing in mud and rain during current months. She’s more of a fair weather rider.

Just do it! And get to enjoy chatting to dog walkers and horse riders. But do NOT approach hare coursers. And use your local pub so that it doesn’t shut, and campaign for your village post office, if your village is lucky enough to still have one.

riding wise, road will be much better, offroad much worse

once you get to pepperbox hill / downton / nomansland you can join up winchester/ SDW or oxdroves all the way to somerset.

Loads off off road links there. much better then so’ton cuty centre i’d have thought?

OP, plenty of off road round your chosen area!

I’ve moved from city (Southampton) to a very small village, running the pub helped!

On the outskirts of the city now, with riding on the doorstep (when it dries out a bit!)

How about Stockbridge?

Decent sized Co-op for your shopping, excellent independent wine shop for your booze, Becky’s for your fruit and veg, the marvellous Ashley at T&T for fish, the finest butcher in the land in Robinsons, oh and some smashing trout fishing on your doorstep. Riding’s good, too! 🙂

Owls. You will hear more owls. This may be a good or a bad thing depending upon what flicks your switch.

Do it, except move somewhere with good road and offroad from the doorstep…if poss.

Pros:
You’ll talk to you neighbours.
People look out for each other.
Getting involved in community stuff.

I know all of my neighbours and we had a great street party last year. I have good road and off-road riding within 15 minutes of my front door – no need to get in the car.

My rural paradise is called Bristol.

I’ve recently moved from a nice wee village with a pub, postoffice and Co-op to Stirling, which has got Waitrose, TK Maxx and everything! But I am closer to a wider range of trails and now ride out 3 or 4 times a week and made some new trailbuddies into the bargain. Stirling is small enough to walk/ride everywhere but has got good road/rail links too. Med sized town with fries FTW!

If you are looking between Southampton and Salisbury, I guess Fordingbridge might be a good compromise, don’t know it well but has quite a few shops.

Not quite city & not quite village, but, we moved from Enfield to Brimscombe. One morning in the summer I left home at 04:30 to commute by bicycle and had to stop on my drive to comprehend what the noise I could hear was, it was the dawn chorus, at dawn. A perfect moment that made moving right (well that and the riots).

oops

Not quite city & not quite village, but, we moved from Enfield to Brimscombe. One morning in the summer I left home at 04:30 to commute by bicycle

Were you still working in Enfield?

Somewhere with a pub (or 2!) and a shop is hardly going to be a culture shock, thats a heavyweight village really. Just make sure to contribute to village life and you’ll feel at home.

Fordingbridge and stockbridge have a bit of a premium it seems, probably because of those shops, we are looking at Whiteparish at the moment just off the A36, it is only 10 miles or so from Romsey/Salisbury/Southampton so not the middle of nowwhere. But a huge change from Shirley (for those that are locals on this thread…)

Reason I say offroad will be worse, at the moment I can ride to LW and enjoy myself there for a couple of hours (well when it isn’t a swamp). Unless there is another secret squirrel place near whiteparish I would have thought it would mostly be bridleway type riding, which is fine, but not the rooty twisty stuff I really like.

Well it seems all the city-dwellers have a lovely neighbourly set-up then.

I used to love living in the smoke for all the reasons of work, cultural and social activity proximity. Was I friendly with my neighbours? No. We’d only talk when something bad happened usually 🙁

Maybe we were too young, selfish and less interested in neighbourly issues. Our neighbours were fairly transient too. Anyway, small towns and villages suit us better now.

But a huge change from Shirley

I feel your pain. (I lived on Viole(n)t Road for a year many many years ago! Shirley would have been luxury in comparison!)

I served my time in the flowers estate too whilst at uni 🙂

Can’t remember which road, where the surgery is….

Shirley is much better, only been attacked once in 8 years living there, and that was kind of my own fault walking up the highstreet drunk and alone at 4am….

Shirley born & bred here!

Moved a long way now… Got as far as Totton 🙂

Nice area, around Redlynch, Whitechapel and Nomansland is lovely countryside, and pretty decent roads into Salisbury and S’hampton. Used to spend lots of time down around there as a kid, and always liked it, nowhere around there is exactly in the middle of nowhere! You might want to look at Canada*… 😉

*just off the A36, great to be able to reply to the question ‘where do you live?’ you answer ‘Canada’. 😀

There was some research recently showing that people are generally most happy in a market town sized place. 🙂

I moved from a city to a market town – don’t regret it at all.

there is some decent bridleway riding over that way. maybe not quite lordswood but you’ll be able to get some twisty rooty stuff in in an 60-90 minute loop for sure.

I love my village home, but the cost of commuting into London is extortionate. Wifey does a drive to the station, train then tube which costs £6k a year.

I use a motorcycle for my 80 a day round trip which keeps the commute time down to around an hour each way. I’m currently running an old Fireblade for winter, a KTM 990 for summer and a Renault Laguna estate for everything else. Probably around £5K a year to keep everything going.

We’re thinking about selling up and moving to back into London.

DT78 – Everyone who rides in Lordswood hates you. I am sure I speak for everyone when I say you should leave. Now.

😉

I’m looking at between Corhampton and Bishops Waltham at the moment – loads of woods right on the doorstep, road riding if I really have to and bridleways galore….

Im sure there are little bits of wood that would be fine, might even look to buy some. And wc you only hate me cause you cant keep up 🙂

😉

I left London a long time ago. My take is that everyone has their own sort of remoteness threshold. I’d find it hard to live in a smallish village with just a pub or two and a corner shop, I like a choice of shopping, places to eat out and enough people that I don’t know everyone I meet every time I walk out of the front door. Oh, and easy access to something a bit like culture, in my case a 30-minute train journey to Manchester. But I don’t want to be entombed in concrete with hills miles away, I like being able to do stuff from the front door.

So a smallish town works for me. But everyone’s different. It depends on what you’re used to and how you’re wired. In my book, small villages are nice for a visit or a week-long holiday stay, but not as somewhere to live. A mate of mine lives in a village in the Eden Valley with no shops, pub or anything else bar houses. I couldn’t do that, he and his missus love it there and it is a beautiful place.

Not rocket science I know, but I suspect everyone’s different and you have to decide where your optimum balance between urban and isolated sits.

I can’t wait to leave the city. We have lived in our terraced inner city house for seven years, and in that time parking has become a nightmare, and we are now surrounded by barking dogs on all sides.