Moving rural: experiences

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Introuble83

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Currently living in north kildare. Spouse wants to extend and my preference would be to move 50km or so midlands and purchase a rural house. We are a large family in a small house and kids are getting bigger and I just feel we need more space . My wife is not sold on the idea . Kids settled in school etc . We can both work remotely. Has any members moved to the sticks and regretted the decision? Any experiences or opinions welcome .
 
Would you be moving to an area either of you are familiar with?
With extended family there?
What age range are children?
And do either of you have interests hobbies that are tied to the area you're currently living?
 
RedOnion said:
Would you be moving to an area either of you are familiar with?
With extended family there?
What age range are children?
And do either of you have interests hobbies that are tied to the area you're currently living?
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No be a new area .
no family although no real family here either.
Kids 3 5 7 12 17
No interests keeping us here .
 
When you say “rural” are you talking about a rural town or a one off house in the countryside. I take it to mean the latter.

I left Dublin in 2012 and lived in the sticks ‘til 2018. Now living in Cork City.

There are many many considerations. Here are five that spring to mind.

Driving
The main one is driving. Lots of driving. Need milk? Into the car. Nowadays I walk to the shop with a backpack, bringing the dog with me.

Connectivity
My broadband is about 15 meg now, was 1.5 meg. A rural living friend has 0.5 meg.
I’d no mobile reception in my house. I’d have to go out on the road to get a bar or two of 3G. Fortunately I’d been made aware of Vodafone’s SureSignal (I think it was called), something I’d never heard of before or since. It plugged into the WiFi router and provided 5-bar 3G signal to registered Vodafone numbers.
It used to drop out about once a week, requiring reset, which would complete in less than an hour.

Social Life
Expensive. No such thing as a casual cheap night out with cinema, pizza and a glass of wine. Anytime you’re paying for a taxi the cheapness is gone. Every night out is a costly one. And if you’re going out on a weekend you’ll probably have to book a taxi. Where I lived there were two taxis. A Saturday night drive home would have to be booked that morning.

Kids Activities
Drive them to local GAA or drive them further to larger town for soccer/rugby/etc or drive them further again for swimming.

Lockdown
So often I think we’re so lucky to live in a city during the pandemic...

I wouldn’t say I regret having lived in the sticks. It’s a completely different lifestyle.
I could live just about anywhere. But you live a different life.
 
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If rural the kids once of legal
Age will need car/s as pubic transport is hit and miss.
However the peace and quiet is priceless (if that's your thing)
 
Having been a young teen whose family moved, I'd be inclined to wonder how the children would manage, especially the 17 year old.
Younger kids very resilient to change but the 17 year old..? What are their plans for then they finish school....example, college, apprenticeships, work....what public transport will be available etc. I feel for you both working from home with 5 kids....might this idea just be due to the stress of covid?

Editing to say I hope I was not too negative. I just remember struggling with this as a teen. But on the flip side, and as a parent now, Id say if it is am ongoing conversation, you have one life, so try it. Or can you do a temporary trial, rent for a year etc? Happy parents = happy kids.
 
Introuble83 said:
My wife is not sold on the idea
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I would suggest renting for a while before committing to this. As someone who has spent time in very rural areas as a teenager it's very isolating and the car dependency is not to be underestimated.
 
Not exactly the same but we did a move as adults to somewhere I thought I would love and would put down roots. It ended up being a miserable experience for various reasons, despite a lot of effort on our part as this was apparently a golden opportunity for us. We were renting and to reverse our move was very simple when we decided to return. I hugely recommend that, especially so with kids.
 
EasilyAmused said:
Lockdown
So often I think we’re so lucky to live in a city during the pandemic...
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I would have to disagree with this one. I feel there were huge advantages to living in the countryside during lockdowns. No problems isolating and beautiful walks where you meet very few people.

We live in the countryside and love it. However I agree with most of what the other posters have said especially about driving kids. Being on a school bus route helps a lot but having 4 kids that are sport obsessed meant a huge amount of evening driving. Although we did car pool where possible. Its easing now as some of the kids are driving / in college.

The other disadvantage to living away from a city is when the kids go to college. Paying for college is a huge cost which we hadn't really thought through when we moved 16 years ago. We're currently paying €650 per month for one of our sons in Dublin. This is probably balanced out by the cheaper cost of housing outside cities but still a lot of money to find!

However its like everything there are pluses and minuses to everything ... it just depends what's important to you. For us, we are very happy not to live in a housing estate and love having so much space both inside and outside the house.
 
We moved rural in December 2019 from Dublin. We were familar with the area as my wife is from there and we had lived there short term a few years ago. The headings that @EasilyAmused used are good so I'll reuse them within our context. I'm blessed to be able to work remotely so very flexible in that regard.


Driving
In Dublin, we could do with one car and a bicycle. We needed to get a second car when we moved rural but our circumstances changed at the same time requiring a second car which would have been the case in Dublin too. School runs which are new to us in the past year require driving but similar driving time would have been required for us in Dublin for that purpose.

Connectivity
My broadband is faster now than I could get in Dublin, believe it or not. In Dublin I was getting 10-12Mb/s download and now getting 30-60Mb/s download, with the same mobile broadband system. Phone signal is more or less the same.

Social Life
As we have family and friends here, it's improved somewhat. People in general are more friendly and have more time to chat. Neighbours will help each other out without question. On a whole, I think it's a more socialable place to live but perhaps we've just landed into a nice community. That wasn't the case in Dublin, as people seem to feel they have less time or are less accepting of other people.

There are some good local restaurants, pubs, cinema etc here but you do have to drive to them or taxi.

Kids Activities
Driving for the most part is required, there would have been more options closer in Dublin.

@Hurling Fan raises a good point about university. We are less than an hour away from a major city but we expect to budget for accomodation for our children in years to come.

Lockdown
Having lived in both places, I would always take lockdown in rural Ireland over a city/town. Plenty of space, the scenery is beautiful and plenty of nice walks locally. There is the argument that services are further away but then often nature/nice scenery is further away in cities or possibly non existant. It depends on what is important to you.
 
Hurling Fan said:
No problems isolating and beautiful walks where you meet very few people.
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Interesting take. I find meeting people during lockdown as a very positive thing. By “meeting” I mean randomly bumping into people. But I understand how others see the negative in it, i.e. they may be C19/B117 vectors.
 
I’d be interested to know how the OP feels about driving. The words “drive”, “driving”, “car” and “taxi” appear quite a bit i this thread.
We can assume that connectivity will improve, social life is down to the individual, lockdown won’t last forever (!) but distances are permanent.
 
My parents bought a "holiday home" in the 90s in the west and still go there a lot. It's not really in a tourist area at all and nearly everyone is local.

I've spent some time there over the years, never more than 2 weeks at a stretch but anyway some thoughts:

  1. Retail - ten minutes drive to a petrol station. 20 minutes to nearest town. Means a lot of time on the road, and usually every day;
  2. Absolute silence - if you don't like the sound of traffic or other humans it is pretty easy to find complete silence in rural Ireland;
  3. Residents - seem in general positive. They've often said they prefer people living there to not living there, even if only part time. They don't like lights going out for good;
  4. Social life - outside the big towns there is nothing except small pubs. No playgrounds and would be pretty lonely for someone with a young baby. I think you would do a lot of ferrying kids around;
  5. Huge houses - the locals basically all built 150sqm mansions in the boom years and you can still buy one cheaper than build cost. If you like a lot of space this is for you;
  6. Third-level - literally everyone with a decent leaving cert leaves to go to college somewhere else. Maybe a half ever return.
 
I would suggest splitting the thought process into 2 separate things:
- moving to a different area
- living 'rural'

There are lots of different levels of what people mean by 'rural'. I know people from Dublin who would consider any town smaller than Cork city as 'rural'.

Personally I grew up in the middle of farmland where the nearest neighbours were a mile away. I still live in the countryside, but there are 10 houses within 5 minutes walk. But the 'local' pub is still too far to walk home after a few pints. Although both rural, they are world's apart in terms of feeling of isolation, and practicalities of school runs, access to sports, etc.
 
EasilyAmused said:
Interesting take. I find meeting people during lockdown as a very positive thing. By “meeting” I mean randomly bumping into people. But I understand how others see the negative in it, i.e. they may be C19/B117 vectors.
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I'd agree with you wholehearted with you on this one ... you do meet people which having a walk in rural Ireland too and a socially distanced chat with them is lovely. In the city, its the hundreds of people that you meet that you don't know are ones I'm more than happy to avoid.
 
That's a very good point. We are 5 minutes drive from a large enough town, and 25 minutes to a much larger town. Plenty of schools, sports etc within 5 to 15 minutes drive. There are also plenty of houses next to us. It's very different to living in a more remote part of the country.
 
candor said:
Plenty of schools, sports etc within 5 to 15 minutes drive.
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There are lots of "rural" areas within 30km of Dublin or Cork city centre where you have 10 houses within 500m, a petrol station within 5 minutes, and a school within 10 minutes. This is basically urban living without the downsides of people living on top of you.

Some rural living is much more isolated and means adjusting all of those numbers by a factor of 5. And there is plenty in between.
 
NoRegretsCoyote said:
No playgrounds and would be pretty lonely for someone with a young baby. I think you would do a lot of ferrying kids around;
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Funnily enough, where I lived every town and village had an under utilised playground. I’d two within 45 minutes walk of the house. Used to push the kids there in a double buggy.
For example, one of those villages had a church and a school but no shop. Despite this small size it had a decent playground.


NoRegretsCoyote said:
Huge houses - the locals basically all built 150sqm mansions in the boom years and you can still buy one cheaper than build cost. If you like a lot of space this is for you;
Click to expand...

Beware of big houses. Lots of hoovering, cleaning, dusting, etc. And you’ll probably buy more furniture to fill up the rooms. Space is great until you destroy it, ie, fill it with “stuff”.

I’d a half acre garden in the last place. I love gardening but I never did so little. So much of my gardening time was spend mowing the lawn, trimming hedges, tending to trees, etc, etc, I did no “real” gardening. Too much garden maintenance. Now I’ve a much smaller garden I do way more gardening!
 
Is this not the classic "ribbon development " it's not really rural and it's definitely not urban. Someone made reference to the big McMansions built all over the place another unfortunate development. I think we took a wrong turn 20 years ago in what we let get built there. Of course the reason it happened was because it was the easiest road politically to allow all this.
 
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