Moving To The Country: Is The Grass Really Greener?

Once upon a time, people fled their small town upbringings to find work in the bigger cities.

But this trend has been flipped on its head in recent years. Whether that's because work can now be done remotely or people prefer a better quality of life over a job that pays fifty cents more an hour is anyone’s guess. The point is, people are moving to where the grass is greener, and who can blame them. However, to think this transition will be a walk in the countryside would be an error on your part.

So, to help you avoid a scenario where you start looking for a removalist sharpish so you can run back to the city, we have come up with a few little pieces of advice that will prepare you a bit better:

Don’t Go On A Dream

If you went to some glorious part of the countryside on a bank holiday weekend when the weather was perfect, the mornings were crisp and the sun danced across your skin as you sipped on a coffee and soaked it all in, and in that moment decided that this was the life for you, then you need to check yourself for a second. Visiting somewhere and living there are two entirely different things. So, make sure you visit the part of the country you are interested in a few times, at different times of the year and in different conditions; that way you will get a much more rounded understanding of what small town life is really like.

Don’t Move Too Far

If you are a city-person that loves the fast-paced urban life you were brought up in, but find it all a bit much to take nowadays, don’t go completely the other way and move five-hundred miles into Nowheresville, just south of Mount Nowhere. That will make your move so stressful. Instead, stay as close to the city as you can while still being in the country. That way you can easily nip back at the weekends - or whenever you are feeling the countryside blues settling in. This is especially important if you have teenage kids that have grown accustomed to city life and are looking forward to the independence the city offers. A bus passing through your village every other Thursday is hardly independence.

Get Involved In Things

Moving to the countryside can very quickly feel like a move into a total wasteland, especially in a cultural sense. A quick trip to the cinema used to mean a short walk, Uber ride or going one stop on the tram. In the country, though, it could mean a nine-mile car ride, unless you know where to look and decide to get involved. You see, in a lot of rural places, the cinema comes to them, so do fish and chip vans and art exhibitions and, what you will find, is that each of these events feels more like an experience than just another thing to do. You start to feel part of a community. The cinema isn’t just a film, it is a film with wine and a good old chinwag; fish and chips Thursday’s become a nice family bonding session, and the exhibitions that come your way can be so sought after that your city-dwelling friends ask you for tickets.

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This is a contributed article written for WhimMagazine.com