Is the English country-side as quaint and bucolic as media portrays it as?

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I cycled from London to Brighton last year in the heart of our most densely populated region and was amazed at how rapidly Londin gave way to open country and how green densely populated Surrey and Sussex were. Now this is actually part of green belt planning which many consider to be a disastrous policy which artificially constrains housing supply and generates a housing shortage for no real benefit, but it's worth considering. Away from Southern England you don't get many suburban areas. Most Northern English or Scots live in relatively few major towns and cities with largely unpopulated land in between.

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Drammeister@reddit

Tell me you’ve never been north of Watford

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TurboMuff@reddit

Yes, the green belt is an artificial choke that is now more harmful than helpful. Want help explaining why a shoebox in the south east is a million quid? Because Surrey is more given over to golf courses than houses, and nimbys cling on to the green belt to keep it that way. Nobody wants to see us/Australian style sprawl, but there has to be a middle ground somewhere.

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WWMRD2016@reddit

How wrong you are. There's plenty of brown belt sites that can be developed on. Developers just want to ruin green belt as it's cheaper to develop and eats into their profits.

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ellievison@reddit

Certain parts of the country side, exactly like it. But you’d be have to be very wealthy to own little cottages and houses and land like that. They are NOT cheap.

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adam_ondras_neck@reddit

But then you go to Wales or Scotland and suddenly what you'd get a 1 bed flat for in England for you get a 3 bedroom cottage with an acre of land... gotta love it

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Silver-Appointment77@reddit

Where I live in the North Eat you'd get the same. I was talking to a few Southern friends who couldnt believe you could buy a massive 3 bedroomed victorian house, with a huge cellar for £100k. There houses around me which are massive houses with an acre of land for around £400k. The same houses down South cost millions.

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Silver-Appointment77@reddit

If you go somwwhere where theres hardly any visitors, then its beautiful. I remember years ago when out for a day out with my dad. We were on little back roads, really really lost. It was slow going as there were sheep on the road akll the way along. Now that countryside was beautiful. No rubbish any where. Go to places like visitor traps, and expect rubbish and dog crap. But there are a lot of lovely country side, from rough and rugged, to beautiful greenery. I love Northumberland and the Lake distict for the natural beauty.

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DaveFoucault@reddit

I moved here from Australia for my wife‘s job 25 years ago. Although the people are varied, and the regions vary also I would guess that it is pretty much as you imagine it. The little village we live in has a Norman church that is nearly a thousand years old and loads of old half-timbered pubs - there was seven when we moved here but it is down to four now which is still pretty amazing considering the small population - our house was originally built 400 years ago. Things are changing somewhat as the surroundings are so idyllic that wealthy Londoners have bought second homes here so about a quarter of the houses are holiday homes and empty in winter. It was once primarily a fishing village but this industry is having hard times and I work on the last fishing boat that still operates. The local community is strong and I am involved in the kids football club and the volunteer fire brigade and various other local goings on and it is not hard to get local people to give up there time for the various events that happen throughout the year. I do like living here and I probably wouldn’t stay in the UK if I was living in a city or the suburbs as I can do this in OZ with nicer weather. I can’t see myself ever moving now; all my mates are here and my daughter grew up here and there are a lot of memories.

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RaedwaldRex@reddit

I live in rural Suffolk too and wouldn't change it for the world. I grew up here, and so did my father and grandfather before him. I love the slow pace of life. It can be a little too rural at times, my village is in a dip in the countryside so if we get heavy snow we literally get cut off as the main road in and out that runs through the village gets big snow drifts that are impassable. The community is great, though on the older side and the village all come together to help if there's a problem, but since we moved here 11 years ago everyone has been welcoming and friendly, you get the odd misery guts but I wouldn't change it. The surrounding countryside is amazing, we are always out and about.

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vegemar@reddit

I love Suffolk. I'm from near Bury St Eds me.

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PeteUKinUSA@reddit

I had a bunch of family in Norfolk and spent alot of holidays in Aylsham growing up. Feel really quite lucky to have got to experience that.

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OzzyinKernow@reddit

I used to live in Wickhambrook, which sounds quite a bit like the place you describe. It was lovely but too isolated for us, though, the village was really spread out. When we had our daughter we moved to a village in cornwall near where my wife grew up. It’s equally rural, but a more ‘classic’ layout of everything in the middle (pub, shop, other bits) with the properties radiating outwards. Plus, we’re near the sea and a few miles from Falmouth.

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fudgykevtheeternal@reddit (OP)

sounds lovely !

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D1sposableher0@reddit

I live in the countryside. Its as depicted mostly. Green, peaceful, lovely little pubs, i love it

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SojournerInThisVale@reddit

In small parts. Many lovely villages have been trashed with new build estates totally out of keeping with the rest of the village

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mrshakeshaft@reddit

That’s because in most villages, you’ve got low income families who go back generations who can’t afford anything there anymore because they’ve been priced out. If you want to keep that local feel to the village, you need to build affordable housing so that normal people can actually afford to live there and so that every driveway isn’t filled by a Volvo XC90 and a small electric car “because Phoebe is a stay at home mum to jack, Charlie & Bella so she really doesn’t need anything more than a runabout and we’re all going to have to go electric eventually, yeah?”. We’ve got a couple of new build bits on the end of our village, they’re not great to look at but I get why we have to have them. We’ve also got a couple of rows of 50’s council houses and they are not the prettiest but they’ve been there for so long now that they just kind of blend in

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SojournerInThisVale@reddit

Or one could build housing in keeping with the area. One can still use red brick, just build them with lower ceilings (more heat efficient), and with the little bits off decoration that make a house a home. Not 40 houses bolted onto the end of the village, but maybe 20 homes added onto a new access road, built with a higher density than all th space wasted on new builds

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mrshakeshaft@reddit

Yes, one could.

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BrushNovel9003@reddit

Nice feel to read many of the comments to OP. My thought as an oborigine from an erstwhile "quaint and bucolic" countrisides, people living entirely with nature and never having had to go outside, were all almost annihilated, their natural life destroyed, and entire country and continents taken over to these people ending up in a society with lack of food, facilities and pillaged by modern day slavery of capitalism, went to those days, and to see that OP and people who spread their population to many other countries, calling the people of the old quaint and bucolic countries overpopulated and needing help! LOL

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fudgykevtheeternal@reddit (OP)

that's a lot to unpack boss

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mintymoomin@reddit

Oh, absolutely. If you ignore all the racists and sewage rivers.

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TheHalfwayBeast@reddit

It's boring once the novelty of staring at fields and scrappy patches of woodland wears off, the public transport is all but nonexistent, there's too many rich people and their rich people shops where a bag of chocolate nuts is £10, muck spreading stinks the place up, the roads are falling apart, and most people are elderly or 'young families' because everyone who can moves into civilisation the moment they turn 20. Growing up, I lived in a hamlet of 300 people and had no friends because literally all of the other children hated me. There were only a dozen, so it wasn't hard. There were no shops and one bus stop, with infrequent buses to Ipswich. So I developed an internet addiction before I hit puberty.

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acidteddy@reddit

You’re getting downvoted but it is not for everyone. I grew up in a tiny quaint country side village. It is so beautiful but I found it so boring - good to visit for a night or two but not much to do apart from that. Whilst at growing up as a teenager I was so insanely bored that we just ended up drinking cheap cider in the local park 5 nights a week. Moved to a city when I was 17 and can never imagine living outside a city now where there’s so much going on and I am never bored. Different strokes for different folks I guess :)

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TheHalfwayBeast@reddit

The most exciting thing that ever happened in my village was the old pub landlord killing his wife with an old WW2 bayonet.

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Interceptor@reddit

A few weeks ago I went and walked along the ridgeway - an ancient track that's considered to be the oldest road in Britain (been in use for about 5,000 years give or take). Each night I'd walk to the nearest village and stay in an airbnb or pub or whatever. It's surprising how remote it feels, even though you're really only 20 miles from a city or large town. The villages are small, medieval churches, a pub or two and maybe a village shop. People seem to know each other and I saw quite a few people just out in small groups nattering away. When I left I'd be in open fields in 10 minutes, and didn't see a soul on a couple of days.

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Any-Establishment-99@reddit

That depends: what does bucolic mean? 😂

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lotter-otter@reddit

I grew up in the countryside in the south east of England. Aesthetically, it's incredible. I had tutor buildings on my doorstep and went to tiny school that was also a Tudor building. I was fortunate that in the nineties they built some social housing there and I had a lovely childhood. However, outside of my estate (which was very peaceful and consisted of families) the residents were ultra wealthy, racist NIMBYs who lived in their privileged bubbles and drove to work in their massive cars. The wealthy take over of the countryside has had a detrimental effect on the community feel of the place.

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ValidGarry@reddit

Which media are you getting this from? That might tell us the angle(s) they are portraying. Also, define quaint. Quaint can mean '200 year old houses owned by very wealthy people as second homes' so what do you mean by it?

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Thatcsibloke@reddit

Some of it is pretty rubbish, but, where I live, I can walk out into open fields within five minutes to exercise my dog. I can drive for 10 minutes to a decent, large forest, which is open to all to enjoy. If I walk from the house I have two pubs within two minutes and another great pub across open fields, full of sheep and a babbling river which is all about 25 minutes away. To do that, I have to walk past a house that Mozart visited. I can also walk in a different direction and go past a Victorian model farm and the home of the original creator of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (which were real racing cars). We have all sorts of wildlife including hedgehogs and raptors. Now and again I will see a fox or a badger. All of this is 10 minutes outside a major city which has everything in it that anybody could need and only 20 minutes from the coast. I certainly don’t need anything else. Even the kids can easily get a bus into town until about 10 pm if they want to. However: some of these bucolic delights are not available in many rural areas where there is poverty and continuous infighting between the locals and rich incomers, who do things like complain about the church bells.

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ShiningCrawf@reddit

It's quite a large island, actually.

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fudgykevtheeternal@reddit (OP)

im canadian so I guess my perspectives are different 😅

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JCDU@reddit

If in doubt - jump on google streetview and look for yourself. Outside the towns & cities / off the main roads yes it can absolutely be as pictured on the chocolate boxes.

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MDF87@reddit

It used to be, now half of it is a construction site for new homes.

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generalscruff@reddit

That's probably what people said when they built your house

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Sazzlesizzle@reddit

agree, new houses have to be somewhere. i just wish they weren’t so ugly, poorly constructed, and car-centric

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MDF87@reddit

Yes but when they build over every field as far as the eye can see, it fucking sucks. Where I live was surrounded by fields you could walk through for miles in any direction, now it's all construction sites for those ugly as fuck new build homes that all look identical.

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mfizzled@reddit

Same round here, end of our road was a field of sheep a couple years ago and now it's shitty copy and pasted houses that they charge an arm and a leg for. Tiny windows and low ceilings are just so grim, I don't even know who's paying so much cash for them considering you can get a house with big windows and high ceilings in the same area for less cash although obv they're less energy efficient.

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Watsis_name@reddit

It really is like that. Once you get on the country roads you'll pass through little villages here and there with populations of 20-100 people. With their one stone built pub that was onve visited by Kind Edward I or some shit.

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zplq7957@reddit

Like others have said, the majority are centered in on dense areas whether city or right around cities. Makes sense, right? That's where jobs are, where families grow, etc. The Lake District is absolutely stunning. There are towns there but small. Tourism is a driving force for the local economy and quite expensive. For most people, living in a quaint countryside place isn't feasible due to a lack of employment options. Rail options are more difficult the more rural a place is, too. For example, the train goes to Windermere in the Lake District, but not to other little towns further west. For someone who chooses to live there (and it is adorable, quant), there will be seasonal tourists and a really long drive if their jobs are not based in tourism.

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WWMRD2016@reddit

Changed a lot recently. I could never move to a rural location due to work but since Covid I can manage 90% of my work remotely so I could cope with the occasional commute or hotel stay for the remaining 10%. All I need is fibre Internet which is becoming more available in the countryside.

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EstorialBeef@reddit

Generally yes, the country side is sparsely populated compared to the very dense urban areas. But sparsely populated means in most of England your less than an hours walk away from a village at any given moment.

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camster29@reddit

It can be, but there are still pockets of rural deprivation across England.

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mynamecouldbesam@reddit

Depends on the location of the countryside. There's loads of glorious countryside available in some areas.

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Grendahl2018@reddit

Yes it is. Last visited 5 years ago when I took my US wife on her first trip to England. Deliberately toured the Cotswolds via minor roads - the number of thatched cottages amazed even me

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Relevant-Passenger19@reddit

Yes - we moved to a tiny historic village last year and I still can’t believe it when I look out the window - I see a river, an old church and someone’s cottage. That’s it. People tend to live in cities and suburbs over old countryside villages so that’s why they remain quiet.

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CryptographerNo7457@reddit

Yes, it is. What people don’t understand is all these people are packed into dense spaces. There can be tons of people living in one city, like London for example which has as many people as New York (9 million) and is very dense. As well as that, the way we take care of our urban/rural environments and landscapes ensures that the character of smaller and more rural areas are maintained. For example we have green belt policies that aim to prevent much urban sprawl. Urban sprawl would lead to increased absorption of smaller communities into bigger ones and result in the loss of that rural charm. So yes, it is as quaint as seen in pictures. Effective policies and high populations packed into certain parts of the country enable this.

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MoxieHasKnottyBits@reddit

Yes because we tend not to live in the countryside much. Look up the Cotswolds or York or the Lake District for the countryside/lovely old cities.

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