Suburbia

Are you suburban, and do you enjoy suburbia, or do you have rural yearnings, and wish to escape the crowd, or indeed do you live the rural dream. Is either all it's cracked up to be?

Re: Suburbia

I live in cloud cuckoo land

Re: Suburbia

Hi Spitfire

I'm a townie but, if I could afford to move (lottery win) then yes, I'd like to live somewhere more rural. I haven't been to my local town centre for years because in the main, I hate crowds.

I've lived in a couple of cities and didn't like it.

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I live in the heart of the city and despite the fact that there are problems associated with that I quite like being right in the heart of the action. On the other hand the country seems like a wonderful place to live and the trade off with not being centrally located is more than made up by living in a peaceful environment.
The suburbs however are a wasteland of neither centralized excitement or a bucolic paradise. They are the worst of all possible worlds, the compromise.

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What is rural life like in Canada, Lloyd? Here in England the thoughts of living in the country for me is an idyllic place to be; tranquil, peaceful but, in winter for some perhaps, impassable if the snow lies heavy. Probably folk in other countries of Great Britain would agree.

I'd love to look out of my window and see pasture-land, or mountains or a river, but sadly all I see is the house across the road, identical to mine.

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My idyllic impressions of country life are based on the UK. Rural life in Canada is incredibly lonely and remote. There are nice areas to life in the country but for the most part the country here in Western Canada is a bleak desolate place.

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Yes, I can understand your thinking. I could imagine rural life in countries like Canada, New Zealand, Australia could be incredibly remote but, because the UK is smaller, it wouldn't be so bad.

Don't know if you've ever been over here but, I'll give you an example. I live in a town called Wigan in the County of Lancashire and if I want countryside, I only have to drive less than 10 miles to see the most beautiful country scenes.

I don't know about other parts of the UK because I don't live there, but even the most rural, beautiful parts over here are never too far away from the nearest town, usually far less than 20 miles.

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We are rural here in NCumbria and it has its disadvantages when you are old. Its 20ish miles to Hexham and the buses run hourly and stop at 7pmI am trying to sort out living either on my own or for when we no longer have a car.I am a Townie and dont like the isolation much.Its fine when there are two of you but its going to be tricky on your own.

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I live in a 110 year old cottage on a 1/4 acre block in a tiny community on the east coast of NSW surrounded by rural farms, mountains, rivers, rainforests, national parks, waterfalls, rocky bed creeks and the ocean.
I can see cows from my backyard and there are horses across the road. I feed the birds of which there are many including lorikeets, spangled drongos, pink galas, fairy wrens, striated pardalotes, bower birds, magpies, kookaburras and numerous others.
I have a veggie and herb garden and have planted many fruit and citrus trees, berry vines and even grew a loofah last year of which I now use in the bath.
I have 3 geese,2 bantam chooks, a pair of turkeys 2 cats and 8 guinea pigs ~ all are free to roam the yard and most were saved from certain death or bad homes.
My garden is fenced and so is the verandah to the house, so in actual fact I am in the cage but it's a very comfy one.
There is a local shop, PO and a pub by the river. They built me a supermarket 6 mins away which opened not long after I moved here 5 years ago from a more built up area a couple of hours north of Sydney. There are a choice of bigger towns all within an hour, the closest bein 20 mins drive.
I love this place and Australia and as my son said yesterday "we should kiss the ground we walk on everyday" as we live in a paradise within a paradise.

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I live in a small town and quite like it. We are close to everything we need but 5 mins in the car and we are deep into the countryside. Best of both worlds.