“[I thought] if we can survive London then of course we can survive the countryside.”
“We thought it would be easier than it was for jobs” Tess said. “It was slim pickings.”
“We weren't as prepared for loneliness, the inconvenience. We were really arrogant in that respect.”
by kizmo74
47 comments
“When it wasn’t summer, it was really sleepy. We were bored. We had nothing to talk about.” 😂
R/compoface material, what did they expect? Shouldn’t they have thought about work before committing to the move?
Back to London to moan about house prices and costalivin.
Never fails to make me laugh when people build up this romantic image of country life then realise its actually much the same as city life but with different pressures and inconveniences
Well since we moved here I’ve never been so busy , fishing for salmon and sewin , beach fishing , somewhere in the middle of nowhere with my metal detector.
Out for walks in the forests and mountains with the dog , taking some of the best pictures I’ve ever taken , I’ve tasted some of the best food in the uk here and met some of the most friendly wonderful people and have made many genuine friends here , if you can’t find solitude in the outdoors in all weathers you will struggle .
Here Cymru has it all , i mi dyma’r nefoedd
Reminds me of the couple who purchased the house I grew up in on Dartmoor, Devon. They moved within a year. And that house was very special to me…
Urbanites struggle to envision how certain regions of “These Isles” can be isolated and sparsely populated, be it in Wales, England or Scotland. I get it – small country. And we should protect those “lonely” little corners of it.
I moved to Wales from London 3 years ago. I am also not Welsh, though my partner is.
I love it here and I hope I can stay forever. I love the Welsh spirit, nature and weather. It felt like the right place for me but I understand everyone is different and has different experience so I am not judging them. Just wanted to share my story of someone who loves being here.
On the plus-side, they achieved self-awareness of their arrogance
Morons, I’m English been living in Wales 1 month & love it not due to housing or weather its the great Welsh people.
I worked down here for a few months to see if its for me then got the wife down.
We moved here to make friends embrace the place & culture for the good & bad with no comparisons , you have to be realistic
I used to live opposite a Scottish fella he moaned every single day how its wasn’t as good as Scotland and its Pish but he never moved back there lol
As long as you have a sense of humour , your genuine and warm you’ll get it back x10 from The Welsh
Mind you I’m from Northern mining towns which have a lot in common regards humour and outlook that might have helped maybe
“‘Jim spent his entire adult life travelling around Europe and he said Wales was the only place he was judged for being Australian.” – it doesn’t make it ok but he wasn’t judged for being Australian, he was judged for not being Welsh, as she stated earlier in the article.
Yes, it is and probably will always be slim pickings for jobs, I ended up moving elsewhere in order to get myself regular and stable employment.
Yes it’s lonely, you deal with it, it gets easier when the fact that most people don’t actually care that you’re lonely settles in.
Opposite for me.
Grew up in Wales, not in a city. Moved to London, tried it for about 5 years, decided it wasn’t for me and moved to a village in Scotland. May return to Wales in the future, but won’t return to London.
> ‘We found Wales really judgy. The people were nosy because they had nothing else to do.”
Not even the faintest hint of irony
“Dog walking was difficult. It’s difficult to walk your dog off the lead in the countryside”
How do you grow up in Brecon and not get used to keeping your dog on a lead?. Those pesky farmers and their lambs getting in the way of their Sunday afternoon walks!
I work in mental health in Pembrokeshire and I lost count of the number of people who moved to the area, had no social group, no friends and just ended up developing mental health problems.
Such a non-story.
I mean, I moved to a village of about 300 from a city of nearly three million and I have absolutely loved it. Would love to stay in this village forever. Not only that, but it’s been the most welcoming place I’ve ever lived.
They didn’t want to live in the countryside, they just wanted to live in the city but with a bigger place and a better view.
I moved from Wales to rural England and I would still go back to Pembrokeshire at the drop of a hat.
I go to visit my friend in Brecon every week (I’m from Ebbw Vale), she’s from Yorkshire and moved there 3 years ago. She doesn’t get any anti English sentiment, probably because she isn’t an obnoxious twat, and has settled into the community gently and on its own terms.
She says it’s great for walking her dog. If you’ve been to Brecon you’ll know it’s a fairly sizeable town, and there are plenty of paths along the river and in various public green spaces.
If you’re not happy with yourself or with your partner to begin with you’re not going to be happy anywhere.
But thank you, Daily Mail, for making us hate each other just a little bit more each day. Bless your heart.
Gwynt têg ar ei holau.
Good riddance.
Isn’t this what happens to some prisoners when set free? They can’t cope with the freedom so re offend to get sent back to prison.
“No where to walk your dog off lead” can’t leave it run riot in a farmers field you mean.
“Xenophobic against him being Australian” 🤔 doubt. Imagine being one of the few unlikable Aussie expats. The pair are probably just assholes, the kind of people to sell a non story to a tabloid.
Just admit you fled the city because it would be a nightmare if the pandemic got worse. Now it’s over you’re going home away from us peasants.
Fucking Townies.
It’s all fun and games until you realise it’s an hours drive for a Wagamama
I think they’re misconstruing wales for *countryside*.
We moved to Pembs for 5 years and loves it but struggled to make friends, eventually i got another job and we moved away.
I miss the countryside every day, but my social life is 10x better now.
I think people like this have to ask themselves what is it they’re looking to get out of a move to the countryside?
It may have been doable before covid. Post covid many things have shut. Banks, post offices, pharmacies, shops etc. And with the 20mph limit, it takes longer to get to places. If you are retiring to somewhere remote, you may wish to consider this also because at some point you will have to rely on public transport more too.
I know people who are from London and have moved to rural areas and hated it. There is literally nothing to do. You have to find new interests. Maybe rent for a year before committing.
Well you couldn’t pay me to move to London, but then again I grew up in rural Wales so I’ll be staying here thanks. I’ve lived in cities and find them way more boring and add in it never being actually quiet and the light pollution
Were they expecting 24 hour public transport and tons of socialising?
Blows my mind.
How is this a story? Also calling the locals xenophobic while happily selling your shitty story and stupid pictures to the daily mail? Scum
I meet people who move here all the time. I always say that you have to give it time.
There’s loads of amazing things and amazing people, but rural places don’t shout that from the rooftops; you have to relax and, slowly, things will reveal themselves.
Sadly, many people just don’t get it though – I don’t think, in their hearts of hearts, they see Wales as a different place. I know some see the the language as a heritage project, or some kind of affectation. Many of these people are extremely kind, knowledgeable people in other ways.
Recently, I had a conversation with a woman who is a fearlessly committed supporter of the rights of women, LGBTQ+, refugees and asylum seekers etc. All good things. I asked her how life was in her little village and she said she’d moved within the area. I asked the reason and her reply was “it was a bit too….Welsh….. for us”
Where do they find these morons?
This sounds like a couple who have to be spoon-fed everything and have trouble occupying their minds if it isn’t on plate for them, what will they do when they reach retirement and have nothing to talk about?
Shame they didn’t give Newport a try
How can you grow up in a rural town and not appreciate when moving back from London that the job prospects will be much more limited?
Should just say ‘we didn’t have anyone to moan to or about’
Typical Flatlanders
They moved to Brecon and Christ she’d lived there before.
What did they expect when the local paper runs ‘Man burns toast, more on page 6’ type headlines.
Hearing about Londoners moving to the countryside always reminds me of those stories of tourists to France suffering from [Paris Syndrome](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_syndrome).
“Everyone should be quiet near a little stream and listen”
He inevitably used the go-to put-down employed by the anti-Welsh brigade, “xenophobia”.
A lot of white-flighters and covid refugees have moved to Wales and found it to have been the most expensive mistake of their lives. After contributing to a rise in house prices here, of course.
The clue here is in the word “dream”. You go anywhere with a picture of how it’s all going to pan out in advance and you’re likely to be disappointed. Did they really not realise how different Brecon was going to be compared with, er, London? Or that small town chat, where everyone knows what their neighbours are doing, is a million miles from the London philosophy that you don’t make eye contact with others, let alone dare to talk to them? I wouldn’t presume to make value judgements on people I’ve never met, but the word ‘naïve’ springs to mind.
Being bored is self imposed.
Absolutely devastated to hear your going back home 😂
“We bought a house for Fck all and then realised that we absolutely despise each other’s company so we are not taking accountability and are blaming the environment.”
You couldn’t pay me enough to swap living in Wales to move to London.
So the people in Brecon weren’t ‘our sort of people’ and they say it was the locals who were judgey
I moved from the Home Counties to Wales
It took me about a year to work out the difference between happy people and angry people. They were mostly happy.
I felt embraced by the fierce warmth of the Welsh I ended up living there for 15 years and I regret leaving.