I stop London for a dream cottage in Somerset – however that is why I’ve had it with rural life: I used to be lonely, relationship was a nightmare, and my £20,000 financial savings vanished in a single day: KATIE GLASS

In hindsight, the main problem with my vision of country life is that it was formed in childhood. I grew up in an idyllic house in North Wales, a converted watermill that lent itself to a Waltons-like childhood of rural bliss – making mud pies, river swimming and keeping goats.

Significantly, it was a time when my family, which later broke up, were happiest. So, for me, the country had a Famous Five feel, where everything was always perfect and everyone was always happy. A child’s picture of rural life built on a fantasy.

It was with this dream in mind that I decided, four years ago, to leave London, selling the flat I owned in Dalston and moving to Somerset.

At the time, just before I turned 40, my life was falling apart. In the pandemic, I lost my job of 12 years on a newspaper, my TV ambitions were brought to a halt when filming on the ITV documentary series I was involved in was cancelled, my relationship of seven years to my fiancé collapsed and with it our plans to have children.

The life I’d been building in London evaporated and I felt broken. The country seemed to offer a gentle place where I could retreat, lick my wounds and start again. After all, the countryside is where I had always been happy. Or so I told myself.

Besides, I’d long felt I was outgrowing my cramped flat – as well as Dalston, the frantic hipster heart of trendy east London.

When I first moved in, I loved having nightclubs on my doorstep but, as the years crept on, I became sick of the screaming High Street, where someone in drag always seemed to be having a fight.

In the years before I left, there were also a spate of knife attacks. Dalston felt increasingly edgy – and not in a cool way.

When I searched Rightmove and discovered that for the price of my London flat I could buy a house with a garden, it seemed obvious what I should do.

I entered a dream spiral, imagining a picturesque life of farm shops, fields, Land Rovers, creamy cottages, cute dogs, pretty roses – and hot farmers.

I was high on #cottagecore. Yet signs that country life would not be as Famous Five as I imagined started at the viewings. I got lost on muddy country lanes without any telephone reception and ran into angry farmers rolling their eyes at ‘Londoners’, I discovered houses running on wood pellets, and septic tanks, which were alien concepts to me.

I went to properties where the neighbours had the right to walk their cows over your land and a house up a Welsh mountain where the estate agent warned me that I’d need a generator for when the snow cut me off.

At first it all seemed amusing. ‘It will be a challenge!’ I told friends in London, who gently enquired if I was having a breakdown.

Eventually I found my dream cottage, surrounded by Somerset fields – and moved in, enthusiastically embracing all country cliches – buying an old 4×4 and a Barbour jacket and adopting a labrador.

What I hadn’t reckoned on was the money it would take. I moved in with Escape To The Chateau ambitions and a Benefits Street budget, and the problems began immediately. The gulf between owning a small Victorian city flat and a 17th-century detached cottage was vast.

Huge amounts of work needed doing. The electrics needed rewiring, woodworm had to be addressed, I would have to add a damp course and fix the gutters. I’d never even painted my London flat.

I took on projects myself where I could – at first, enthusiastically. I ripped out the old kitchen, bathroom and carpets, painted walls in my dungarees, dug out a driveway in the muddy garden, took a plumbing course to tackle the constant leaks. I felt proud – I was a strong, independent woman!

But the issues continued relentlessly. I’d decorate one bedroom, only for the water tank to flood it. I’d plaster a wall only for a leak to appear.

Money poured through my hands as I had sleepless nights dreaming about the roof caving in. The £20,000 I’d had in savings vanished overnight, as every month thousands in earnings ran through my fingers, straight into tackling house issues.

It wasn’t helped by how naive I was. I made endless stupid mistakes attempting to live The Good Life.

I spent thousands installing wood-burners so the whole cottage ran on wood – cooking, hot water and central heating – and yet quickly came to hate the time it took to cut and stack logs, build fires and empty messy ash.

In the city I’d be out every day, going to plays, seeing exhibitions, grabbing lunch with friends – in the country, my life quickly felt dull.

I became insufferably consumed by the weather. If it rained I’d panic about the gutters; if it snowed I worried about pipes bursting, in the summer I assessed trees for subsidence. My world, so vast in the city, microscoped into the four stone walls, as I somehow turned into a retired dad. 

Even now, as I write, I’m conscious that the rain is hammering outside and the pipe on my water butt is loose.

Meanwhile, other things about country life started to nag, like the relentless driving. The cottage, so idyllically located among soft fields, has almost nothing in walking distance. Even a trip to the shops takes an hour and £10 in petrol.

Having imagined myself getting fit in the country, in reality I walk less than I did in London. I miss my fancy exercise classes – Barry’s Boot Camp, hot yoga. I tried Zumba at a local church, but it didn’t cut it like a Shoreditch House spin class.

It took far longer than I’d hoped to make friends. I’d had some insane 1950s illusion that I was moving to Emmerdale or would find The Bull in Ambridge but, in fact, my cottage was intensely isolating.

Unless I actively made plans, I could see no one for days – perhaps weeks – except the postman.

My dog, Bear, a highly sociable labrador, sometimes sits by the gate looking desperately for someone to walk down our lane. But they never do.

In winter, especially, the isolation can be relentless. Now, at 4pm – boom! – darkness descends and I’m stuck. If I fancy going out, I’m limited to one glass of wine, or committed to staying with friends – unless I book a taxi two weeks in advance. And then I stress all night worrying about whether it will show up.

One Friday night I considered getting a bus into town and found the next one was on Monday. Sometimes I open my Uber app in case a car is on there that has got lost.

Meanwhile, I wondered if people were right when they warned me the country wasn’t for single people – it’s a place you move to when you’ve had a family and given up on having a social life.

When I did date it was a very different experience. The options were limited – and, frankly, in a small rural community, it’s easy to swipe through every option on Tinder!

Despite a dalliance with a farmer who was undeniably hot, I struggled to meet men who shared my cultural interests. When I did get into something serious, it was with an artist living on the west coast of Ireland, even more rurally than me.

It wasn’t so much that the country made me unhappy, but that even when I was happily tending my garden in summer, I started to worry that I had accidentally, well, given up.

I still appreciate the tranquillity of being in nature, but, well, it drags.

I miss all the stimulus I had. I’m bored of going to the same three local cafes and the only two decent restaurants – and how everything is shut on Mondays.

I started to miss the surprise and unpredictability of the city, where you might pop out for a drink and end up eating dim sum at 4am with someone you met at a gig. In the country, there is almost no chance of something unexpected happening.

Meanwhile, I became equally frustrated by the way rural life had changed from the childhood I remembered. The area of Somerset where I bought my cottage has changed beyond recognition.

An influx of Londoners – yes, I get the irony – and a wider working-from-home culture has allowed people on city salaries to live rurally, which means the country has become fashionable.

Once an escape from the superficial, country life has become a catwalk, and my local High Street has turned into a mix of dog boutiques, sourdough bakeries, and chi-chi coffee shops. Buying organic honey from the farm shop could bankrupt you.

Of course, there are plenty of things I love about the country – the way that, when the angry world is churning, there is a sense of timeless peace among the fields.

I love the slowness of long mornings listening to birds and walking the dog along the river, with its waterfalls and mossy trees.

Having never had my own garden before, it felt like magic to scatter seeds and grow a meadow of wildflowers. 

I dug up half the lawn at my cottage and replaced it with cornflowers, asters, morning glory and poppies. I created beds of gladioli, peonies, violets, lavender and endless rose bushes, feeling my anxiety vanish every time I dug into the earth.

I created a vegetable patch from which I fed myself – poorly – in summer, mostly on courgettes and lettuces. I took my apples to be pressed and made my own juice and cider. Sometimes on cold nights I stand in the garden in wonder at the number of stars you can see.

Rural life has forced me to become resourceful and capable in ways I didn’t know I could. Now, when a tap leaks or a strange rustling starts behind a wall, I can proudly say I would at least make a vague attempt to tackle it.

A lthough it took time, I have built a strong and incredible circle of friends, interesting creative women, whom I throw dinner parties for in winter and go wild swimming with in summer. We have poetry readings and writing circles – as smug as that sounds.

To be honest, I’d got to a point of embracing it and had almost decided to stay, when something significant happened that changed everything.

Last year, my former fiancé died in a motorbike accident, plunging me into grief. Almost overnight I started detesting the things I’d found mildly frustrating about country life. Quiet evenings on my own by the fire, contemplating life, became torture. I couldn’t bear the silence and space.

I started going to the city more often and all the things I’d loved about London overwhelmed me. I felt the same thrill I’d got when I moved to the capital in my 20s. Compared with the monotonous green of Somerset, London was a kaleidoscope of fashions, art, culture, possibilities.

It was a delight to be able to eat something other than English food. I went for Turkish breakfasts, Mexican lunches and Thai suppers (at my cottage there is only one Indian place that delivers). I enjoyed how ethnically diverse city life is, a cacophony of interesting people from different backgrounds.

When it rained in the city, I didn’t even consider the water butts. Even my dog was happier as restaurants supplied treats and he got pats on the Tube from drunk strangers.

Around this time, I met a man in London for whom I briefly went a bit crazy for – even if he didn’t prove as interested in me. But as the relationship fizzled out, I realised something; all the reasons I’d fallen for him – his quick wit, political mind, intellectual curiosity, culture and ambition – were things I loved about London.

Now when I return to my cottage from the city, I feel I’ve been exiled. Things once charming about country life – like finding a slug in the kettle – have started to grate. Even the things I used to truly love, like seeing my roses flower, no longer sustain me.

I realise something in me has shifted. I came to the country to heal and I have; I came seeking peace and a sense of family, and found that among close friends (who now feel like the only reason to stay); I found peace.

Perhaps most significant, I shattered my childish fantasies of country life – for the better. The country is a complex place that exists as far more than a canvas for my naive fantasies. In the end, all the things I hoped to find here I had to find in myself.

Now I’m ready to return to the city. I’ve been to estate agents for valuations of my cottage and started exploring Rightmove for a London flat. This time I’m looking at Highgate and Hampstead, where things are quieter and more grown up.

It doesn’t feel like going backwards. The country was an adventure and I’m ready for the next one.