Retirees bombarding our beautiful rural seaside area

I think BlueBelle is spot on!
It isn’t the fault of the “incomers” that property prices are too high for local people-it’s failure to invest in affordable housing in rural areas over a long period of time by both main political parties.
People are entitled to live any where they want to in this country, and diversity is beneficial to the gene pool. Seriously some of these comments sound xenophobic!

notanantoo what you say about Portugal is especially true in the Algarve but not so much over the rest of Portugal where most of us have integrated and live much as the Portuguese people do and are not demanding English food and foreign restaurants . In many places in the rest of Portugal foreign immigrants have bought up semi derelict properties that the locals don't want and made them into comfortable homes. They are mainly retired people who have their own income.
There is not enough work for the Portuguese which is why they have to move abroad to work. Then you get young people from the UK and other parts of Europe asking what work they can get here and expecting same salaries as the UK. Talk about naive because they obviously havent done any homework as to whether the move is feasible. They are usually into alternative therapies yet the average Portuguese earning the minimum salary of €600 per month is struggling to pay his bills and doesnt have money for fripperies. You then get parents who have moved over with young children posting about playdates and special play facilities like they had in the UK. Talk about not being in touch with the Portuguese because really they just want to replicate their UK life here

I don’t blame my neighbours from different places for the lack of doctors and teachers - some of them are doctors and teachers.

I wouldnt worry too much with the pension age rising those now moving to your beautiful coountry side arre likely to be the last generation with su h dreams.
If it is so idylic why are people selli g up and moving making homes available I suggesst a by law is passed no one is allowed to move out for 20 years.
Since this is not the first similar post I think Ill stay put in the city

you want to try living in London and see how that's changed over the last 60 years!!

To answer just one of OP's questions: I believe people move away from the cities they have spent their working lives in because these places are far too expensive to live in once you have retired.

Another reason is that in a big city, very few people spent their adult life near those they went to school with, or even relatives, so moving away is a completely different prospect than it is to people who have lived in a small community all their lives.

The same is happening in Tasmania, Australia. We are a small island state and the influx of retirees is growing day by day. Also mainlanders settling in our small rural towns. Overall a good thing - diversity is good.

Kandinsky I can't agree about London, sorry. I don't think the shops are better, well maybe if you are really, really rich. We have independent shops and restaurants and don't have to travel very far for a few top brands. What we gain is fresher air and friendly people. In London a couple of days ago, talking to a young man we know about where we live and he said he had lived in London all his life and never met his neighbours.

I've lived in London and found that some people really don't know other areas of the country and are not open to thinking outside the M25. We are not all 'flat 'ats and braces' you know.

We lived in a national park for 12 years and I worked in the nearest small town as a nurse, tried joining local groups but never really felt welcome. We moved to a bigger northern town recently to be near family. I commute to work on a big city hospital ward. Although I miss the fabulous scenery and easy GP appointments in the national park, what a relief to be with friendly, tolerant people instead of insular bullies.

Specs & Co.......just be grateful they are not migrants/asylum seekers like my area has.

I started a thread a while back apropos of people I knew living in Thames Ditton, a village a couple of miles from me, who had a group of travellers roll up and had to put up with both human and dog waste being chucked over their fences, and "threatened by a big dog" and other such anti social behaviour. One poster, north of the border, no prizes for guessing who, said something along the lines "when people deliberately look for trouble and demonise certain groups then they'll find they have problems" not verbatim but that was the gist. Interesting! so it seems when a lack of appreciation of local customs and of how things are done in her neck of the woods, from incomers, or to be specific English newbies, because as we know no other group of people could behave in such a reprehensible way, then somehow that throws a different light on the matter!

I cannot believe one poster's comment mentioning what used to be called white settlers
Would that have been said about any other colour or can one say, with impunity, anything about our own race?

people who haved worked all their lives, saved for their retirement and used that, plus pension pots to buy somewhere lovely to live, to spend their final years are quite entitled to do so. Do these 'incomers' not contribute to society and to the local economy? How awful to have such a biased an unwelcoming attitude

I used to work in a two-man outlet of a major bank in a pretty rural village. So often new customers came in to change their account details (pre-internet!) They had retired and moved to embrace country life after living and working in cities. But as time went by, maybe they were no longer able to drive, or one of them died, so often they then moved back to where they had come from to be nearer adult children. What seems ideal at 60 years of age isn’t so appealing perhaps 20 years on.

We live in a beautiful village in rural North Wales, whose only community run shop and pub are manned by retirees, the majority of which are not Welsh! No ‘them and us’ here, we all appreciate our village and combine our time and efforts for the success of shop, pub, annual pantomime, village show, school events, Everyone benefits this way!

Obviously we should be put in an island well away from “normal” people or in my case send me back to Ireland,even though I have paid taxes here and still do for 60 years and nursed for that length of time.i now see elderly people being looked after in hospitals eating purée food just waiting for it all to end.i remember very few old people in the London hospital where I trained,people lasted days in hospital then.i wonder if the advances in medicine for older people is great

It's hard to believe that there are areas where they live such an insular life that they abhor ripples from the bigger pools of humanity.
It's like a private club, a clique, a sect.
I endorse the comment made by BlueBelle.
I'm from the NorthWest and fitted very happily and seamlessly into life in a Surrey market town which has the highest rents outside London.
I'm accepted just as much as those who've lived here forever but I do get the feeling (from comments made by posters North of 'The border') that anyone not born there knows nothing about that area and is an infiltrator.
Happy to be corrected on that point.

I agree with BlueBelle.

Sounds distinctly like BrexitLand!

Perhaps the 'townies' moving to the countryside are making spaces for the young from villages to move to the towns and cities to work, study and grow up.

This is beginning to sound like the North/South divide. We have so many people now in the S E that in our town we must have every nationality under the sun, there are few problems really considering how packed in we are but you can hardly blame people for moving into the countryside if they are looking for a 'quieter' kind of retirement. We are working through our baby boomers old age now and as somebody else said with later retirement this moving around may slow down a bit. To specs I would say you are lucky to have got away with it, if that how you see it, up to now. I do know how annoying the middle classes can be when they get going on a Committee.

Have been seriously considering moving out of our "commuter village/small town" which I have lived in on and off since last years of senior school.

Thought it would be nice to have a slower pace of life, and also free up a large family home for a family.

After reading the OP, flipping heck, I would be mortified to move into that village!!!!!!

I make no apology for my mortgage free existence or my pension pot, but blimey our generation really are now getting the blame for all that's wrong in the UK, global warming, no housing it will be plague and pestilence next!!!!

Live in Exeter and love cosmopolitan, love different languages spoken, love young learning people from everywhere and likewise retirees from wherever in U.K. & elsewhere. Change is a part of life, for better as well as worse.

Lived and worked in London for 2 happy years, Goldenage and sympathise with your view. Great short-term or to visit but not where we chose to make our home. Returned to Scotland, made good careers and raised our family.

15 minutes from the city centre takes us to wide open country side. Edinburgh 40 minutes away and Glasgow an hour.
2 excellent universities attract bright young people from all over the world, plus research funding ( much of which could be lost, of course). I live near the edge of the campus but have no significant problems with students!

Today I find I live in one of the UK's best 10 places to live, first in Scotland. ( No great surprise to us!)

Anyone who's open-minded, would be welcome here to enjoy all the advantages including reasonable house prices.

I don't have the experience the OP has. Mine is different and I think a bit peculiar.
In the 1950s my family moved into a house. I was a tiny tot in those days. Time moved on I grew up married bought various houses and moved around but mostly within 5 miles of where we moved to all those years ago.
Latterly I cared for my parents who are now dead and I inherited the house in my own name. The house has alterations for old age etc. As I am knocking on I thought this was a good plan.
Meanwhile the people who lived in the surrounding houses came and went, some also died out. There are only a very few of this style of house in the area. Two such houses lost their owners within 6 months. Both houses went to children of the previous owner. I don't know if people living nearby were watching the residents getting older and thinking they will die and the houses will be freed up.
I live alone in my house formerly my parents' house and I don't feel at all welcome here. To the point where I feel that I can't live in the house after 65 plus years of family residence. The actions of some neighbours have made me so uncomfortable with their constant watching my comings and goings. They never speak to me except when they want to know who visited me. Strangely there is a lot of NHS nursing staff in the vicinity. I know that one nurse was attending an elderly patient and when that person was going into care the nurse asked him to sell them the house rather than put it on the open market! ~Within 6 hours of the death of my last parent I had a person at the door stating she had heard of the death and what was I doing with the house!! She was an NHS employee.
As a result of this, I feel that I want to move to an area which may be similar to where OP lives. I have visited the area many times recently and I was stunned that strangers would say Hello or Good morning to me as I walked along streets.

We live on the outskirts of Cardiff. The city boundaries are ever expanding and counties are moving closer together due to extensive building by ripping up the fabulous countryside. What was once a lovely drive into the city through hedge lined roads are now mini housing estates either side. The traffic is getting worse and we have a four hour slot before between the school runs to get anywhere. I'm not complaining, just observing the changes.

There has been an increase in accommodation for over 60's where older people can have access to a thriving village, transport and health care. I think this is good as these types of assisted accommodation releases larger houses for families.

We have often toyed with the idea of moving to Cornwall which we love, but at our age it is just a dream as we fully realise what an upheaval it would be. So, we visit a few times of year instead, renting an apartment overlooking the sea.

Change is around us all the time, and we must accept it, even if it interferes with the status quo and interrupts a life we do not to see changed. Live and let live.

Oh England! No wonder there is so much trouble and strife in this country after reading through the “them against us” underlying attitude that’s prevalent in so many of these posts. Fanning the fires of the ever present UK class structure will make for a very miserable future for the whole retirement community both - new and long term residents as they battle away their “ golden years”.