Living in the country

My advice would be to shop around.

I feel your pain! I was in the same position a few year ago after my car died beyond repair! I live in a little village with terrible public transport. We have an active, fairly busy, train line with TWO stations in the village, one of which is just down the road from where I live. Both are closed and have been for about 8 years! The bus that used to stop at the bottom of my lane was discontinued in 2017 and the next nearest one is in the centre of the village, which is a 25 minute walk. So I was rather stuck. I have a chronic illness and can't walk far most of the time and my family live too far away to help. I was without a car for 6 months and during that time I discovered my village operates a car ride scheme. Volunteers (all checked and verified) will drive a local resident wherever they need to go within a 20 mile radius for the cost of the fuel. That came in very handy when taking my pooch to his regular vets appointments! I also used Ubers when needed, which are cheaper than taxis. A taxi from my home to the nearest hospital was £21 at the time, whereas an Uber charged just £8. It might be worth checking to see if there's a local car ride scheme near you? Some branches of Age UK offer a similar service but you'd need to check with your local branch. If you have access to "In My Area", or Facebook, you could register with your local group/page and there may be someone on there who offers lifts to locals, too. I have found that most country folk are very helpful.

We lived in the country for a number of years, but made the decision to return to a more urban setting because we missed things like the theatre/ galleries etc. The theatre has always been a great love, and I missed it terribly.

Since getting older we now appreciate access to medical services etc. heart attacks and other emergency can get us to hospital within 30 minutes, whereas when we were in Cornwall this year, an emergency took us 2 hours to get to Truro hospital from the north Cornish coast!

We don’t live in the country but my accountant husband reckons driving a mile near London costs him £2 a mile now we have ULEZ fees as well .

Moved recently, in our late sixties needed a downstairs toilet, smaller garden and better parking.
Hubby kept looking at houses in the countryside with fields at the back that were lovely but away from family, bus routes, doctors, dentist, shops. I had to persuade him that we were getting older and may not be able to drive in the future, and needed to be nearer all of the above not further away. After 2 years here, hes accepted that this house works much better for us, but he took some convincing.