What do you miss about the town/city/country you grew up in ?

Quote lafergar Fri 20-Jun-25 14:49:26
Anniebach
Born in South Wales, moved age 11 years old to Mid Wales, hated it, every few weeks put on a bus to take me home for weekends , back on a bus for school on Mondays., grandfather bought me car when 17 so I could go home very often,
Nearly 3 years ago has choices of 8 nursing homes to move to,
i chose to come home, definitely the people
Do you think people are different in different parts of the UK?

This fascinates me.

I am speaking of a distance of about 25 miles, so different, even Welsh accent is different, when I moved age 11 was mocked for my accent, two different worlds, I moved to a farming community from a coal mining community

I miss the unspoilt beautiful beaches…….all spoiled now by tourism.😫

As an army brat who lived in 11 different locations (6 different countries 5 locations in the UK) during a peripatetic childhood. What criteria should I use to decide which is my childhood home?

The one I lived in longest I left a month after my 5th birthday, so memories are limited.

Same here Monica (RAF)
I would love to have somewhere I could relate to and feel that I grew up there. I suppose Marlow in Buckinghamshire and Ventnor on the Isle of Wight come the closest.
When DH and I moved to East Anglia in the seventies he asked if I felt at home. I told him to ask me again in four years. 😂

I only live 15 miles from the small town where I grew up. It was, and still is, a beautiful place and I go back regularly to see a relative and to put flowers on family graves. But I always feel sad thinking of my grandparents and parents being there as well as all the other people that I knew who are long since gone. When I look around the cemetery I think these people were all part of my childhood. I am glad to get back to the busy town where I live now and don’t have those memories.

Nothing because after 50 years I’m back there

Nothing at all as after wandering around the world in my younger days I ve been back at my beginnings for a long time now and very happy to finish my days by my beloved beach and sea 😀
My happy place

Anniebach

Quote lafergar Fri 20-Jun-25 14:49:26
Anniebach
Born in South Wales, moved age 11 years old to Mid Wales, hated it, every few weeks put on a bus to take me home for weekends , back on a bus for school on Mondays., grandfather bought me car when 17 so I could go home very often,
Nearly 3 years ago has choices of 8 nursing homes to move to,
i chose to come home, definitely the people
Do you think people are different in different parts of the UK?

This fascinates me.

I am speaking of a distance of about 25 miles, so different, even Welsh accent is different, when I moved age 11 was mocked for my accent, two different worlds, I moved to a farming community from a coal mining community

It’s the mountains between I think Anniebach, 25 miles was equivalent to much more than that elsewhere, and therefore the communities didn’t mix much.

Yes the mountains between Casdon , the communities didn’t
mix true but it was more than that , there was a dislike which was troubling to an 11 year old, when married to a police officer
i live in the north of the county and down to the south, loved both but not that place in the middle. The first time I experienced the lives of the family in a large house at the end of the village, certainly didn’t like or understand why they were
seen as important, I loved my mining villages, loved the people, and I am back home

merlotgran

Same here Monica (RAF)
I would love to have somewhere I could relate to and feel that I grew up there. I suppose Marlow in Buckinghamshire and Ventnor on the Isle of Wight come the closest.
When DH and I moved to East Anglia in the seventies he asked if I felt at home. I told him to ask me again in four years. 😂

I think the area of south London where all my grandparents lived and where my parents grew up, and I spent my first five years is the nearest I have to a childhood home, and I cnnot honestly say I miss much of that. The south London suburb my family lived in has long disappeared. The past, as they say, is another country.

As a fully sentient child, the longest I lived anywhere is the, once, garrison town, I now live 3 miles from, have friends living there and often shop, catch trains there.

What I miss most, is something that has been installed since I left. In my childhood in this town and other army bases in the late 1940s-late 1960s, before terrorists and bombs and personal attacks, security levels were quite low. There were no threats. In particular the streets containing the army quarters were just ordinary suburban streets you turned up drove round etc. Now the quarters area is surrounded by a high fence, razor wire and other high security protection. Entry is through the guardroom.

I have lived where I live now for nearly 30 years, and I have never been able to revisit my childhood home there because of the security - and that is sad.

When we moved here, my father was still alive and the first time we visited and we drove back by the depot and quarters all swathed in high fences with dogs patrolling, even he was visibly shocked. It was not the army life he had experienced.in this country, although we had experienced it overseas.

I don't really miss my hometown in Ontario. My sister still lives there, and it is a nice town, but I love it here in BC and wouldn't ever go back. I've never felt any longing to go back.

It's funny though, when I was 12 and we went to Jersey (my mothers and ancestor's home) , I felt a real sense of belonging. For quite a while afterwards, I wished that I lived there instead of my hometown. Perhaps there is a genetic pull to specific locations or landscapes. Who knows?

Lived in South Wales all my life never more than about 15 miles from where I was born. Moved to Surrey to be near my children when I was 63, Im now 72 in a couple of weeks.

I drive back several times a year and say I’m going back home . I keep in touch with old friends and am still homesick. It’s lovely seeing my family all the time but Surrey will never be home in the way Wales was and still is really .

I miss seeing mountains too.

Where we lived for the first 17 years after coming to Australia is still pretty much the same with one exception- they made the road. It used to be a dirt track and I just loved that. It sounds silly but it felt really rural and and you could smell all the eucalypts. They cleared a lot of the land at the top of our street and put big fancy houses on it. Don’t see kangaroos there anymore. We knew everyone at our end of the street, the kids used to all walk up to the primary school together. Happy days.

I spent the first 9 years of my life in post war Birmingham. We lived in a back to back house a short walk from the city centre.
Looking back, I suppose it was very grim, but as I recall it had a strong, supportive community. Members of my family lived nearby, all within walking distance. Every weekend, the whole clan would get together.
Families lived in the same area for generations.
I live 20 miles away from my home city now and I visit often.
It's all very different. Not better or worse, just different.

The factories, slums and bomb sites are all gone and a New York style skyline has grown in their place.

Ignore me. I'm going all "nostalgic!"

Nothing. My parents moved area when I was 6, and 9, and again (over 100 miles) when I was 18.
I have sometimes envied dh whose parents lived in the same London house from when he was a baby, until they were in their 60s.
I never had any such ‘roots’.

Crazy H - definitely not all spoilt by tourism. Can't tell you where they are because then...

M0nica
Yes! Relating like mad to your post. I simply don't have a "home town" - something most people can't imagine. We left the RAF base where I was born after about three months and then a new place every couple of years. We were the "new kids" at several schools until they sent us off to boarding schools. Sad awful places- in our case anyway. I've lived and worked all over the world but where I live now feels most like home.

Seapebble

M0nica
Yes! Relating like mad to your post. I simply don't have a "home town" - something most people can't imagine. We left the RAF base where I was born after about three months and then a new place every couple of years. We were the "new kids" at several schools until they sent us off to boarding schools. Sad awful places- in our case anyway. I've lived and worked all over the world but where I live now feels most like home.

10 schools, 8 primary and 2 secondary. I took and passed my 11+ in Singapore, went to the army grammar school there until we returned to the UK then boarding school it was. I didn't mind boarding but didn't particularly like the school I was at.

But if I hadn't boarded I would have gone to 4 secondary schools and I and my sister would have returned to theUK in March, with Alevels and O levels due to be sat that summer. As it was we went to boarding school had a continuous education that led to good A levels, university and a degree - and the rest, they say, is history.

I lived in the middle of nowhere in Scotland. Great for my friends and me to ride our bikes and have picnics safely. I was not allowed to ride to the nearest town, 2 miles away, because I had no road sense. There were few vehicles on the road and fewer buses.

The one thing I loved was that it was only a two-bus ride from St. Andrews, which was just a few miles away. That is the only place I miss, as well as walking along the sandy beaches.

I have lived in London nearly all of my life and I love it here.

Charleygirl, the West Sands at St Andrews are wonderful.

Well said Anniebach My mother, especially never liked where we lived after we moved out of Wales. Both my parents would have moved back like a shot. I think all the Welsh experience hiraeth, I most certainly did, even , as like you I grew up in a small mining village. …I’m glad to be home .

amesandJon33 Sat 21-Jun-25 12:57:57
Well said Anniebach My mother, especially never liked where we lived after we moved out of Wales. Both my parents would have moved back like a shot. I think all the Welsh experience hiraeth, I most certainly did, even , as like you I grew up in a small mining village. …I’m glad to be home .

Thank you JamesandJohn yes definitely hiraeth, I chose to move into a nursing home so had choices of where to live,
countryside, city, no thank you , back to the mining village,no collery or slag heaps now but the warmth of the people the same, like you - I am glad to be home

Grew up n Brighton now live near Bradford
I miss the sea but that is all because Brighton has changed drastically
I can now enjoy the Yorkshire Dales, North York Moors, great architecture, city of culture, social history , trips to Saltaire etc
Would never go back south to live tbh

Grandmabatty

Charleygirl, the West Sands at St Andrews are wonderful.

I was there just last week. Came home to Central Scotland with a sun tan!

I still live in the city where I grew up and most of all I miss the cleanliness. We have lots of tourists visiting the City and when I look around at what they must be seeing I feel very disappointed by the litter and dirty streets.