Going back to your roots.

Yes, I have. I found my little cottage online, when I was looking to downsize. It's next door to where my great-aunt lived and I played here as a child. It's a mile away from where I grew up, and is a special place that I always longed to live. I couldn't believe my luck when I saw it was for sale. I won't move again - i'm very glad I came here.

I would love to, mrsmopp, but unfortunately MrA doesn't feel the same way. I certainly feel a distinct "pull" whenever I revisit old haunts or see or hear mention of the area I grew up in.

I don't regret moving away because at the time it seemed the right thing to do, and I think the family had a better quality of life here. Roots go deep though, and if you've got the opportunity I'd say go for it. Good luck!

In principle I would say never go back but if it was a long time ago that is different. A few years ago we went back for a social event to somewhere we had previously lived and found that everyone was exactly the same as wen we left but we had changed! We resolved that when we retired we would not go back as we felt we would have been dissappointed.

We set out our criteria for when we wanted in our retirement and looked at several places withing the large area we had chosen and eventually settled on somewhere I had lived as a child. We are very happy here but I think it is not because I lived here previously but because it is such a great place.

I would suggest that before you burn your boats you rent in your chosen place for 6 months to give it a trial and see how it works out.

I feel all warm and cosy when I go back to Brum these days, but I'm not sure that I'd want to live there again. And Cornwall, where I lived for a few years in my late teens calls to me constantly. I'd like to live in both places for a while just to get them out of my system, but it's out of the question because I'm lucky in that both of my children have ended up living locally.

I grew up in Derby and DD1 lives there now so I am there often. In fact, I go once a week to have the GC after nursery and school. Nothing is the same!!

After 39 very happy years in the UK, married to a Brit- we moved back to my roots 3 years ago, when OH retired. In the UK we lived in SW London. Staffs and later East Leicestershire.

Never ever expected to move back to my Swiss mountains. In many ways, it was my OH's decision, as he always envied my very deep roots (they moved all the time when he was young, and always had to leave as soon as he'd made friends) - very happy. But we might one day go back to UK and still have a flat in Market Harborough and a daughter and grand-children in Surrey, and go back very regularly.

I long to go back to the Isle of Wight. Because of mum's failing health we haven't had a proper holiday for years. One day we will go back and have a good think about it. Like mrsmopp I have spent many an evening on rightmove looking at properties and dreaming. It's not that I'm discontented where we live now but our smallholding is very isolated and I am beginning to worry about the future.

It's sheer nostalgia I have on occasions got on Right Move to see if a house sale comes up on the road I grew up on so I can get on to street view and trawl along the road remembering the roller skating and bike riding of my childhood. Unfortunately actual home town high streets are never quite as you remember them.

MrsMopp I know how you feel - I am from the North-west too and I love going back there to see friends, and feel it's 'home'. I sometimes dream of going back.
But life's a bit more complicated than that, isn't it? One of my DD's still lives near us and I don't want to leave her, and we have lots of friends here now.
And the North-east has everything!

It's a long time since I had roots. Hardly anyone I know lives in our Ayrshire town now except for one cousin, ten years my senior. I visit Dundee to see my sister and BiL two or three times a year but it's also a long time since I lived there. I did consider moving to the East Neuk of Fife when I retired, but my DSs and their families were settling in the South of England and I still had a GD near me in the NW, so here I am and, for the moment, here I stay.

I'm also from the North West and I do enjoy going back to see my mum, but I couldn't wait to leave and I would never go back there to live. I did return when I was in my thirties and spent ten years there, but now I've made my home in the place I want to stay.

MrsMopp, take great care and rent for six months or a year to make sure that what you remember hasnt changed beyond recognition.

I had a friend who spent most of her 30s in Yorkshire. She was very happy there and always remembered and talked about those years with affection. She moved south towards the end of her 30s and lived there until her late 50s when financial circumstances made life difficult for her and she decided to sell up, repay her morgtage and head back north where she had been so happy and where she could buy a property mortgage free.

It was a disaster. House prices in the south are so high that even a street with the least expensive property will contain a real social mix, depending on when house owners bought their properties. Her neighbours in the south included council labourers, mainly retired, nurses, doctors, solicitors, shop workers. She didnt realise that in the town in Yorkshire she headed for prices were low enough for any professional person to buy a their first house in a 'good' area. She bought the best house she had ever owned but discovered that she had bought into an area in the 'wrong' side of town and was the only professional person living in the street. Usually the most sociable of women, her neighbours held her at arms length because to them she was an oddity, in their terms a southerner, middle class with a professional career behind her. When someone broke into her home, nobody came to her assistance, even though the neighbours later admitted they had heard her screams.

She could not afford to move and five years after her move died of cancer in her early 60s, a cancer that I am convivnced was exacerbated by where she was living.

I appreciate that not every move is as disastrous as my friends, but the past is another country and you need to check that it is still as you remember it and, as I said, rent for 6 months or a year to check it is most things you remember and what you need now before commiting yourself to a move and buying property.

Thanks for all your comments. I don't think it's going to happen as DH has dug his heels in and won't budge. I will have to content myself with regular visits. But when I'm up there, it feels as though i have come home. Very little has changed. And when I'm up there I never want to come back here....... The people are lovely.
It does sadden me, as all the moves we have made have been for his work and I never had a say in any of it. I went along with it, as you do, for the benefit of the family. But now we are retired I think it could be my turn to choose where we live.??
Perhaps I am being selfish....

mrsmop I too followed DH's job and don't think you are being the least bit selfish. Could you persuade him to let out your home for 6 months and use the rent to pay for somewhere near your roots for 6 months? IMO that is the very least he could do.

Nothing on earth would make me move back to housung estate in Swindon where I grew up!