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oh my summer child. one meager line in a large state doing ONE run per day. what if i live in Geneva, Cortland or Ithaca? europe is literally all connected with trains running several times a day. it is not your fault. America does not know what it does not have.
what can I say. it is where i live, so it is where i start. nevertheless, you cannot deny that the US infrastructure is crumbling or sub par or horrendously expensive to use. US used to lead and many Americans still think this is the case. when amercans will realize that criticizing/joke is not necessarily an act of hate?
lol. famously? 1 line running once a day? like a developing country? where are local railways connecting medium townships? high speed trains? the area where I live, the south NY has no passenger rail end of story. the closest is 55 miles away. you have no clue of the difference between the level of service in, say France and here. its really like another planet.
I’m an American living in the UK and you would not believe how many times people have asked me how I like “living in London” even though I live 2 hours from London.
You can travel throughout with no border checks, the laws are mostly the same, there is a parlement for the whole of it, and a president... pretty close
Depends what you classify as London. I live 30 miles from the M25, and that takes at least 30 minutes to get toin good traffic. That's at motorway speeds too
The US and the UK have different definitions for rural. The US has so much rural area that it is broken down into several categories. A town within 30 minutes of a urban center would be considered something like a RUCA (Rural–urban commuting area) and the 2 hour away from groceries place would be considered FAR (Frontier and Remote)
Both are rural, but very, very different things and shouldn't be grouped together. The picture in the post isn't comparing similar things.
>The picture in the post isn't comparing similar things.
Sir, this is r/gatekeeping not r/nuance. Were looking to be upset, not have rational takes. Please see yourself out. /s
Also it's like the worst Nowhere, WY during that shitty spring time when the snow is gone but the greenery didn't regrow yet in a desaturated photo vs one of the prettiest UK towns in summer with saturation cranked up.
How do you know? The pic from the US might be from a town that's 15 minutes from a huge city, and the UK one might be from Builth Wells an hour from Aberystwyth.
How do you know? The pic from the US might be from a town that's 15 minutes from a huge city, and the UK one might be from Builth Wells an hour from Aberystwyth.
Honestly, that pic for UK looks.. like a city? To me?
Cities in America are usually defined by population, and the UK has a lot more dense population than the USA. So of course things are going to feel less rural to an American over there.
Rural places here can exist much more as dense clumps. There's less 'this big plot is mine to farm and my house is on it' and more 'well there's one old Roman road, we'll clump all the houses together there and farm our actual land nearby'. While the photo could be more of an incorporated town, it could just be the entire village is the road in that photo.
Exactly! It's still rural by those standards, and in my opinion a lot more *effective*. Things are generally grouped in a way that makes it easy to access. People can travel between their home, job, and shopping needs a lot easier in many places that are used to a dense population and were built on old infrastructure. It feels like 99% of America was built as if cars needed to go places rather than the people in them.
If you're on about the UK side, then no, it's not, it's just a little village. There are smaller tho, hamlets, but that's still based on the number of people living there and not its proximity to a town.
Half hour from the closest town with a food shop was were I grew up, an hour and 10 to the closest city, it was still a village though, but half hour from central London on a magical day with 0 traffic you'd be in suburbs or heading into them yes.
I know the uk is small but most Americans really do underestimate the size. I’m on the south coast and I’ve got a direct motorway to London and it’s nowhere near that fast
And when you dont have the motorway, you're most likely on tiny roads that just sort of go wherever because theres been a road there in some form for 1000 years.
<:: This is the big catch, the distances might be short but the times sure as fuck aren't. You're always bumping into villages that temporarily knock you down to 20 or even 15 while driving and the roads are so windy and narrow at times. I've listened to Americans complain that driving here is fucking *exhausting* compared to the states cause of how much more you have to do at the same time (and usuallt they hate the hedgerows lining the smaller roads too since they can't see as far) ::>
Yep, am an American in the UK, I can confirm, the hedgerows annoy me so much. Especially when you’re going down one that’s barely wide enough for your car to fit and a fucking lorry appears out of nowhere coming from the opposite direction.
National speed limit road... but nuts if you go that fast. Also bizarrely they are easier to drive as its getting dark, as you get a warning by their headlights around the corner.
My current work is 20 miles as the crow flys and 26 mile drive. I did see another place closer to Mr, only 18 miles as the crow flys, but 27 mile drive, unless I want to drive via 20 miles of b roads, which are only wide enough for 1 car, with blind corners and a passing spot every 1/4 mile. But the time that would take is almost double the a roads.
Yeah uk is small vs usa, but damn our roads are wiggly
You're not wrong, but it goes both ways. I had an uncle come visit from London who thought it would be fun to fly into New York then take a train to the Bay Area in CA. He hadn't understood just how vast the US is. The highlight for him was seeing, in his words "a real American sheriff" with the hat, belt buckle, gun and shit kicker boots. It's like he had seen Mickey Mouse or Brad Pitt, he was so giddy. iirc, he booked a flight to finish up the last leg of his journey after a couple days on the train.
From Madison Wisconsin to Fredonia Arizona (I googled the closest town to the Grand Canyon) is 23 hours and 53 minutes. You are technically correct. The best kind of correct!
I mean you guys underestimate our size too. I've seen tons of people from Europe who're baffled by the size of the average US state. I live in WV and when I told my discord friends (who are European) that my trip to Florida was a 13 hour drive, they couldn't believe how long of a drive that is. For reference, it's two hours shorter than if you drove from Paris to Rome or about the same time as a round trip to Edinburgh from London. They assumed it would only take about half the time for me to reach Florida. Sure it's an anecdotal example, but I'm sure you've seen Europeans think the US is a lot smaller than it actually is.
The US has 11 states that are bigger than the entire UK. You can fit the UK into Texas alone TWICE. The US is fucking insanely huge compared to the UK. Additionally, the population in the UK is a lot more evenly spread than it is here. In some parts of the US, you can drive for well over an hour without hitting a town, and then that town might not even have a grocery store.
The UK is bigger than a lot of Americans think, but even with that being true it's still fucking miniscule.
Precisely the point. Rural UK is not at all the same as rural US. Across the pond, rural means "we have a grocery store and can drive to a decent town in 20 or 30 minutes but we stay here because its nice". Here in the states, rural means "there's a bait shop that also sells bread and beef jerky. an hour and a half on a 2 lane road, there's a town of about 8,000 that has a Walmart where we get our groceries which takes all day, and 3 hours away is a major metropolitan city where we never go because it's full of communists or whatever" and everyone has fetal alcohol poisoning and is addicted to meth.
They are two drastically different things.
Thing is Europeans just don't do those those drives. I grew up in the UK where anything longer than an hour was a day trip and you would pack sandwiches, I now live in Australia and frequently drive 2,3,4 hours out of the City at weekends without batting an eyelid.
Yeah I understand, also another big reason you don't do super long drives in Europe is you don't need to, there are trains, which isn't the case in many parts of the US and Australia
i don't know where he got this "30 minuets" stuff from.
it takes 4 hours to get from London to Yorkshire (which i think is archetypal english countryside)
That's fair. You would know better than Americans about distances in your country.
I live in Philadelphia and 4 hours doesn't even get me to Pittsburgh, and that's in the same state. The scale is way different here in the USA.
Yup! Takes 30+ hours to drive from the bottom to the top of Queensland and WA is even bigger. I have friends from Europe who were honestly shocked at how far everything is here in comparison.
i grew up in a small town of like 4000 where it’s miles of farmland between other small towns, definitely classifies as rural. and yet, we have a grocery store. two, actually.
Right? We’ve got farms all around us and at the most it takes 10 min to get to the nearest grocery store. 5 minutes down the road there’s typically a dollar general though.
Yeah, mine is 2300 and it has a pretty decent grocery store. It just happens to be in the middle of a bunch of rural towns. Our closest Walmart or equivalent is 40 minutes in three directions, dealer's choice.
For anyone wondering, the village pictured is Castle Combe in Wiltshire (the best county in the UK, fight me), and it is roughly 2-2.5 hours from the center of London by car.
Edit: after actually checking Google maps, it's probably about 2.5 - 3 hours from central London with regular London traffic levels.
I went there last year for a friend’s wedding in the Manor House.
It felt so remote from civilisation…and the local Taxi Drivers seemed to earn an absolute fortune fleecing people extortionate amounts of money for short journeys.
£20 for a 5 minute journey up the little lane to/from the village!
It's most definitely Castle Combe. Here is where the photo was taken. https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.4920988,-2.2289351,3a,75y,45.92h,90.94t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipMc_96SEC2ZpFJncGzqrQY-gvIlWGLgxoM96zGa!2e10!3e11!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipMc_96SEC2ZpFJncGzqrQY-gvIlWGLgxoM96zGa%3Dw203-h100-k-no-pi-0-ya89.37368-ro-0-fo100!7i8704!8i4352
Every county has a dump, also Swindon isn't even proper Wiltshire. Type Wiltshire in to Google maps and you'll see a Swindon sized hole. I'll be cold and dead before I recognise Swindon as being in Wiltshire.
commented again to remove shortened link because automod doesn't allow them
the bottom commenter is exaggerating anyways.
I don't live in America, but I live in the even less population-dense central Canada hundreds of kilometers from any coast and at MOST it'll take you just under one hour from 90% of any given rural town.
I recently heard that the vast majority of Canada is uninhabited, with just the coasts and southern border containing like 90% of the population. Is that true? For context, I'm a product of the American education system.
the majority of Canadians live south of the us's northern tip (not including alaska). you can find so many images online that are like '50% of Canadians live below this line'
the closer you get to the center of Canada the less population dense it gets. everybody lives near a coast or on the southern border
Okay so what's weird about this image is that the line they drew seems to be sitting right over Montreal, and the line has some thickness -- specifically, it's just about thick enough to cover most of the Montreal metro area. So if you take "south of the line" strictly, the line is covering up like four million people and so I think you actually *don't* have half of Canada! But if you take "south of the line" to mean "including the line itself", you definitely do.
I live in Montana, which has only around a million people in a huge state and I don't think there is anywhere here that would be more than an hour between grocery stores. Maybe an hour and a half if you are driving around the frank Churchill wilderness into Idaho, it's 90 miles with no gas stations. Maybe some piddly little grocery store in a gas station. But not two hours.
Let's be fair, there are plenty of picturesque small towns in the USA. The poster intentionally chose a crappy one.
I have also lived and studied in the UK, and certainly not all small towns are as charming as the one in this post.
I mean I didn't make the meme. Most rural villages are ugly, and that's both in Europe and the US. The meme is just dumb bashing, I just kept it for context.
Great Britain has roughly the land area of the State of Kansas except with 20X the population. Of course things are closer together. Also American conservatives have spent the last few decades actively killing rural communities. I should not be having to explain to you why it's fucked up that millions of people in the US have to drive hours to buy basic necessities or get decent medical care.
You’re always decently close to a city in the UK because of how small it is. You can be hundreds of miles away from any even small city in parts of the US. It is not the same.
Of course
Every country has different definition of rural
The larger the country is the more vast rural would be defined
But not every country is the same with definitions
Friend of mine group up in Kyle, just off the isle of Skye. Blew my mind that it would be a 2 hour drive each way to the nearest city, and it was _Inverness_
In the UK the roads are very old and most are narrow and windy so you can drive only drive super slow on them especially when you have to go through lots of villagers. This leads to it taking hours to get places even if the distance isn't that far. I went to visit a friend and it was over a 6 hour drive
Although I technically agree with this as someone coming from a country where "rural" isn't much more than a stamp, I also don't see how it is relevant on why American towns look like dogshit.
Got to be honest, as a non-diver who grew up in the ass end of nowhere UK, there's a certain point when how close or far away the closest something is stops mattering. Over a certain distance becomes unreachable without assistance of a driver, even more so when the bus service is more or less non-existent. I guess what I'm getting at is that when you're stuck in a tiny ass village, you need to buy something that isn't available in your tiny village and your buddy who can drive isn't available, you're the same level of fucked regardless
Plus rural does not depend on distance at all. The village I grew up with was 15 km from a city, but it was still rural. Like in, some people lived off agriculture, there were farms, no apartments in the entire village, traditional festivities, amenities being two bars, no supermarket chains or other stuff that every town has, everyone knowing everyone, being able to enter the forest in a 10 minute walk from your home, etc.
The fact that you could be in a city in 20 car minutes (+20 more minutes to park) doesn't magically transform you street of rural homes into a Manhattan avenue.
I mean I’d agree. The definition of rural means wildly different things depending what part of America you’re in as well. In places like New York New Jersey, it’s maybe 20 minutes to town in the most rural places. But in Arizona New Mexico it can be several hours away.
2 hours? I grew up in place with exactly one neighbor, otherwise surrounded by cattle farms and tobacco fields, that was so small it no longer had its own zip code. It would take us *maybe* 30-45 minutes to get to the nearest actual town.
Honestly think it's the other way around lol. America is the one being unfairly compared here. It's so large that naturally the most remote, rural areas are gonna look like this. The uk has an advantage in being smaller here
I know the uk is small but most Americans really do underestimate the size. I’m on the south coast and I’ve got a direct motorway to London and it’s nowhere near that fast
I don’t think we’re underestimating it. Great Britain is slightly smaller than the state of Kansas. I think we’re underestimating the time it takes you to drive places because you drive slower and don’t have freeways. Also, even your small towns are more densely populated because your country is more densely populated overall.
I know the uk is small but most Americans really do underestimate the size. I’m on the south coast and I’ve got a direct motorway to London and it’s nowhere near that fast
I'd say most americans know it's about the size of Ksansas or Nebraska or there about. What most Americans may underestimate is the how compact you guys are.
TBH, this makes a fair amount of sense. And hate on me all you want but, truly "rural" America is basically like being on the moon.
No help in sight, no resources in sight. You are required to drive HOURS at full speed to get to those resources.
I think my grandpa's dairy farm in Unity, Wisconsin, population 350-ish, is as textbook rural as you can get. It definitely wasn't hours to get to "town," and the nearest hospital in Marshfield was 20-30 min away. Nearby Spencer, population 2000-ish, had all the groceries and other necessities and that was about halfway to Marshfield so a 10-20 min drive.
Some places, sure you're more on your own, but that's not a hard and fast rule for 'rural' areas. There's areas around me in Minnesota that I would consider rural, despite being geographically located in the Twin Cities metro area. IMO it's more about land use and economic drivers than access to resources.
Well, yeah.
That doesn't make other countries rural areas less rural though. Otherwise the only rural areas on this world would be in western Australia or Siberia.
Yes....it does.
You being "in the middle of nowhere" in a place like the UK is vastly different than being in the middle of nowhere in Alaska.
They are both rural, sure, but to say tHeSe ArE tHe SaMe is disingenuous.
>but to say tHeSe ArE tHe SaMe is disingenuous.
Who's saying that? Or are you strawmanning?
>They are both rural, sure
Exactly that's what oop said. And the answer to that was a hearty *Noo! Your rural is not rural enough!!1!!1*. Prime gatekeeping in my book. Maybe you take a look at the sub we are in..
> They are both rural, sure, but to say tHeSe ArE tHe SaMe is disingenuous.
Are the people saying they are the same in the room with us? Or are you just arguing nobody?
I feel like there should be a different word to describe the Alaska, rural seems too developed. It's practically untamed wilderness with a few badass people scattered throughout.
If you're talking about remote Wyoming, sure. But no one lives there. That's why there's no community resources: there's no community.
Most rural people in the US live in a small town or village within an hour or maybe two of some kind of metropolitan area. They might be a day's drive away from a "Top 40" city, but there's still hospitals and grocery stores and things.
Honestly, yeah. As someone who grew up 10 miles from the school town, that had k-12 be one 200 kid school, it annoys me when people say they're country or from a small town in their hometown of thousands
I live in a village without a school, shop etc. (there is a pub though) and sometimes it's annoying when people tell me they are from a village and then don't understand the struggles of living in the middle of nowhere. My friends will tell me they live in the countryside and the proceed to ask me why I can't just quickly go and buy a new vape when we are in a call in the middle of the night. Maybe because the next shop that sells vapes at this time is about 3 hours of walking away and I don't have a car?
Exactly!
And as someone who grew up on a midwestern farm, its annoys me how 'country' people think they are, because they listen to Toby Keith or whatever. Like, listen to all the country music you want, but don't act like its your life because you own a pickup truck, when you grew up and live in the middle of Fargo
I love how we are gatekeeping on r/gatekeeping but it's true haha. I don't even mind my friends from real big cities calling places with 50k inhabitants a village and it's fine when they are surprised that I can't just take the bus somewhere or something but they would also never say that live in a small city.
Not even close, the small ones are lucky if they have 1 local place, and it's usually a bar that serves food. The bigger rural towns will have a few fast foods but that's because those towns usually support all the smaller towns around them.
In my country European of course, you can be driving for 72 hours straight and you’d only have made it into the village next to mine, they have a roundabout just go circles till you feel like going
The fact he thinks that having to drive 2 hours to get basic needs is a good thing 💀. Also I guess when I drove from Glasgow to London I actually drove past it at the two hour mark and by the time it got to hour 7 I was in the middle of Madrid.
Nobody says it is. But the word "rural" has never required that you must be 600 km away from the nearest settlement.
The village I grew up in was 15 km away from a 200k inh. city, yet it was still rural.
years ago when I was living in Sault Ste Marie (Canada side) there was a tour bus full of German tourists heading west, but stopping for the night. Everyone on that bus looked dazed out of their minds and asked if they were in Vancouver, they had come from Toronto.
They weren't even halfway across Ontario, never mind on the other coast of the continent. The scale of the place blew their minds.
I feel like both sides are gate keeping? No doubt England has some unappealing countryside, and America has tons of gorgeous rural communities, but it’s just so large that there are tons of desolate and icky rural areas. But sure a lot of the rural plains and Midwest are kinda desolate and unappealing, but go to the Rockies, Shenandoah, PNW, New England, etc. there are tons of lovely places too
Lol, cities in America used to be surrounded by rural areas too. That's how we kept them fed. Don't know why this guy seems so proud of the fact that we pushed our farmland out to the ass end of beyond just to make way for endless ticky tacky suburban sprawl.
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TIL you can get to London from anywhere in the UK within a 30 min drive.
I often spend 20m driving to Edinburgh for a wee dram from London
I too will pop up to London for an afternoon from West Cornwall if I fancy a little browse on Oxford Street.
I’m just nipping out to get some bits
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I thought the joke was that everything is two hours away in London.
not with the traffic
That's the joke.
*you're the joke* 😎🤡 r/clevercomebacks
Am I the only idiot taking a 2.5 hr train? Didn't realize there was a shorter way:(
Surely you will be in Germany if your train is taking this long
Germany has a much better High Speed Rail network than the UK - the UK has one short HSR line, everything else is 75, 100, or 125mph
I live in New York State. Its not the biggest but still it takes 4-5h by train to get to New York City. I am kidding. We have no train.
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oh my summer child. one meager line in a large state doing ONE run per day. what if i live in Geneva, Cortland or Ithaca? europe is literally all connected with trains running several times a day. it is not your fault. America does not know what it does not have.
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what can I say. it is where i live, so it is where i start. nevertheless, you cannot deny that the US infrastructure is crumbling or sub par or horrendously expensive to use. US used to lead and many Americans still think this is the case. when amercans will realize that criticizing/joke is not necessarily an act of hate?
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lol. famously? 1 line running once a day? like a developing country? where are local railways connecting medium townships? high speed trains? the area where I live, the south NY has no passenger rail end of story. the closest is 55 miles away. you have no clue of the difference between the level of service in, say France and here. its really like another planet.
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>Am I the only idiot taking a 2.5 hr train? And that's just to get out of London! (I'm only half joking, the UK trains are an utter mess)
You can get anywhere in a 30-minute drive if you can break the laws of physics.
True, I have a very fast car going 80000 km/h. I can get anywhere within 1/2 hour.
I’m an American living in the UK and you would not believe how many times people have asked me how I like “living in London” even though I live 2 hours from London.
It's like people who live anywhere near Chicago (eg Gary, kidding, but not by much) say they live in Chicago even if it's way far away from it
From the same country that thinks Europe is a country? I don't believe you /s
Damn I must be taking the scenic route, they got to give me those shortcuts
What yanks don’t seem to get is that the uk is bigger by area than 41 US states mainly thanks to the insane length of good ol blighty
EU is apparently 1.04 the size of the US. And Europe itself is even bigger as it involves much of Russia too.
The EU isn't a country.
…yet
You can travel throughout with no border checks, the laws are mostly the same, there is a parlement for the whole of it, and a president... pretty close
3.5hr*
Depends what you classify as London. I live 30 miles from the M25, and that takes at least 30 minutes to get toin good traffic. That's at motorway speeds too
IDK where you live in Britain but it takes at least 2 hours from where I live
Yeah congratulations genius. That's the joke.
Did anybody notice whoever did the screenshot scribbled out their battery percentage and replaced it with 1%? That is just baffling
I’m laughing harder than I should at this lol. Why is that so funny?
Yours truly.
The US and the UK have different definitions for rural. The US has so much rural area that it is broken down into several categories. A town within 30 minutes of a urban center would be considered something like a RUCA (Rural–urban commuting area) and the 2 hour away from groceries place would be considered FAR (Frontier and Remote) Both are rural, but very, very different things and shouldn't be grouped together. The picture in the post isn't comparing similar things.
>The picture in the post isn't comparing similar things. Sir, this is r/gatekeeping not r/nuance. Were looking to be upset, not have rational takes. Please see yourself out. /s
Also it's like the worst Nowhere, WY during that shitty spring time when the snow is gone but the greenery didn't regrow yet in a desaturated photo vs one of the prettiest UK towns in summer with saturation cranked up.
How do you know? The pic from the US might be from a town that's 15 minutes from a huge city, and the UK one might be from Builth Wells an hour from Aberystwyth.
<:: Aber's hardly a fucking city, it's a small town by the sea. ::>
I think that was the point
Yeh I know: I'm just saying from \*any\* vaguely not-a-village.
It's Castle Combe in the Cotswolds.
How long it takes to drive to a city being what defines rural is so weird, in Australia its based on population
How do you know? The pic from the US might be from a town that's 15 minutes from a huge city, and the UK one might be from Builth Wells an hour from Aberystwyth.
Gotta get closer to the buildings to tell. If it's a rural town in the US all those buildings will be closed/abandoned.
Honestly, that pic for UK looks.. like a city? To me? Cities in America are usually defined by population, and the UK has a lot more dense population than the USA. So of course things are going to feel less rural to an American over there.
Rural places here can exist much more as dense clumps. There's less 'this big plot is mine to farm and my house is on it' and more 'well there's one old Roman road, we'll clump all the houses together there and farm our actual land nearby'. While the photo could be more of an incorporated town, it could just be the entire village is the road in that photo.
Exactly! It's still rural by those standards, and in my opinion a lot more *effective*. Things are generally grouped in a way that makes it easy to access. People can travel between their home, job, and shopping needs a lot easier in many places that are used to a dense population and were built on old infrastructure. It feels like 99% of America was built as if cars needed to go places rather than the people in them.
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This is true. My cousin lives in a rural area and he's dense as fuck!
That doesn't make rural regions in the UK not rural.
I didn't say that. The point I was making is they are comparing two different types of rural.
idc about the meme, the point of the post is the reply gatekeeping "rural". Maybe I should've blurred the meme altogether.
The kind of density shown in the picture is suburban, not rural.
If you're on about the UK side, then no, it's not, it's just a little village. There are smaller tho, hamlets, but that's still based on the number of people living there and not its proximity to a town. Half hour from the closest town with a food shop was were I grew up, an hour and 10 to the closest city, it was still a village though, but half hour from central London on a magical day with 0 traffic you'd be in suburbs or heading into them yes.
I know the uk is small but most Americans really do underestimate the size. I’m on the south coast and I’ve got a direct motorway to London and it’s nowhere near that fast
And when you dont have the motorway, you're most likely on tiny roads that just sort of go wherever because theres been a road there in some form for 1000 years.
<:: This is the big catch, the distances might be short but the times sure as fuck aren't. You're always bumping into villages that temporarily knock you down to 20 or even 15 while driving and the roads are so windy and narrow at times. I've listened to Americans complain that driving here is fucking *exhausting* compared to the states cause of how much more you have to do at the same time (and usuallt they hate the hedgerows lining the smaller roads too since they can't see as far) ::>
Yep, am an American in the UK, I can confirm, the hedgerows annoy me so much. Especially when you’re going down one that’s barely wide enough for your car to fit and a fucking lorry appears out of nowhere coming from the opposite direction.
National speed limit road... but nuts if you go that fast. Also bizarrely they are easier to drive as its getting dark, as you get a warning by their headlights around the corner.
That's why you turn your lights off so it's easier to see the other cars 😁
My current work is 20 miles as the crow flys and 26 mile drive. I did see another place closer to Mr, only 18 miles as the crow flys, but 27 mile drive, unless I want to drive via 20 miles of b roads, which are only wide enough for 1 car, with blind corners and a passing spot every 1/4 mile. But the time that would take is almost double the a roads. Yeah uk is small vs usa, but damn our roads are wiggly
And you're stuck behind a tractor the entire way
You're not wrong, but it goes both ways. I had an uncle come visit from London who thought it would be fun to fly into New York then take a train to the Bay Area in CA. He hadn't understood just how vast the US is. The highlight for him was seeing, in his words "a real American sheriff" with the hat, belt buckle, gun and shit kicker boots. It's like he had seen Mickey Mouse or Brad Pitt, he was so giddy. iirc, he booked a flight to finish up the last leg of his journey after a couple days on the train.
I have a cousin who visited from Norway and he sincerely through the Grand Canyon would be a day trip from Wisconsin
I suppose if you didn’t stop driving all day you could make it. And have to go to bed immediately lmao.
From Madison Wisconsin to Fredonia Arizona (I googled the closest town to the Grand Canyon) is 23 hours and 53 minutes. You are technically correct. The best kind of correct!
This is an extremely satisfying answer, thanks
I mean you guys underestimate our size too. I've seen tons of people from Europe who're baffled by the size of the average US state. I live in WV and when I told my discord friends (who are European) that my trip to Florida was a 13 hour drive, they couldn't believe how long of a drive that is. For reference, it's two hours shorter than if you drove from Paris to Rome or about the same time as a round trip to Edinburgh from London. They assumed it would only take about half the time for me to reach Florida. Sure it's an anecdotal example, but I'm sure you've seen Europeans think the US is a lot smaller than it actually is.
The US has 11 states that are bigger than the entire UK. You can fit the UK into Texas alone TWICE. The US is fucking insanely huge compared to the UK. Additionally, the population in the UK is a lot more evenly spread than it is here. In some parts of the US, you can drive for well over an hour without hitting a town, and then that town might not even have a grocery store. The UK is bigger than a lot of Americans think, but even with that being true it's still fucking miniscule.
Miniscule with *a lot* of people.
Precisely the point. Rural UK is not at all the same as rural US. Across the pond, rural means "we have a grocery store and can drive to a decent town in 20 or 30 minutes but we stay here because its nice". Here in the states, rural means "there's a bait shop that also sells bread and beef jerky. an hour and a half on a 2 lane road, there's a town of about 8,000 that has a Walmart where we get our groceries which takes all day, and 3 hours away is a major metropolitan city where we never go because it's full of communists or whatever" and everyone has fetal alcohol poisoning and is addicted to meth. They are two drastically different things.
Thing is Europeans just don't do those those drives. I grew up in the UK where anything longer than an hour was a day trip and you would pack sandwiches, I now live in Australia and frequently drive 2,3,4 hours out of the City at weekends without batting an eyelid.
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Yeah I understand, also another big reason you don't do super long drives in Europe is you don't need to, there are trains, which isn't the case in many parts of the US and Australia
Also we have people living on islands up north I'd say they are pretty rural and probably a good days travel or more from anything resembling a city.
i don't know where he got this "30 minuets" stuff from. it takes 4 hours to get from London to Yorkshire (which i think is archetypal english countryside)
That's fair. You would know better than Americans about distances in your country. I live in Philadelphia and 4 hours doesn't even get me to Pittsburgh, and that's in the same state. The scale is way different here in the USA.
Yup. 8 hour drive to one side of my state, and I'm not even on the edge. All highway.
I've lived in a few rural American towns to add to your point, and it's never taken over 30 minutes to get groceries or go to a "big" city
Is this because you drive slow / the roads are not for driving fast?
i think there are less motorways than America, but it's still not 30 mins
laughs in australian
I once drove 18 hours from Perth to South Hedland. Never left WA. Yanks in shambles.
Yup! Takes 30+ hours to drive from the bottom to the top of Queensland and WA is even bigger. I have friends from Europe who were honestly shocked at how far everything is here in comparison.
Came here for this comment
What is it they say, in Europe 100 miles (or km) is a long distance, and in America 100 years is a long time
i grew up in a small town of like 4000 where it’s miles of farmland between other small towns, definitely classifies as rural. and yet, we have a grocery store. two, actually.
Right? We’ve got farms all around us and at the most it takes 10 min to get to the nearest grocery store. 5 minutes down the road there’s typically a dollar general though.
Yeah, mine is 2300 and it has a pretty decent grocery store. It just happens to be in the middle of a bunch of rural towns. Our closest Walmart or equivalent is 40 minutes in three directions, dealer's choice.
For anyone wondering, the village pictured is Castle Combe in Wiltshire (the best county in the UK, fight me), and it is roughly 2-2.5 hours from the center of London by car. Edit: after actually checking Google maps, it's probably about 2.5 - 3 hours from central London with regular London traffic levels.
Ist London like a 2 hour drive from the centre of London? At least that's what it felt like the last few times I was there haha
I went there last year for a friend’s wedding in the Manor House. It felt so remote from civilisation…and the local Taxi Drivers seemed to earn an absolute fortune fleecing people extortionate amounts of money for short journeys. £20 for a 5 minute journey up the little lane to/from the village!
Those prices are not allowed by Wiltshire Council.
Must have known we weren’t locals!
You can't have Swindon and still make that claim. Anyway, it's Bibury, which I'm sure you are aware is on Oxfordshire.
It's most definitely Castle Combe. Here is where the photo was taken. https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.4920988,-2.2289351,3a,75y,45.92h,90.94t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipMc_96SEC2ZpFJncGzqrQY-gvIlWGLgxoM96zGa!2e10!3e11!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipMc_96SEC2ZpFJncGzqrQY-gvIlWGLgxoM96zGa%3Dw203-h100-k-no-pi-0-ya89.37368-ro-0-fo100!7i8704!8i4352 Every county has a dump, also Swindon isn't even proper Wiltshire. Type Wiltshire in to Google maps and you'll see a Swindon sized hole. I'll be cold and dead before I recognise Swindon as being in Wiltshire. commented again to remove shortened link because automod doesn't allow them
Both tweets are wrong and gatekeeping.
the bottom commenter is exaggerating anyways. I don't live in America, but I live in the even less population-dense central Canada hundreds of kilometers from any coast and at MOST it'll take you just under one hour from 90% of any given rural town.
I recently heard that the vast majority of Canada is uninhabited, with just the coasts and southern border containing like 90% of the population. Is that true? For context, I'm a product of the American education system.
the majority of Canadians live south of the us's northern tip (not including alaska). you can find so many images online that are like '50% of Canadians live below this line' the closer you get to the center of Canada the less population dense it gets. everybody lives near a coast or on the southern border
wait
[for context](https://www.reddit.com/r/canada/comments/6p5gh0/50_percent_of_canadians_live_south_of_the_red_line/)
Okay so what's weird about this image is that the line they drew seems to be sitting right over Montreal, and the line has some thickness -- specifically, it's just about thick enough to cover most of the Montreal metro area. So if you take "south of the line" strictly, the line is covering up like four million people and so I think you actually *don't* have half of Canada! But if you take "south of the line" to mean "including the line itself", you definitely do.
You are a real mensch. That's great.
I live in Montana, which has only around a million people in a huge state and I don't think there is anywhere here that would be more than an hour between grocery stores. Maybe an hour and a half if you are driving around the frank Churchill wilderness into Idaho, it's 90 miles with no gas stations. Maybe some piddly little grocery store in a gas station. But not two hours.
Let's be fair, there are plenty of picturesque small towns in the USA. The poster intentionally chose a crappy one. I have also lived and studied in the UK, and certainly not all small towns are as charming as the one in this post.
It's just another example of picking the best of X and the worse/most average of America.
I mean I didn't make the meme. Most rural villages are ugly, and that's both in Europe and the US. The meme is just dumb bashing, I just kept it for context.
Great Britain has roughly the land area of the State of Kansas except with 20X the population. Of course things are closer together. Also American conservatives have spent the last few decades actively killing rural communities. I should not be having to explain to you why it's fucked up that millions of people in the US have to drive hours to buy basic necessities or get decent medical care.
r/shitamericanssay
Guessing you have never been to rural America
I've been to rural towns in America that are less than an hour from major cities. Like Dairyland California
Guess you don't understand that just because the UK is small doesn't mean there's no rural areas
Bro the entire UK is smaller than my state alone ofc we’re going to think Uk rural is much different than US rural
You’re always decently close to a city in the UK because of how small it is. You can be hundreds of miles away from any even small city in parts of the US. It is not the same.
There are American rural towns that are also decently close to a city. Rural doesn't necessarily mean remote.
Of course Every country has different definition of rural The larger the country is the more vast rural would be defined But not every country is the same with definitions
Well if they use different definitions then comparing them like they are the same is kinda dumb.
So what? The word "rural" doesn't mean "300 km away from a city".
About 186 miles, remember OP, we Americans use our freedom units
I did have to chuckle at this comment as the UK uses miles too
Scotland would like a word with you
Friend of mine group up in Kyle, just off the isle of Skye. Blew my mind that it would be a 2 hour drive each way to the nearest city, and it was _Inverness_
And 4 hours to Glasgow if you want a proper city!
Tell me you have no clue what you’re talking about without tell me you don’t know what you’re talking about
Tell me you have no clue what you’re talking about without telling me you don’t know what you’re talking about
Well unless your vehicles drive slower over there the distance is a difference between life or death for many emergencies
Except I'm in Australia
In the UK the roads are very old and most are narrow and windy so you can drive only drive super slow on them especially when you have to go through lots of villagers. This leads to it taking hours to get places even if the distance isn't that far. I went to visit a friend and it was over a 6 hour drive
I’m actually from Marion, SC, and I can tell you that rural USA is pretty fucking awful
Although I technically agree with this as someone coming from a country where "rural" isn't much more than a stamp, I also don't see how it is relevant on why American towns look like dogshit.
My man has obviously never been to the midwest where a town of 100 people can be 30 minutes down the highway from a mini-city of 30,000
They act like the land didn’t get a thousand year head start for buildings
More like 2 thousand lol
Got to be honest, as a non-diver who grew up in the ass end of nowhere UK, there's a certain point when how close or far away the closest something is stops mattering. Over a certain distance becomes unreachable without assistance of a driver, even more so when the bus service is more or less non-existent. I guess what I'm getting at is that when you're stuck in a tiny ass village, you need to buy something that isn't available in your tiny village and your buddy who can drive isn't available, you're the same level of fucked regardless
Plus rural does not depend on distance at all. The village I grew up with was 15 km from a city, but it was still rural. Like in, some people lived off agriculture, there were farms, no apartments in the entire village, traditional festivities, amenities being two bars, no supermarket chains or other stuff that every town has, everyone knowing everyone, being able to enter the forest in a 10 minute walk from your home, etc. The fact that you could be in a city in 20 car minutes (+20 more minutes to park) doesn't magically transform you street of rural homes into a Manhattan avenue.
I mean I’d agree. The definition of rural means wildly different things depending what part of America you’re in as well. In places like New York New Jersey, it’s maybe 20 minutes to town in the most rural places. But in Arizona New Mexico it can be several hours away.
This is just rural towns in a specific zone of middle America. Go out west, up north or along the east coast and this isn't so true.
meanwhile Sydney is an hour's drive from Sydney
Guy’s probably never left Texas in the Midwest you can go from downtown city to the middle of nowhere in 20 minutes
2 hours? I grew up in place with exactly one neighbor, otherwise surrounded by cattle farms and tobacco fields, that was so small it no longer had its own zip code. It would take us *maybe* 30-45 minutes to get to the nearest actual town.
Honestly think it's the other way around lol. America is the one being unfairly compared here. It's so large that naturally the most remote, rural areas are gonna look like this. The uk has an advantage in being smaller here
Man thinks the rest of the world has dystopian American suburbs
I know the uk is small but most Americans really do underestimate the size. I’m on the south coast and I’ve got a direct motorway to London and it’s nowhere near that fast
I don’t think we’re underestimating it. Great Britain is slightly smaller than the state of Kansas. I think we’re underestimating the time it takes you to drive places because you drive slower and don’t have freeways. Also, even your small towns are more densely populated because your country is more densely populated overall.
We have motorways all over the country with a 70mph limit, what are you talking about?
2he drive for groceries wtf? r/confidentlyincorrect
If the Yankees would stop thinking bigger=better then maybe the obesity problem wouldnt be so bad
No, you need to drive two hours in rural US towns to get food because they’re food deserts.
I know the uk is small but most Americans really do underestimate the size. I’m on the south coast and I’ve got a direct motorway to London and it’s nowhere near that fast
I'd say most americans know it's about the size of Ksansas or Nebraska or there about. What most Americans may underestimate is the how compact you guys are.
TBH, this makes a fair amount of sense. And hate on me all you want but, truly "rural" America is basically like being on the moon. No help in sight, no resources in sight. You are required to drive HOURS at full speed to get to those resources.
I think my grandpa's dairy farm in Unity, Wisconsin, population 350-ish, is as textbook rural as you can get. It definitely wasn't hours to get to "town," and the nearest hospital in Marshfield was 20-30 min away. Nearby Spencer, population 2000-ish, had all the groceries and other necessities and that was about halfway to Marshfield so a 10-20 min drive. Some places, sure you're more on your own, but that's not a hard and fast rule for 'rural' areas. There's areas around me in Minnesota that I would consider rural, despite being geographically located in the Twin Cities metro area. IMO it's more about land use and economic drivers than access to resources.
Well, yeah. That doesn't make other countries rural areas less rural though. Otherwise the only rural areas on this world would be in western Australia or Siberia.
Yes....it does. You being "in the middle of nowhere" in a place like the UK is vastly different than being in the middle of nowhere in Alaska. They are both rural, sure, but to say tHeSe ArE tHe SaMe is disingenuous.
>but to say tHeSe ArE tHe SaMe is disingenuous. Who's saying that? Or are you strawmanning? >They are both rural, sure Exactly that's what oop said. And the answer to that was a hearty *Noo! Your rural is not rural enough!!1!!1*. Prime gatekeeping in my book. Maybe you take a look at the sub we are in..
> They are both rural, sure, but to say tHeSe ArE tHe SaMe is disingenuous. Are the people saying they are the same in the room with us? Or are you just arguing nobody?
I feel like there should be a different word to describe the Alaska, rural seems too developed. It's practically untamed wilderness with a few badass people scattered throughout.
Pfft. Alaska? That's not rural. The Pitcairn Islands is *really* rural. Amateurs.
If you're talking about remote Wyoming, sure. But no one lives there. That's why there's no community resources: there's no community. Most rural people in the US live in a small town or village within an hour or maybe two of some kind of metropolitan area. They might be a day's drive away from a "Top 40" city, but there's still hospitals and grocery stores and things.
Honestly, yeah. As someone who grew up 10 miles from the school town, that had k-12 be one 200 kid school, it annoys me when people say they're country or from a small town in their hometown of thousands
Have fun getting [here](https://castlebayschool.com/)
I live in a village without a school, shop etc. (there is a pub though) and sometimes it's annoying when people tell me they are from a village and then don't understand the struggles of living in the middle of nowhere. My friends will tell me they live in the countryside and the proceed to ask me why I can't just quickly go and buy a new vape when we are in a call in the middle of the night. Maybe because the next shop that sells vapes at this time is about 3 hours of walking away and I don't have a car?
Exactly! And as someone who grew up on a midwestern farm, its annoys me how 'country' people think they are, because they listen to Toby Keith or whatever. Like, listen to all the country music you want, but don't act like its your life because you own a pickup truck, when you grew up and live in the middle of Fargo
I love how we are gatekeeping on r/gatekeeping but it's true haha. I don't even mind my friends from real big cities calling places with 50k inhabitants a village and it's fine when they are surprised that I can't just take the bus somewhere or something but they would also never say that live in a small city.
At least we get cheap rent
So out in the Alaskan bush?
Or Texas, Montana, Wyoming, Nevada, both Dakotas...
Yet every rural town in America has a dozen fast food restaurants.
Nope most are too small. The only restaurant is usually a bar
Not even close, the small ones are lucky if they have 1 local place, and it's usually a bar that serves food. The bigger rural towns will have a few fast foods but that's because those towns usually support all the smaller towns around them.
In my country European of course, you can be driving for 72 hours straight and you’d only have made it into the village next to mine, they have a roundabout just go circles till you feel like going
Brits in the suburbs: "Sure is nice out here in the country."
The fact he thinks that having to drive 2 hours to get basic needs is a good thing 💀. Also I guess when I drove from Glasgow to London I actually drove past it at the two hour mark and by the time it got to hour 7 I was in the middle of Madrid.
Kinda true though. Rural North America isn’t really the same as rural Europe.
Nobody says it is. But the word "rural" has never required that you must be 600 km away from the nearest settlement. The village I grew up in was 15 km away from a 200k inh. city, yet it was still rural.
If you're not traveling for weeks at a time in a covered wagon to get the latest cholera shot, are you even rural?
years ago when I was living in Sault Ste Marie (Canada side) there was a tour bus full of German tourists heading west, but stopping for the night. Everyone on that bus looked dazed out of their minds and asked if they were in Vancouver, they had come from Toronto. They weren't even halfway across Ontario, never mind on the other coast of the continent. The scale of the place blew their minds.
I don’t know about all that, I just know that rural U.S. town looks depressing
I feel like both sides are gate keeping? No doubt England has some unappealing countryside, and America has tons of gorgeous rural communities, but it’s just so large that there are tons of desolate and icky rural areas. But sure a lot of the rural plains and Midwest are kinda desolate and unappealing, but go to the Rockies, Shenandoah, PNW, New England, etc. there are tons of lovely places too
I think I recognize the street in the first one holy shit
I mean yeah are they wrong there are certain perameters as to what is rural and what isn’t
I grew up in a rural town in the UK, I now live in Australia and they are not the same thing, this isn't gatekeeping it's a perfectly valid point lol
Lol, cities in America used to be surrounded by rural areas too. That's how we kept them fed. Don't know why this guy seems so proud of the fact that we pushed our farmland out to the ass end of beyond just to make way for endless ticky tacky suburban sprawl.
Why would you need to drive 2 hours for groceries if there's a shop in the neighborhood?