Is the Lake District a good place to live?
We've written extensively about the national parks of the UK, and our research led us to conclude that the most popular national park by far is the Lake District. The data from the official Lake District authority estimates that around 15.8 million visitors come to the Lake District every year - pretty crazy.
So we all know that the Lake District is a great place to head on holiday, but what about living there? We conducted our own research to see if people actually enjoyed living in the Lake District, let's look at the statistics:
What does the /r/LakeDistrict subreddit on Reddit say?
One of the great things about Reddit is that you can find bustling communities dedicated to just about anything. We were still quite surprised however to find a very active subreddit dedicated to the Lake District with more than 3000 members, /r/LakeDistrict. One of the great things about submitting a poll to a community like this on Reddit is that everything is anonymous, so you get genuine answers. We asked this community a simple question - 'is the Lake District a good place to live?'. As you can see from the screenshot above, the results were pretty conclusive, but as an overview:
- 40 of 84 voters (47.6%) said 'Yes - no question'
- 35 of 84 voters said 'Most of the time it's good'
- 6 of 84 voters said 'Most of the time it's bad'
- Only 3 out of 84 said 'No - no question'
So it's pretty clear to see that the majority of people living in the Lake District think it's a good place to live most of the time.
Did anybody mention anything else?
The poll was pretty conclusive, but a few users were extra helpful and explained their thinking behind their vote. For example, this user explains how despite voting that most of the time the Lake District is a good place to live, it has changed for the worse in recent years:
Another user backed up what this user was saying about how things have changed, and also mentioned the influx of holiday home and student accommodation which has changed the feel of the area:
The feedback was really insightful and useful and we highly recommend you read all of the replies on the Lake District subreddit.
For the sake of balance, we'll include a screenshot of one comment which was very negative about living in the Lake District:
This comment didn't have as many upvotes as the more positive comments under our poll so we're pretty sure it doesn't reflect the opinion of the majority of people living in the Lake District.
Final thoughts
So the poll we conducted was pretty conclusive and suggests that most people are happy to live in the Lake District most of the time. However, it is clear from the comments that a number of users have noted how the area has changed for the worse over the years as the number of holiday houses and students has increased.
Finn H
Finn is the editor of You Well and has been writing about travel, health, and more for over 10 years.