Cos we’re at fucking work, or having to do housework or shopping, for some getting a woodland area could be over an hour’s drive.
Eastern_Seaweed_8253 on
Three hours a week out in nature. Yeh right.
Cue all the boomers who have a 750k bungalow on the outskirts of a rural village tutting at the youth of today.
I had a 60yr career filing accounts and supported my 3 kids with it. Dont hear me moaning.
Yeh cause now we have Excel to do your job your whole career is dwarfed by a school leaver who has used Excel for 5 minutes.
ratttertintattertins on
About 10 hours for me, didn’t realise I was such an outlier.
Tim-Sanchez on
This is quite depressing when it counts gardens and parks as nature. I’m not doubting it’s true and I understand the reasons why, but it’s definitely sad.
If I didn’t include gardens and parks I’d definitely be below 3 hours spent in “wild” nature.
The_Book_Rat on
[ Removed by Reddit ]
saintedward on
Wake up
See wife off to work
Give kids breakfast
Get kids dressed
Take big child to preschool
Take small child to childminder
Go back home
Put washing out
Wash up
Make dinner ready for the evening
Leave for work 1040
Work 11:00-19:30
Home ~19:40
Kids bedtime
Back downstairs
Have dinner
See wife to bed
Back downstairs
Wash up
Washing on
Make 3x lunchboxes
Have a quick tidy
Take out compost
Shower
Go to sleep
Repeat 5x days
BigBeanMarketing on
Thoroughly recommend joining a walking group in your local area. My local (Stag Walkers) are really good, I used to do a weekly three – five hour hike with them on a Saturday/Sunday morning, or sometimes on a weekday evening. There are some fantastic hiking trails to follow all throughout the countryside, and it’s a great way to make new friends.
Worldly_Client_7614 on
Sad to say but most adultsI know just want to drink, stay at home or go to live events rather than just enjoy the local area.
I suppose decades of telling kids to not enjoy the surrounding area has probably conditioned them as adults to not enjoy it as much.
Ambitious-Elk-3350 on
I don’t live near any bloody nature. I have wasteland, brownfield and a six lane carriageway. Public transport doesn’t go near any ‘nature’.
I know what it’s like to live amongst woods and parks. And what it’s like in miserable concrete hell.
Government can fuck off with their finger wagging.
goldenhawkes on
Weekends are currently mostly DIY rather than going out in nature, and even if the garden counts as nature it’s currently not very usable (as we’re spending weekends doing inside DIY not outside DIY) so we don’t spend much time out there…
SeoulGalmegi on
Here’s me thinking three hours a week sounds quite long.
anonnymouse2025 on
What percentage of those don’t feel safe out on their own wandering about the woods?
Rich_Ball_21 on
It’s because other people are there. I hate other people.
LyingFacts on
Lol. Between working and being worried whether can afford toilet roll to wipe our arses then yes being out in nature is low on the priorities for most these days.
Larrypants1 on
This is a really interesting headline, because it also means the opposite. Half of UK adults spend at least three hours a week in nature. I get why papers go for the doom and gloom aspect but it’s a shame
It is bloody hard to get out in nature with our solitary lives, and on a week like this week I would imagine a lot more people are able to with such a lovely bank holiday weekend
Lynvor on
Last night I was looking up 2 nights in the lake district for about 6 weeks from now for one person and some places were pushing £700.
3 hours seems pretty high.
ravntheraven on
I’m fortunately placed because there’s lots of nature reserves around me. Most people aren’t so fortunate or else they work too much to even be able to think about getting into nature. This world we live in isn’t fucking normal. We shouldn’t be living like this.
Dull_Worth1227 on
Whats so great about outside? We have spent thousands of years trying to make inside to avoid outside!
shauneok on
I’m lucky, I live just north of Birmingham so I’m a stones throw from Cannock Chase AONB. When I get the motivation that’s where the dogs get walked
hotchy1 on
Best thing about having a dog, youve no choice but to go outside. Plus id feel a bit wierd walking myself in the woods without a dog.
thecockmeister on
I work out in the countryside, unless the site happens to be in an urban area, so easily spend 35 hours a week out in all weathers. It’s really nice when it’s good going, but come winter it’s a shitshow or right now and it’s unbearable.
Tend to spend the weekend hiding indoors, unless I’ve been stuck in the office during the week and then I usually try to get up in the nearby hills for some fresh air. Did try to take up running last year but couldn’t be fucked after a day on site, and then when I was in the office and had the energy ended up fucking my knee so stopped.
Sunshinetrooper87 on
What annoys me is that nature is promoted as some great healer and fantastic for mental health and I’m around it all the time and I’m fucking nuttier than the combined squirrel’s nuts at a squirrel gang bang.
crowwreak on
Because we’re working 40 hours a week for shit pay
hutchyconquerer on
Not a popular opinion. People in the UK take work way too seriously. Life revolves around work. I used to be like that until someone told me I take work too seriously. Prioritizing work over a doctor’s appointment or working when sick. I genuinely think it’s so draining that folks just cba to do anything when they have a few hours to burn.
LargeLetter1 on
Kind of a weird thing to make a thing?
It felt like it rained every day for two months at the start of the year. It gets dark before most people have finished work for half the year.
Once you factor in work/life/kids 3 hours around like alot?
mrafinch on
That’s a shame. Even an hour in the evening around the woods can do so much for your mental health.
no_good_usrname_left on
Forestry commission arnt exactly helping. All their sites near me have recently had parking charges introduced and what little facilities they did have, have been removed. We still go out in nature, but only what is in walking distance of leaving the house
bacon_cake on
I’m sure other local councils are not as good as ours but I’m firmly in the >3hrs camp and I must say; shout out to my local council for maintaining some excellent outdoor spaces.
We’re fairly firmly in suburbia here and yet there’s no shortage of local parks, nature reserves, and outdoor spaces.
BronnOP on
Out in nature? My energy bill is going up £112 this year despite us cutting back.
Council tax went up once again.
My mortgage is going up by a few hundred as well, despite buying my first house and fixing for two years at 5.2% because all the experts assured me it’d be cheaper in two years. Here I am, two years later, with my interest rate going up again.
My food bill is ever increasing, with takeaways becoming a birthday luxury.
Netflix, Amazon, Disney+ etc were all cut years ago because they were too expensive.
What time do I have to be out in nature when I need to work overtime to pay for these ever increasing prices? And the time I do have, I’d actually quite like to enjoy the home I’m now paying out the arse for. Especially when the closest actual nature is a decent drive.
HendersonsFineRelish on
What nature?
I spend a lot of time in the Dales, the Moors, the Lakes, and the Highlands, all of which are man-made through centuries of deforestation, hunting the local fauna to extinction, and carefully curated game preserves so that people too lazy for real hunting can shoot the slowest, fattest, dumbest birds they can find.
If someone could point me to some actual nature instead, that’d be lovely.
Glittering_Vast938 on
It’s probably less than that!
There’s hardly anywhere to walk that isn’t fenced off with keep out signs.
Some of the Public Rights of Way aren’t maintained properly by landowners and overgrown, barbed wire strung across stiles and thick deep mud in winter with cattle feeding troughs placed right next to the path.
Most woodlands are privately owned.
Nature reserves are often difficult to get to without a car.
No_North_8484 on
There isn’t much ‘nature’ in the UK. Most of it is industrial animal production, industrial forestry production, industrial crop production, industrial industry, or shopping.
Whole-Strawberry3281 on
In surprised the other half do. 3 hours is quite a lot when it’s dark by the time I get home, and my nature is a park full of spice heads. I guess weekends I could go for a longer walk
ox- on
Get dogs on a fucking lead permanently or muzzles, I am sick of being attacked “by the bestest wittle boy in the world”. 4 hours in hospital last time.
A bunch of fat lazy terminally online Redditors manufacturing bullshit reasons why they can’t leave their man cave for more than 3 hours a week to get some fresh air and exercise.
Dannyjw1 on
1. It’s too damn hot.
2. The video games are inside.
Deervember on
People should check out their local parkrun, it’s every Saturday 9am and you can walk it. They’re all usually located in nice parks/woodland areas.
Sunday is the kids version which is a 2k run.
It’ll help get you out the house, socialisng and benefit your health with exercise, sunlight and fresh air.
It’s pretty surprising people think they need to drive an hour to get into nature, In reality you’re probably 10 minutes away.
Even in London there’s thousands of parks and nature, and that’s the most jam-packed city in the UK. I think people just like to make excuses to not go outside.
YakOverall15 on
It can stay that way for all I care. I go to nature to get away from humans, and the ones I do see say hello if you walk by.
Everyone needs to get out more, but I’m quite happy if the scumbags stay inside watching tv and drinking their Stellas
appletinicyclone on
If the UK was set up the way it should have been we would have changed to part time work hours (Dutch did this) but using AI and automation productivity gains got full time income.
We would have remote work as a standard and hybrid for companies that need in person presence. Commercial Real estate space and urban planning and infrastructure projects to build up the spine of the uk so not everything is London centric. Make London into a mix of classic urban design solar punk parks and futurism meets classic tourist London culture capital.
I still feel like there’s a lot we can do but it will take 20 years of cooperation and a government that isn’t short termist and probably a crushing of right wing rags and social media for some time so that it can actually happen
If you look at how Singapore started off they did a lot of stuff at the very beginning right wingers would never allow
Their model is hardly perfect, LKY is quite racist and their GDP trick is because of lots of Malaysian workers coming in each day to supplant the city state.
But there’s something in this all that can be worked with
Then you could get your outdoorsy nature stuff
c64z86 on
Everyone loves to blame work for the reason why they can’t be out in nature, but when they do get the time off it’s spent lounging in front of the sofa while waiting for their deliveroo and just eats.
And the only garden they have is concreted over to hell and back just for somewhere to park their ford audi. Not to mention the inside of many houses now which is just bland copy paste monotone crappy look without a hint of soul or colour anywhere.
Look if that’s what you love to do then fine, but if the park or seaside is only a few minutes walk away and you still complain there isn’t enough time to go to it yet you still have all the time in the world for Netflix, then that’s on you sorry.
I’ve long suspected that we’ve devolved into a nation of “can’t be bothered”. We will happily bend over to take more hours from the boss yet yet can’t be bothered to look after our own health and wellbeing.
Work isn’t just work for you lot, it’s your convient cop out excuse. And for what? Just so you can afford a few more hours in front of the TV binging your face off while the kids scream the place down out of boredom?
What a fricking crappy life we lead. No wonder why everything is grey and brown.
MissGraceRose on
Until very recently I was lucky enough to be in a relationship that meant my time in natural areas massively increased and it did wonders for my mental health. I got to experience a lot of places, pretty regularly, that otherwise were quite inaccessible for me.
That relationship has now ended and as well as the normal kind of heartache, I’m really going to miss getting to spend so much time in nature. It will require a lot more time and effort to get to places, and it’s going to be faaaar less often. I think people who don’t experience it don’t realise how beneficial it can be once you have it
42 Comments
Cos we’re at fucking work, or having to do housework or shopping, for some getting a woodland area could be over an hour’s drive.
Three hours a week out in nature. Yeh right.
Cue all the boomers who have a 750k bungalow on the outskirts of a rural village tutting at the youth of today.
I had a 60yr career filing accounts and supported my 3 kids with it. Dont hear me moaning.
Yeh cause now we have Excel to do your job your whole career is dwarfed by a school leaver who has used Excel for 5 minutes.
About 10 hours for me, didn’t realise I was such an outlier.
This is quite depressing when it counts gardens and parks as nature. I’m not doubting it’s true and I understand the reasons why, but it’s definitely sad.
If I didn’t include gardens and parks I’d definitely be below 3 hours spent in “wild” nature.
[ Removed by Reddit ]
Wake up
See wife off to work
Give kids breakfast
Get kids dressed
Take big child to preschool
Take small child to childminder
Go back home
Put washing out
Wash up
Make dinner ready for the evening
Leave for work 1040
Work 11:00-19:30
Home ~19:40
Kids bedtime
Back downstairs
Have dinner
See wife to bed
Back downstairs
Wash up
Washing on
Make 3x lunchboxes
Have a quick tidy
Take out compost
Shower
Go to sleep
Repeat 5x days
Thoroughly recommend joining a walking group in your local area. My local (Stag Walkers) are really good, I used to do a weekly three – five hour hike with them on a Saturday/Sunday morning, or sometimes on a weekday evening. There are some fantastic hiking trails to follow all throughout the countryside, and it’s a great way to make new friends.
Sad to say but most adultsI know just want to drink, stay at home or go to live events rather than just enjoy the local area.
I suppose decades of telling kids to not enjoy the surrounding area has probably conditioned them as adults to not enjoy it as much.
I don’t live near any bloody nature. I have wasteland, brownfield and a six lane carriageway. Public transport doesn’t go near any ‘nature’.
I know what it’s like to live amongst woods and parks. And what it’s like in miserable concrete hell.
Government can fuck off with their finger wagging.
Weekends are currently mostly DIY rather than going out in nature, and even if the garden counts as nature it’s currently not very usable (as we’re spending weekends doing inside DIY not outside DIY) so we don’t spend much time out there…
Here’s me thinking three hours a week sounds quite long.
What percentage of those don’t feel safe out on their own wandering about the woods?
It’s because other people are there. I hate other people.
Lol. Between working and being worried whether can afford toilet roll to wipe our arses then yes being out in nature is low on the priorities for most these days.
This is a really interesting headline, because it also means the opposite. Half of UK adults spend at least three hours a week in nature. I get why papers go for the doom and gloom aspect but it’s a shame
It is bloody hard to get out in nature with our solitary lives, and on a week like this week I would imagine a lot more people are able to with such a lovely bank holiday weekend
Last night I was looking up 2 nights in the lake district for about 6 weeks from now for one person and some places were pushing £700.
3 hours seems pretty high.
I’m fortunately placed because there’s lots of nature reserves around me. Most people aren’t so fortunate or else they work too much to even be able to think about getting into nature. This world we live in isn’t fucking normal. We shouldn’t be living like this.
Whats so great about outside? We have spent thousands of years trying to make inside to avoid outside!
I’m lucky, I live just north of Birmingham so I’m a stones throw from Cannock Chase AONB. When I get the motivation that’s where the dogs get walked
Best thing about having a dog, youve no choice but to go outside. Plus id feel a bit wierd walking myself in the woods without a dog.
I work out in the countryside, unless the site happens to be in an urban area, so easily spend 35 hours a week out in all weathers. It’s really nice when it’s good going, but come winter it’s a shitshow or right now and it’s unbearable.
Tend to spend the weekend hiding indoors, unless I’ve been stuck in the office during the week and then I usually try to get up in the nearby hills for some fresh air. Did try to take up running last year but couldn’t be fucked after a day on site, and then when I was in the office and had the energy ended up fucking my knee so stopped.
What annoys me is that nature is promoted as some great healer and fantastic for mental health and I’m around it all the time and I’m fucking nuttier than the combined squirrel’s nuts at a squirrel gang bang.
Because we’re working 40 hours a week for shit pay
Not a popular opinion. People in the UK take work way too seriously. Life revolves around work. I used to be like that until someone told me I take work too seriously. Prioritizing work over a doctor’s appointment or working when sick. I genuinely think it’s so draining that folks just cba to do anything when they have a few hours to burn.
Kind of a weird thing to make a thing?
It felt like it rained every day for two months at the start of the year. It gets dark before most people have finished work for half the year.
Once you factor in work/life/kids 3 hours around like alot?
That’s a shame. Even an hour in the evening around the woods can do so much for your mental health.
Forestry commission arnt exactly helping. All their sites near me have recently had parking charges introduced and what little facilities they did have, have been removed. We still go out in nature, but only what is in walking distance of leaving the house
I’m sure other local councils are not as good as ours but I’m firmly in the >3hrs camp and I must say; shout out to my local council for maintaining some excellent outdoor spaces.
We’re fairly firmly in suburbia here and yet there’s no shortage of local parks, nature reserves, and outdoor spaces.
Out in nature? My energy bill is going up £112 this year despite us cutting back.
Council tax went up once again.
My mortgage is going up by a few hundred as well, despite buying my first house and fixing for two years at 5.2% because all the experts assured me it’d be cheaper in two years. Here I am, two years later, with my interest rate going up again.
My food bill is ever increasing, with takeaways becoming a birthday luxury.
Netflix, Amazon, Disney+ etc were all cut years ago because they were too expensive.
What time do I have to be out in nature when I need to work overtime to pay for these ever increasing prices? And the time I do have, I’d actually quite like to enjoy the home I’m now paying out the arse for. Especially when the closest actual nature is a decent drive.
What nature?
I spend a lot of time in the Dales, the Moors, the Lakes, and the Highlands, all of which are man-made through centuries of deforestation, hunting the local fauna to extinction, and carefully curated game preserves so that people too lazy for real hunting can shoot the slowest, fattest, dumbest birds they can find.
If someone could point me to some actual nature instead, that’d be lovely.
It’s probably less than that!
There’s hardly anywhere to walk that isn’t fenced off with keep out signs.
Some of the Public Rights of Way aren’t maintained properly by landowners and overgrown, barbed wire strung across stiles and thick deep mud in winter with cattle feeding troughs placed right next to the path.
Most woodlands are privately owned.
Nature reserves are often difficult to get to without a car.
There isn’t much ‘nature’ in the UK. Most of it is industrial animal production, industrial forestry production, industrial crop production, industrial industry, or shopping.
In surprised the other half do. 3 hours is quite a lot when it’s dark by the time I get home, and my nature is a park full of spice heads. I guess weekends I could go for a longer walk
Get dogs on a fucking lead permanently or muzzles, I am sick of being attacked “by the bestest wittle boy in the world”. 4 hours in hospital last time.
Interestingly, a few seconds of scrolling took me to https://www.reddit.com/r/unitedkingdom/s/7yV4U0bNcL, that perhaps underlines the problem.
This thread is genuinely hilarious.
A bunch of fat lazy terminally online Redditors manufacturing bullshit reasons why they can’t leave their man cave for more than 3 hours a week to get some fresh air and exercise.
1. It’s too damn hot.
2. The video games are inside.
People should check out their local parkrun, it’s every Saturday 9am and you can walk it. They’re all usually located in nice parks/woodland areas.
Sunday is the kids version which is a 2k run.
It’ll help get you out the house, socialisng and benefit your health with exercise, sunlight and fresh air.
It’s pretty surprising people think they need to drive an hour to get into nature, In reality you’re probably 10 minutes away.
Even in London there’s thousands of parks and nature, and that’s the most jam-packed city in the UK. I think people just like to make excuses to not go outside.
It can stay that way for all I care. I go to nature to get away from humans, and the ones I do see say hello if you walk by.
Everyone needs to get out more, but I’m quite happy if the scumbags stay inside watching tv and drinking their Stellas
If the UK was set up the way it should have been we would have changed to part time work hours (Dutch did this) but using AI and automation productivity gains got full time income.
We would have remote work as a standard and hybrid for companies that need in person presence. Commercial Real estate space and urban planning and infrastructure projects to build up the spine of the uk so not everything is London centric. Make London into a mix of classic urban design solar punk parks and futurism meets classic tourist London culture capital.
I still feel like there’s a lot we can do but it will take 20 years of cooperation and a government that isn’t short termist and probably a crushing of right wing rags and social media for some time so that it can actually happen
If you look at how Singapore started off they did a lot of stuff at the very beginning right wingers would never allow
Their model is hardly perfect, LKY is quite racist and their GDP trick is because of lots of Malaysian workers coming in each day to supplant the city state.
But there’s something in this all that can be worked with
Then you could get your outdoorsy nature stuff
Everyone loves to blame work for the reason why they can’t be out in nature, but when they do get the time off it’s spent lounging in front of the sofa while waiting for their deliveroo and just eats.
And the only garden they have is concreted over to hell and back just for somewhere to park their ford audi. Not to mention the inside of many houses now which is just bland copy paste monotone crappy look without a hint of soul or colour anywhere.
Look if that’s what you love to do then fine, but if the park or seaside is only a few minutes walk away and you still complain there isn’t enough time to go to it yet you still have all the time in the world for Netflix, then that’s on you sorry.
I’ve long suspected that we’ve devolved into a nation of “can’t be bothered”. We will happily bend over to take more hours from the boss yet yet can’t be bothered to look after our own health and wellbeing.
Work isn’t just work for you lot, it’s your convient cop out excuse. And for what? Just so you can afford a few more hours in front of the TV binging your face off while the kids scream the place down out of boredom?
What a fricking crappy life we lead. No wonder why everything is grey and brown.
Until very recently I was lucky enough to be in a relationship that meant my time in natural areas massively increased and it did wonders for my mental health. I got to experience a lot of places, pretty regularly, that otherwise were quite inaccessible for me.
That relationship has now ended and as well as the normal kind of heartache, I’m really going to miss getting to spend so much time in nature. It will require a lot more time and effort to get to places, and it’s going to be faaaar less often. I think people who don’t experience it don’t realise how beneficial it can be once you have it