I typed out a whole I see both sides/both are great comment but then thought why bother? But I am off to drink wine on my porch!

The point that I was making is that I live with mountains close by.. I didn't in England. I would be leaving the country to go to the Alps, whereas now I can take a 10 min drive and walk the dog up one!

This therefore makes the outdoors lifestyle better in my case.

Ahhh, in YOUR case.

You don't do it in the UK because someone would nick your table and chairs!

No I don't, but nothing wrong if you do. We live about 20 mins from Galway now and it's quite rural with roughly 15 houses along the street. Most plots are around 0.5 acres and plenty of fields around.

So you aren't in the UK then.

Good point

Didn't think we were talking about the view

Given that the OP hasn't returned to the thread, I'll stick with my original reaction - rather than my comments - which was/is : have you visited/spent any time in the area of Canada which you are thinking of moving to??

(Okay, I can't resist a comment ! ) :
I'm what is usually described as an "outdoorsy" sort of person. I've been here a while. I have to say that I probably profit from/enjoy the "outdoors" lifestyle a lot less in Canada than I did elsewhere in the world. When it gets to below -20, very few outdoor activities are fun for more than a very short time, cost more, require significant travel time/preparation.

Space/house size? I'll wait until the OP comes back to comment.

In London we had a "nice" house of about 1800sq ft including the integral garage. Here we have a crappy house with about 3500sq ft and a 3/4 acre plot. Personally I prefer it here. It's all about what you want. Year by year we're improving our house and gardens. In London we'd reached the point where changing the toilet roll was considers renovations! If you put our house and grounds into a SW London context it would be worth (guessing) about £1.5 - 2 million.

But we don't live in SW London any more - so it depends entirely on what your priorities are and what you want out of life.

Only come to Canada if it is because you really want to and you're sure of your convictions. As many have said on here before - it's not a utopia that makes everything that's wrong with the UK better, it's just a different place.

For us it works pretty well; for some, not so much.

Good luck though......