This rural din has shattered my urban idyll

"You're moving to where?" they asked as I packed up. They all thought I was mad - but I pointed out I was just one of the many people who had decided that city life was no longer worth the hassle.

I was following a dream, one where cows grazed in the fields and farmers dropped by pints of milk and eggs on your doorstep. "I want peace and quiet," I said. "I want an easier life." "Ha!" my friends said. "That doesn't exist."

Nine years on I have to concede that they have a point. I am not surprised to find out that a new national Tranquillity Map, based on research from Newcastle and Northumbria University, has found there is little of the stuff left.

Apparently, it's only possible to find real peace in Dartmoor, Exmoor and parts of Cumbria, Northumberland and Yorkshire.

Even that depends on what you class as being tranquil. I have been attacked by marauding ponies trying to nick my sandwiches on Dartmoor. And you can barely walk up a hillock in Cumbria without finding sets of youths yomping up behind you.

Officially I live in an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, yet it's so noisy. Cars tear down my country lane, aeroplanes fly over constantly, lorries thunder past.

Even the natural sounds can be annoying - barking dogs, grunting deer and a cockerel across the way which crows from dawn until dusk.

Every day is an assault on the senses - the groan of hedge cutters, tractors, sewage lorries, men in vans going too fast, boy racers, yummy mummies in their 4x4s. On Sundays we can barely move for ramblers, who all discuss their routes slap-bang underneath my bedroom window. And I can't walk out of my door without being accosted by a friendly neighbour who wants to talk about the planned rerouting of a footpath.

Yet every so often we are told that the majority of city dwellers are desperate to downsize and move to the country. Now I wonder why. In London at least you can walk to the shops, to see friends, to go out to eat. Here we all drive. London has its own tranquillity: everyone studiously ignores each other.

Of course, with three children (all boys) who make vast amounts of noise themselves, I never expected to find a tranquil nirvana. But I believed that the space and peace the countryside could offer us would offset all that.

It didn't. Perhaps finding tranquillity is more about your own life and state of mind: where you live doesn't, in fact, make much difference, especially if your life is as noisy as mine.

I may have the cows, eggs and milk aplenty - that doesn't mean life is idyllic. To be honest, I think I had more peace and quiet when I lived in Kentish Town.