Many urbanites fantasise about life in the country - but it's not for everyone. Anne Dempsey meets a woman who tried it and fled - and a family who headed west and found their dream

Two years ago when physiotherapist Aine O'Neill and her partner went house hunting around south county Dublin they were dismayed to see how little bang they could get for their buck.

"We were renting in Dalkey where Cormac worked from home and I worked in Glasthule," says O'Neill. "We were disillusioned at the tiny places available locally. Looking further out, every five miles south seemed to buy an extra bedroom."

They finally fetched up in Rathdrum, Co Wicklow, spending €241,000 on a 10-year-old family home in a large garden, about half of what they would have paid for an equivalent home in Dalkey. They redecorated and moved in on November 2003, but their first house was never destined to be home sweet home.

"It was too far away from everything we enjoy," she says. "We love the theatre, cinema, meeting friends, eating out, we are very social. Living in Wicklow proved to be just too far out.

"If we wanted to go out after work we had to stay on in town. It got that I carried a suitcase in the car so that I could change after work, and stayed over with friends, or my in-laws, or we stayed over together.

"It took the spontaneity out of things. You couldn't decide at eight o'clock to catch a film, people couldn't pop in, everything had to be very planned and deliberate.

"Another amenity I missed was walking. I could walk in the evening around Dalkey because the area is lit and there are people about. In Wicklow, many roads are unlit. Avondale was nearby but you didn't feel safe walking there on your own, even in daylight.

"Also, our road in Dalkey was quiet and mature, in Rathdrum we were surrounded by young families, so it was noisier than we had anticipated!"

They lasted a year before deciding to move back. O'Neill, who hadn't previously considered apartment living, fell in love with a three-bed penthouse in a new development in Cabinteely with its own swimming pool and leisure centre.

They sold the Rathdrum house for €286,000, paying over €400,000 for their new home, a big hike to the mortgage. "But I had opened my own physiotherapy practice and reckoned I could work extra hours. We also felt we would save on petrol, we convinced ourselves!"

They moved in February and have never looked back. "We love it. There is no maintenance, it's very quiet, it's so easy, convenient to everything, workwise, it's 15 minutes' away, and friends can drop in as before.

"Having said that, we don't consider the last year a waste of time. It helped us know what we want and don't want. We got the bigger house, but we found we didn't need the space, and that country living is not for me."