I have a lovely balcony and secluded garden, but I've mostly given up trying to work out there. Even if the sounds of constant renovation stop for a minute, there's always something else, or a beep-beep-beep of reversing lorries on the street above.
This is admittedly one of my big drivers for getting out of suburbia.
We live far from suburbia. But we’re under a flight path to Luton for half the day (unless the wind is strong from the East, then it’s all day). And about half a mile from a dual carriageway that was ok until the cheapskates chip-and-sealed it. Plus kids from 5 doors down, barking dogs, garden machinery.
You’ll need your own estate of several acres, and hope no bastard puts a useless rail link (HS2, that’s you) through it.
Our first place in London was a flat in West Ealing backing onto the main west coast rail line. You learned to hold your conversation every few minutes as an intercity roared past the bottom of the garden, about 25 metres from our living room. The main benefit was that you couldn't hear the Heathrow flight path directly overhead. You also couldn't really close the window because it turned out the place was damper than a swamp. We beat a fast retreat to the relatively tranquil confines of Shepherd's Bush (and third floor, where the damp really would have needed to be aspirational to climb that high).
Our last house had a branch line (between Crystal Palace and Birkbeck) at the bottom of the garden but the trains only trundled by at London speeds. That was oddly soothing. Till they did the track maintenance, that giant track bed whomping machine scares the hell out of you the first time it starts up outside your bedroom window at 3 am. I think they're supposed to let you know when they're going to do overnight maintenance. They never, ever do, preferring the element of nocturnal terror. Sometimes you'd hear the steady approach, as it tamped it's what from Crystal Palace, like some lead-footed brontosaurus on a mission to keep you awake till dawn.
There's a train line through the valley here, though mostly quiet, it's just the endless sound of suburban home improvements which never ever seems to stop (I know I'm being hypocritical, we had The Asbestos Palace refurbished when we moved here).
Still, visiting friends recently, who have places out in the country, and oh the blessed silence in their gardens. Here when the daytime symphony of refurbishment finishes, it's the mad cackle of the barky dog lady (she walks the dogs about 875 times a day and all they do is bark* and endless deliveries (beep beep beep as they try to get down the narrow lane).
*on the plus side, she always walks a cat that thinks it's a dog.
