In her former life, Penny Power was living the executive London lifestyle as sales and marketing director for a large IT firm.

But when she became pregnant with her first child, Penny and her husband downsized by swapping big city lights for the quieter environs of Farnham in Surrey. It was six years and three children later before she worked again.

Penny says: 'I always said that if I had children I would stay at home with them, so as soon as I found out I was pregnant I knew I'd need to give up work. I loved the experience of having a baby, but there were downsides.

'Generally when you go through life you don't have to be proactive about finding friendships. But for the first time in my life, I was at home with no friends around. Some people I did see seemed to talk down to me, and I found the adjustment very hard and isolating.'

So hard that a year after the birth of her second child, Penny booked an appointment with her GP to talk about the possibility that she had post-natal depression. Her doctor saw through her situation and suggested she was bored and lacking in stimulation rather than depressed.

Gradually, Penny began bringing back some excitement into her life by creating a coffee networking group for mothers in her area. It was her first, formative, experience of running a social networking event.

After the birth of their third child in 1997, Penny's husband became self-employed and also began to feel isolated and lonely with the absence of a lively office environment.

So began an idea: realising many other self-employed people were in the same situation – and six years before the phrase 'social networking' was even coined – Penny set up a networking website for entrepreneurs.

Eight years later, www.ecademy.com clocks 40 million hits a month and boasts 109,000 members and counting. Penny explains: 'Setting up the business brought stimulation to my life, a sense of purpose, and contact with other people. It has also given me the opportunity to try new things like neuro linguistic programming courses.'

'I missed the buzz'
Sarah Wolf, whose background was in PR, also struggled with the change of scene and tempo when she and her husband downsized from London to Somerset four years ago.

Sarah explained: 'Life in the countryside wasn't all it was cracked up to be - I missed going out after work, I missed being able to buy presents in my lunch hour and more than anything I missed the buzz of working in a big office with loads of creatives.'

Sarah took a succession of temporary jobs when she was expecting her daughter before coming to the conclusion that she would only find the scope and stimulation she craved by setting up on her own.

'I'm only 32 – I don't want to stop yet! It's not that I want to live in a big city, but I just can't sit around and talk about finger painting all day. I'm ambitious and I need to keep my brain busy.'

She launched her own PR company, Diablo PR, and has never looked back. 'The business allows me to get out and about – meeting clients and helping people run press offices at shows', she says.

'We don't have a good shopping area'
For Louise Marshall and Leah Bryant the problem wasn't boredom - it was just that they no longer had access to aspects of city living that they once took for granted.

The pair decided to carve a city-style business from their rural Buckinghamshire base after meeting at their children's school. They bonded immediately over a shared love of handbags and shoes and set up their business, All the Trimmings, in 2004.

Louise says: 'We bought a few bags and started throwing some house parties. The parties were such a success that within two weeks of the first one we had constructed our own website,
www.all-the-trimmings.co.uk and had a fully fledged business selling handbags, and now shoes.

'Having the business has brought back some sanity. I'm not really comfortable with the whole welly-brigade thing, and doing this makes you feel like a grown up. We don't have a good shopping area less than 30 minutes away. And that's what we like – the fact that we can bring people a little slice of city life in their rural lives.'

All of which perhaps goes to show that despite the drawbacks of downshifting (lack of a social network, boredom, fewer excuses for retail therapy), the countryside can have unexpected plus points that none of these women would have anticipated.

'I would never want to go back to London now', sums up Sarah Wolf. 'Despite its limitations, the countryside is a fantastic place for children to grow up with the added bonus that, with the business up and running, my daughter has a fulfilled mother too.'

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