Just 4 hours from Gogger Ranch. But where is Gogger Ranch?!

Why listings do this

"Twenty minutes to the lake." "Four hours from the ranch." "Close to everything." Rural listings are written by people who live there, for people who they assume also live there, and the landmarks they reach for are the ones that organise their own week.

It is not usually dishonest. It is just useless to anyone standing outside the valley, and it quietly skips the distances that will actually shape your days.

The five drives that decide it

Forget the ranch. These are the ones that matter, and every one of them is worth a number before you make an offer.

• The hospital

  Not the clinic — the hospital with an emergency department. Find out which one you would actually be taken to, and how far that is.

• A full grocery shop

  A corner store is not a grocery run. Time the trip to the shop where you would do a proper week's worth.

• The pharmacy

  Including what happens on a Sunday, and whether it delivers.

• The airport with scheduled flights

  The one family would actually fly into, which is rarely the nearest strip of tarmac.

• The people you want to see

  Door to door, from their place to yours. This is the number that decides how often visits actually happen.

Then do it in a car, in the wrong season

Mapping tools give you an optimistic figure based on a clear road and no reason to slow down. Rural reality includes gravel, logging traffic, seasonal closures, ferry schedules, wildlife, and the fact that snow arrives earlier at elevation than it does at the highway.

Drive the important routes yourself at least once, and if you can manage it, do the hospital run in bad weather. A trip that takes thirty-five minutes in September and an hour and ten in February is a different property than the listing described.

Questions worth asking out loud

Ask the agent directly, and ask a neighbour if you get the chance — the neighbour's answer is usually the more useful of the two.

• Who ploughs this road?

  Municipality, province, a contractor, or the people who live on it. And how early in the day.

• What is the winter route?

  Some roads close or become a bad idea. Find out what the alternative adds.

• Does anything here depend on a ferry?

  Schedules thin out off-season, and a missed sailing is not a five-minute delay.

• How is the internet, really?

  Ask what the neighbours use, not what is theoretically available at the address.

The easier version

For the communities we cover, we list the hospital and the nearest airport with scheduled flights on every community page, with the distance worked out, so you can start from a real number instead of a landmark. Where we do not have a place yet, the list above is the same homework we would do.