Badly, unless the connection you need is a broadband cable. Almost nobody takes the train. Even fewer take the bus. Nearly half of the working residents don't commute at all. Rudgwick gets to work by router or by car, with very little in between.
There's no station on the village's doorstep. Rudgwick had one until it closed under the Beeching cuts, and the census shows what that left: about 1% of working residents commute by train and well under 1% by bus. There are 15 bus stops in the area, which sounds like more of a service than the commuting figures suggest.
The 2021 census shows how people actually get to work. About 47% work from home and about 43% drive. Walking accounts for about 4% and cycling for about 1%. Cars are close to compulsory: only about 6% of households have none, and about 64% have two or more. In Rudgwick the second car isn't a luxury. It's how the other adult gets anywhere.
The Department for Transport's modelled journey times, which estimate trips for the area as a whole rather than from any particular front door, put the nearest town centre about 16 minutes away by car and about 25 by public transport. The public transport figures date from 2019, so treat them more cautiously than the car times.
Broadband is what makes home working possible here. Superfast speeds reach about 93% of premises, and no premises fall below the minimum speed the universal service obligation guarantees. Gigabit and ultrafast connections each reach only about 20%. Most homes can hold a video call. Very few could run a small data centre from the loft.
Mobile coverage is solid: about 100% of the area gets 4G or 5G from at least one operator, and about 99% from every operator.
For anyone commuting, the practical upshot is simple. Plan your working week around the car, keep the home office as your backup, and treat public transport as something you use when the car's in for its service.
The same modelled figures put the nearest town centre about 31 minutes away by bike and about 83 minutes on foot. Walking into town isn't a realistic option. It's a day out.
Everyday errands follow the same pattern, again from the Department for Transport's journey-time statistics. A doctor's surgery is about 8 minutes by car, 12 by public transport or 25 on foot. A food shop is about 7 minutes by car or 14 on foot, which is walkable for a pint of milk. The nearest hospital is about 36 minutes by car and about 84 minutes by public transport, and the drive is the only version of that trip anyone will choose on a bad day. Reaching a major employment centre takes about 21 minutes by car or 22 by public transport. The public transport figures come from 2019, and services have been cut in many places since, so give them less weight than the car and walking times.
The buses themselves are thin. Stops with timetable data average about 16 scheduled departures each on a weekday, and about one an hour at peak. All 13 of those stops have some weekend service. That counts departures, not destinations. One bus an hour at rush hour works as a bus service only if your life already runs to its timetable.
Road noise is the connection nobody wants. Every one of Rudgwick's postcodes sits near roads mapped at or above 65 decibels, the level at which official noise mapping treats road noise as significant, and the loudest band present reaches 75 decibels. That's a measure of the roads near each postcode, not of how loud any particular bedroom will be, so stand in the garden before you buy. Rail noise doesn't register at all, which is the one benefit of having no railway.
Connectivity is Rudgwick's weakest point: broadband carries the home workers, and everyone else needs a car. If your job can't be done from the spare room, the village makes you drive for everything.