Disconnect

There’s some sort of soft beauty in the loss of reception that comes with a trip to the mountains. The disconnect is painful at first; not being able to put out the daily post and tell the world about this new wilderness takes a bit of getting used to. The cold sweats come in; the panic; the frantic climb on the roof to pick up some wandering signal and the longing gaze at the peak behind the cottage, wondering if I’d pick something up from there…. 

It’s all anathema to the roots of these pieces. I mean, what would be the point of spending time each day writing about ways to escape the plastic bubbles that we find ourselves sucked into most of the time, if on release, we spend the time trying to reconnect?

The beauty of it is in knowing that these clear skies and chilly waters; these tiny lanes that meander into seldom-visited places; they’re all still there and only a couple of hours away. In the months to come, when the autumn term reclaims us as its servants, there will always be the possibility of running for the hills. 

Perhaps it was even more poignant this year to get to the hills than in previous years. It has been a hell of a few months: a hell of a 2023, and to know that these places trundle on regardless is a massive relief and a reminder that nature doesn’t give a shit. Our human problems are something that can be escaped from so long as we’re prepared to let a lot of the other things go with it. 

From the cottage I could see the sea and for an inlander like me, that is a revelation. I could have spent the week staring out at the ridiculous enormity of it and lose myself in my own insignificance. The morning walks, rather than a jaunt over the fields, were a stroll through the little lanes to the sand-dunes and through to the beach. Instead of wheat wetting my legs, it was the scratchy dune-grass and the magical sight of deer in the fields was replaced dolphins out in the bay.

In my view there is only one walk that is better than the walk from the cottage to the beach and that is the walk from the beach to the cottage. There can be no sadness at leaving the beach because at once the breath is swept away by the hills that sit aloof from the coast and the darker mountains that lurk behind them in the mist.