30 Apr 2026
Notes on nature and travel from The Pumphouse
I step softly out the bedroom with the baby on my hip, trying to stay quiet so as not to wake everyone else in the house, but when I glance out the landing window, I audibly gasp.
We are staying in The Pumphouse, a lone structure perched on the side of a river in the Fens, and the misty sunrise outside is spectacular. I am in my wellies and out there quicker than I ever usually move at that time in the morning. I can practically hear the Pride & Prejudice soundtrack playing as I walk through the dewy grass, watching the sunlight sparkling through the mist and listening to the geese gently honking in the fields beyond. My lungs exhale a lot of tension I didn’t even realise I was holding.
I need to be in nature more. Whilst I don’t have plans to move, for the first time in my life, I can understand the appeal of living in the countryside. I’m not sure I ever would – I think my desire to live very close to both a coffee shop and a bookshop will probably always win out – but I have a feeling my nervous system would be a lot happier if I were surrounded by trees. I’ve noticed how much happier Alfie often is when we’re in the middle of a lot of green stuff and I think noticing what the kids need is a very good way to learn, or at least be reminded of, what you need.
I keep having this feeling of wanting to disconnect and simplify. I suspect it’s simply a product of being a mum of two young children in a system that demands perfection and offers very little support to achieve said perfection, but I find myself fantasising about throwing my phone in the sea, going and living in a cabin in Scandinavia. In the meantime, a peaceful, misty sunrise definitely helped.
Later, my step-mum and I have a conversation about travel and what we want from it. I used to feel a pressure – almost certainly derived from social media – to go everywhere. And actually, I don’t regret leaning into this in my twenties. There are a lot of places I want to go, and I feel very lucky that I ticked off quite a few bucket list places before we had kids. But I feel a lot more intentional and selective about it now. It’s got to feel worth leaving home for – I like being at home (despite fantasies about upping and leaving for Denmark)! I don’t want to go somewhere less nice than my home and my own bed. I don’t want to go somewhere just because the masses declare I should. I want to go somewhere because I know that if I were in my eighties and I had not gone, I know in my soul that I would regret it. Letting go of this pressure is quite freeing; it allows you to focus on where you truly want to go.
We stayed very close to home last year; I vowed I wouldn’t force us into stressful scenarios with a new baby and a three-year-old just because I felt like we should and so we none of our trips took place outside of East Anglia. I have learned that the feeling that we often chase from a holiday is perfectly possible to find without actually going very far. The Pumphouse was a twenty-five-minute drive from our house and I left feeling refreshed, like I’d been somewhere different, like I’d cleared my head and taken a pause. And the lack of travel is such a perk; we left on Monday morning and could still be back in time for Gary to start work and Alfie nursery. It means that the refreshed feeling doesn’t get ruined by a long, stressful journey.
I sometimes miss the freedom I used to have when it comes to travelling. I never enjoyed the travel per se – it was a necessary evil to get where I wanted to go – but I miss how I could just go. Not having to weigh up the multiple needs of multiple people, questioning how fair it is to put young children through the stresses of travel when you know in your heart that they are probably happier pottering about at home. I hope to show my children more of the world as they get older but in the meantime, I hope to teach them that you can still gain a lot by hardly travelling at all.
Written November 2025
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