It’s Not You, It’s Me – A Break-Up Letter to the Cotswolds

I want to start gently, Cotswolds. You’re beautiful. Truly. You’re the kind of beautiful that makes people sigh and say things like “idyllic” and “charming.” And you are. Golden stone cottages, ancient churches, quiet rivers with willows leaning in like old storytellers. Everything in its place. Everything... perfect.

And that’s the problem.

As I drove from village to village, weaving through streams of tourists and glossy black Range Rovers, I realised something was missing. Not from you, Cotswolds but from me. There was a time I would have adored you entirely. But lately, I find myself yearning for something different. Not the polished but the wild.

Somewhere between the fourth perfect village and the fifteenth quaint shopfront, my heart drifted.

You feel like a film set now, Cotswolds. A stunning one, yes, but curated to within an inch of your life. Even your waterways feel managed. And while others around me were snapping photos and queuing for scones, I was gazing longingly at the woods between the villages, the winding lanes overgrown with hedgerows, the soft, tangled edges of your forgotten places.

It was in those places that something stirred. The leaf-littered floor of a quiet grove. The wild garlic thick in the shade. The hum of unseen insects in the hedgerow and the soft movement of air that felt like breath.

That’s where I found spirit.

Because that’s what I seek now, not just beauty, but presence. A living landscape that hasn’t been dressed up for me. A place that isn’t performing, but simply being.

The sacred doesn’t need to be perfect. In fact, perfection can make it harder to hear the whispers.

So this isn’t a rejection. It’s an evolution. I’ve changed. I walk a path now that seeks the wild story under the skin of the land, the one that doesn’t always smile for the camera. I follow the hawthorn’s crooked lean, the badger track at twilight, the low hum of place that hasn’t been paved over with charm.

So thank you, Cotswolds. You are lovely. But I’ll be spending more time in the tangled lanes and forgotten groves now.

It’s not you. It’s me.

Dear Reader: If your heart, too, is stirring toward the wild and whispering places, the forgotten tracks, the hedgerows heavy with meaning, you may be ready to walk a different path.
This is the path I guide others along in my Druidic work, toward presence, toward land, toward the quiet pulse beneath it all.

Let’s walk there together.