Thoughts from Another Place
Trying new things is a fundamental part of the Another Place experience.
We think it’s important for all of us to step outside our comfort zones sometimes – whether that means paddleboarding on the lake, exploring a huge cave or braving swimming in the middle of winter. Just so long as there’s a thoughtfully designed room to come back to and a hot bath to warm up in, that is…
The consolation of solitude
“His daily Teachers had been Woods and Rills,
The silence that is in the starry sky,
The sleep that is among the lonely hills.”
William Wordsworth, Song, at the Feast of Brougham Castle
Throughout history, adventurers, writers, poets and artists have recognised the value of solitude – how time spent far from the madding crowd can free up the mind and expand the imagination. In his recent book, Outpost, writer Dan Richards took the idea to its outer limits, travelling around the world in search of the most remote places that humans have made shelter, from Russian coal mining towns in the frozen wastes of Svalbard to fire lookouts in the forested peaks of the Cascade Mountains.
“I wanted to explore the human desire for solitude,” he explains. “What drives us to live in these remote places, how we survive when we get there, and how they change us when we return… The funny thing was that after all that travelling, the thing I realised was that solitude is really a state of mind: even in a crowded country like ours, it’s still surprisingly easy to just ‘fall off the map’. You don’t have to disappear to the far reaches of the planet: you can be alone just by heading out into the hills in the middle of a rainstorm, or going for a walk in the middle of the night when everyone else is fast asleep. It helps you view the world through a different lens.”
As Dan found out, solitude isn’t always about being alone. Sometimes it’s just about giving yourself the time and space to breathe.
Thoughts from Another Place
Finding some time for yourself is something we feel really strongly about at Another Place – whether it’s tramping solo up a neighbouring fell, wandering along the lake shore or having a treatment in Swim Club.