The Places I Go…
The where and the why of them all.
👋🏻 Hello, I’m Anna. An adventurer, author of six books and Restless Mumma to three small humans. Each week I write about adventure, travel, daily chaos and the inner workings of my noggin’ 🧠⚡️ 🗺️
✌🏻You can check out past posts at the Restless Mumma homepage here.
Hello Restless Ones,
🌿 Greetings from The Shire,
This week’s post started off as an entirely different story but somewhere along the way I thought about all the precious places I go, and the fact that I visit each one for a different reason.
So one side of my brain said ‘Please continue with that other post you have written Anna… be sensible now.’ And the other half crossed it’s arms, sat back in a chair, shook it’s head and said… ‘Nah. I want to write a different one.’
So here we are!
Please drop into the comments where your special places are, so we can all transport ourselves there. Like a sacred space exchange. Ahhh bliss.
Oooodles of love and catch you next week
✌🏻Anna xx
The Places I Go…
It’s early afternoon on Robinswood Hill on the outskirts of Gloucester, and I’m walking with the twins in the pram. We’re in that phase of toddler life where they still need a nap in the afternoon, but most days, they beg to differ. So the only way to get them off to sleep is to rumble them into submission on the gravel trails of our local hill.
It’s a cool, sunny afternoon.
Robinswood is the highest point in the city and, although I’m on a lower trail, I can still see all of Gloucester sprawled out. The uniform, brown-brick warehouses at the docks. The curve of the River Severn as it skirts the city and meets with the canal.
In the middle of it all, the spires of Gloucester Cathedral stand to attention—which always makes me smile because it looks like someone, perhaps a mystical queen of giants, has set a tall crown down in the landscape, intending to come back and pick it up later on.
Beyond the Cathedral are the Malvern Hills. It’s hazy on the horizon today so they’re only just about visible, but they’re there—rising and falling, tracing a line across the sky like waves on an ocean.
The twins have now gone quiet.
I can sense they’re close to drifting off, so I let my mind drift too, and I settle into a rhythm. I listen to the crunch, crunch, crunch of my feet over gravel. There’s the distant hum of a passing motorcycle. A blackbird sings—a low, unhurried melody. A wood pigeon coos.
Forty-five minutes ago, I began this walk frustrated—filled with mum rage (which is ten times more ragey than any other rage) after long days and nights of solo parenting and little respite.
I want, nay, I need the twins to sleep so that I can have a break in the middle of the day, but my mind starts to catastrophize when I think they might not. I hate to be a cranky mum. And I know that I need a break today to de-crank myself.
So up and down the trail I go. Back and forth. Turning every ten minutes at the points at either end when it gets too muddy or too steep.
Eventually, both twins are asleep. I sink onto a nearby bench. I close my eyes to feel the warmth of the sun on my face and I let out a long breath.
It’s been ages since I’ve walked for any significant amount of time with the pram, not since the twins were babies, in fact. Once they were walking, they didn’t want to be pushed around anymore, so coming back to it now feels strange. Like I’ve hopped into a time machine. I catch fleeting glimpses of coming to the hill in the months and years gone by.
Of powering up to the top at the end of a seemingly endless day — the sun setting behind me and the sky turning to fire.
I think of taking tentative postpartum steps.
Of carrying a child to the top in a sling, their tiny head bobbing against my chest on the climb. Of doing that same climb with close friends—laughing and catching up on life as we go.
I think of this place. And how it has been a sanctuary through early motherhood.
And now I think about all the other places that have, over the decade I’ve lived in the city, become special. And how I go to each one for a different reason.
When I want to feel liberated…
I head to Selsley Common—there’s wide open land there, set close to the edge of the Cotswold escarpment—where the earth drops away dramatically.
From the common you can see for miles—over the River Severn, all the way to the Black Mountains of Wales. If you follow the Cotswold Way trail away from the plateau, it heads into thick woods; a shady, secluded trail contouring around the side of the land.
Selsley is a joyful place which makes me feel wild and free — like I could run forever.
If I have a problem to solve…
Or a point of tension which keeps playing on repeat in my head, I hop on a bike to ‘The Elmore Loop’—a set of country roads just outside the suburbs, lined with hedgerows, dotted with farms and home to an ancient church.
There are just enough hills on the loop to keep my body working hard while my mind spins, and just enough pheasants darting out from hedgerows, attempting to commit hara-kiri under my front wheel, to keep things exciting.
At sunset, the fields surrounding the road transform into a blaze of gold. It’s sublime.
The Elmore Loop always makes me feel lighter, somehow.
There’s a place called the Elmore Loop
Where I drop worries halfway round,
Through spinning thighs and endless sighs,
I leave that loop unbound.
When I’m feeling disconnected…
… from my eldest, Storm, or when I can sense that something’s bothering her but she hasn’t yet worked out how to tell me what it is (like the time a kid at nursery told her she looked like a boy…), I take her for an early breakfast at Gloucester Docks.
There’s a place called Hetty’s which overlooks the black-green waters of the canal basin, as well as some tram tracks and warehouses that have been there since the industrial revolution.
We order up French toast, hot chocolate and orange juice and sit and watch the world go by—making up stories about the people passing on their way to work in the city.
The Docks help me reconnect.
When I feel overwhelmed…
… and I have got myself into such an emotional pickle that I’m willing to do anything to get back on track (like this time), I head to Coopers Hill. A reserve filled with ancient beech woods.
I follow trails through wildflowers, alongside moss-covered stone walls, crunching over leaves all the while. I can walk for hours there and not see another soul.
I never know what the woods will look like; misty, sunny, still. It’s so freakin’ moody in there and I love it for that.
I can go to those woods threadbare and come out brand new.
Each of these places offers something different…
And yet there’s a thread that runs through all of them.
A sense of awe and feeling small. Consistency. A warm embrace.
They’re willing to greet me no matter what mood I’m in—happy, sad, confused, angry—a mix of all these things or something in between.
They don’t mind.
They’re unflappable.
They accept me for who I am in the moment I arrive.
They’re unfazed by my being there, but I feel acknowledged. A gentle nod of the head as I enter, followed by a quiet conversation between me and that place.
An exchange of sorts. A giving up or giving over of a part of myself. And in return…
They listen.
They soothe.
They amaze and dazzle, but they do not distract. They just ask that I be with them for a little while. That I’m really there (as opposed to somewhere in my head).
Perhaps that’s what we want from the world. Forgiving spaces that can hold our messiness, our complexities. And, having seen that in all its scrambled glory — are always willing to welcome us back.
I realised that these places have become medicine. A pill I take for a specific mental ailment. I know when I need to go to each one, and sometimes I’m not even sure why. I just know which is the right one.
As I head back home, rumbling again along the trails of Robinswood Hill, with the twinnies asleep, I think about how important these places are. And how grateful I am for them. And how, over the past ten years, they’ve become as much a part of me as I have become a part of them.
They remind me that the answer isn’t always in the what or the how, it’s in the where. And that sometimes, the solution lies in simply finding the right place to be.
Where are the places you go?
What do they give you?
Is there somewhere you know and love, that’s overdue a visit?