Blog | We Left London to Reconnect with Nature 🌿

After years of dreaming, planning, and countless conversations over kitchen tables, Amber-Rose and I have relocated from the busyness of Central London to the quiet, expansive edge of Eryri (Snowdonia).

Just four weeks ago, we moved from Camden to the border of Eryri. As readers of my book will know, this hasn’t been a spontaneous shift, rather the culmination of years of slowly preparing.

We called the plan The Great Escape. But now that we’re here, it feels less like an escape, and more like a return.

A return to stillness.

A return to attention.

A return to the basics. The real basics.

Somehow we’ve found the place of our dreams:

✅ Nestled in the mountains

✅ On the boundary of a national park

✅ Fed by a private spring

✅ With a natural dip spot at the bottom of a land

✅ Surrounded by deep layers of culture and (pre)history

✅ Tucked on a quiet no-through road

✅ Under 4 hours from London when we need to dip back into the world

✅ And, maybe most excitingly, with planning permission to create a retreat space

After 15 years in cities, I’m only now beginning to understand how much the noise, artificial light, and low-entropy environments shaped my nervous system. I thought I was coping fine. I was. But I wasn’t thriving.

There’s a different kind of stillness here.

We’re deeply aware of how privileged we are to be taking this next step. And equally aware of how much we want to share it.

In the months ahead, we’ll be shaping the land, building, listening, and slowly creating space, for ourselves and for others.

Here on the edge of the wild, we’re learning to live closer to the Seven Practices:

🥬 Food

We’re not off-grid or growing everything (yet), but our relationship with food has already shifted. Foraged food, like dandelions, nettles or chanterelles, are easily found on our land. The damson and blackberries in particular have easily found their way onto our plates.

It is easier to treat meals like moments, eating outside as opposed to in front of the TV.

Slicing vegetables and grilling meat with the mountain Cadair Berwyn in the background. Eating to the sounds of Buzzards and Swallows, instead of sirens.

The short walk after dinner, to aid digestion, feels easier and more fulfilling out here.

💧 Water

This might be the biggest shift: we now drink, cook, and shower with water from our own private spring.

It’s hard to describe what this has done for us, circumventing modern, ultra-processed water systems by going straight to natures source.

There’s something deeply calming about knowing the water hasn’t been chlorinated, piped, filtered, or stored. It just flows. Cold, clean, ancient.

The river flowing from the mountains along the bottom of our land provides us the perfect natural cold dip spot. It has become one of our favourite rituals.

🌬️ Air

You know we preach about the practice of Airbathing. And the air feels truly different here. It’s not just fresher, it’s more alive. There’s moss in it. Rain in it. Spores in it.

The air here passes through trees and fields before it reaches your lungs. You feel it in the mornings when it touches your skin. You hear it at night in the gaps between owl calls.

The air around our home has become something to treasure again, not to worry about.

☀️ Sunlight

On our East facing slope, the light appears early, and leaves early. Our days are dictated by sunlight as opposed to artificial light. Finding time for social media has been tough when the sunlight calls you outside.

We are 3km from the nearest street light, so the darkness is something we need to get used to. It’s ‘can’t see your hand in front of your face’ dark here at night.

With that natural embrace of darkness, I am finding myself less drawn to biohacking tools like our Blue-Light Blocking Glasses and eye blinds, that I would have struggled without in London.

Already in the month we’ve been here, we feel the changing of the seasons, in the form of shorter days. The crisp nights encircling when the sun disappears behind the mountains. The seasons speak more clearly to me now.

🚶 Movement

There’s no formal workout routine here. Just movement woven into life. Hauling logs, clearing space, walking the land, digging, climbing, squatting, hanging.

The landscape invites movement. And with every walk, there’s discovery: a new path, a fox track, a corner of the land we hadn’t quite seen yet or a neighbour we hadn’t met.

We’ve also rehomed Mac O’Malley, a not-yet-friendly feral cat. Bonding with him has meant a lot of slow, patient movement. Sitting still. Approaching carefully. Earning trust, not forcing it. It’s a work in progress, but he’s teaching us something about building relationships at the right pace, and that we don’t need to rush into anything here.

🧘 Mindfulness

It’s not all romantic. The silence can be confronting, asking us to listen deeper.

But there’s mindfulness in everything: lighting a fire, fixing a gate, gathering herbs, trimming the nettles, having new people share our space.

And we really do share it. A peacock (Percy) arrived one day and never left. Now he struts the land like he owns it. And in a way, it does, foraging through our long grass and relaxing in the sun as we work.

We’ve had family and friends visit regularly, and we always end up barefoot in the grass or in the river.

There’s a sense that this place isn’t just ours. It holds a kind of shared energy. A wildness drawing people to visit.

Readers of my book, especially the mindfulness chapter, may notice that I am now living the manifestation I wrote about and shared in my book all those years ago.

🌑 Sleep

No orange glow. No traffic hum. Just pitch black and the layered sounds of nature. We fall asleep to the sound of Owls and wake to the sounds of Woodpeckers, Robins and Blackbirds.

We’re sleeping differently, not necessarily longer, but deeper.

Sometimes I wake up and just stare at the darkness for a while, smiling at the peace and serenity of our mountain woodland at night.

🤲 The Practice of Gratitude

None of this is performative or polished.

This isn’t about living the dream, instead we’re learning to live in reality, closer to the practices that shaped our ancestors. It’s humbling and messy, but deeply grounding. Our hands in the soil, cold water on skin.

We’re aware of the privilege. But also aware of the responsibility of this space. To share, to listen, to make this space not a fortress, but a gathering ground.

This is just the beginning.

If you’re walking your own path toward reconnection, or even just thinking about what rewilding your wellbeing might look like, we see you.

And you’re welcome here.

Ac mae croeso i chi yma.