A Lost Civilisation

Yet another gorgeous English summer day. We returned to the Cotswolds, to a different part, trying to find water for the kids to play in, but everywhere we saw was crowded with folk, so we ended up picnicking just off a bridle path. The very posh farmer came and told us in the nicest possible way not to come back, but to stay as long as we wanted this time.

Ended up in Bourton-on-the-Water for the water, amazed at all the foreign tourists, including loads of young Spaniards. Ice-cream was had by one of the stone bridges over the Windrush, see extra.

Quote from Wild Child, by Patrick Barkham:
A few of my generation, and more from preceding generations, were once wild children. Today the wild child is functionally extinct in the Western world. The idea that a child of, say, nine would roam without adult company through copses and spinneys close to their home is anathema. The self-directed child, playing freely among an abundance of other animals, plants and peers, belongs to a lost civilisation. And we have lost it in the blink of an eye.

This makes me grateful for a wild childhood in the Amazon forest for myself, and in the sertão of NE Brazil for our three children. And for the degree to which our two grandkids do have this, but wondering how to help it happen more for them - and their generation...

Gratefuls:
- the beauty of the Cotswolds
- those houses of golden limestone, so many with roses round their coloured doorways
- the farmer being so lovely to us