A little more time outside.

On the pleasure of being outdoors, and why we think it matters.

There is so much competing for our attention these days that it's easy to forget how satisfying an ordinary afternoon can be. A walk that takes rather longer than expected, a conversation that wanders happily from one subject to another, or an hour spent beside the lake watching the swallows skim the water. None of these things needs organising particularly carefully, and perhaps that is part of their charm.

At Fforest Fields we are fortunate to live and work in a landscape that gives us constant reasons to look up. The hills change colour with the passing seasons, the woodland is full of small happenings, and the skies can be quite magnificent, particularly when the weather is making up its mind what to do. Even after years of living here, there are things that stop us in our tracks, and we find that the more attention we give to the place, the more there is to discover.

Finding our feet

There is something reassuring about the rhythms of the natural world, particularly when life elsewhere feels rather hurried or uncertain. The seasons come round in their own good time, bringing their familiar changes, although never quite in the same way twice. Some winters are hard and long, others seem barely to arrive, and every spring we find ourselves watching for the first signs of life with much the same excitement as the year before.

The countryside is not always peaceful, of course. We see trees brought down by storms, streams rising after heavy rain and animals working extraordinarily hard simply to survive. Yet there is a steadiness to the way life continues, with new growth appearing among the remains of the old and the landscape gradually recovering and changing.

We can learn a little patience from this, I think, and perhaps some perspective too. There are times in all our lives when things feel difficult, when plans don't work out or when we simply have too much on our minds. A few hours outside won't necessarily put everything right, but they can give our thoughts a little room to settle, and sometimes that is enough to help us find our way forward.

Learning to notice

One of the great pleasures of spending time outdoors is discovering how much is happening around us, often without our having noticed it before. A familiar stretch of path becomes much more interesting when you begin to recognise the plants growing along its edges, or learn which birds are calling from the hedgerows. Even the smallest patch of ground can hold an astonishing variety of life, and there is something rather wonderful about realising how much of it carries on quite independently of us.

Children seem particularly good at this. Give them a stream, a few stones and a bit of freedom, and they will often find enough to occupy themselves for hours. They are wonderfully untroubled by whether an activity has been worthwhile, and their enthusiasm for a beetle, a feather or an unusually shaped stick can be quite infectious.

We would love more of us to hold on to that curiosity as we grow older, because learning about the world around us has a way of making it feel both larger and more familiar. Once you know that bats are hunting over the lake at dusk, or that redwings arrive from northern Europe as the weather turns colder, you begin to see a place differently. The landscape becomes full of neighbours, each with their own habits and extraordinary ways of living.

And as we come to know these things, we naturally become more interested in looking after them. It's difficult not to care about a place once you've taken the trouble to get to know it.

The happiness of being here

There is also a particular pleasure in having time outdoors without needing to accomplish very much. We spend so much of our lives making arrangements, keeping appointments and getting through lists that it can feel almost indulgent to spend an afternoon with no greater ambition than enjoying ourselves.

Yet these are often the hours that stay with us longest. Swimming in the lake on a warm day, cooking supper outside when the evening is too lovely to go indoors, or sitting around a fire long after the children have disappeared into their beds. Sometimes there's a great deal of laughter, sometimes a comfortable quiet, and sometimes the rain sends everybody scrambling for shelter, which generally becomes part of the story afterwards.

We don't think the outdoors needs to be dressed up as something more complicated than this. There are plenty of good reasons to spend time in nature, and growing evidence of the benefits it can bring to our physical and mental health, but we needn't turn every walk into an exercise in self-improvement. Being outside can be worthwhile simply because it makes us happy, brings us together and gives us opportunities to enjoy the world we live in.

Making room for more of it

Our hope for Fforest Fields is that it remains somewhere people can come and enjoy the countryside in their own way, whether that means setting off across the hills first thing in the morning or spending a whole day pottering about the campsite. We want children to have the freedom to play and explore, families to have time together without too many demands upon them, and people of every age to feel that the outdoors is somewhere they belong.

You don't have to be particularly adventurous or knowledgeable to enjoy it, and you certainly don't need to wait for perfect weather. There is pleasure to be found in every season, from the great green abundance of early summer to the clear, cold light of a winter morning, when the trees are bare and you can see further into the woods than at any other time of year.

We hope that a few days here might remind people how good it feels to spend more of their lives outside, and that they take a little of that feeling home with them. Perhaps they'll discover a favourite walk near where they live, learn the name of a bird they've often heard singing, or make a habit of going out before bed to simply to see what the evening is doing.