Earlier quoted context omitted.
The context here is UK rural areas which are not quite like other places. Imagine a road that can fit 1 car, with wider places every few hundred metres and 2m+ hedges on both sides, immediately next to the road. Apart from specific paths you can't really go into a field. Random example https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/z/narrow-road-high-hedge-18153... Not all counties will look like that, but quite a lot of them to. Ima…
I found myself walking on one of these roads as the sun began to set last summer and it was actually quite terrifying. We’d made a long loop walking through the hills in the Cotswolds, and the guidebook would have had us crossing a large pasture to get back to the start. At the gate we were confronted by a couple of rowdy young bulls who seemed to have little interest in letting us cross their field, so we took the r…
It was shocking to me how isolated I was. There was a gas station that I could walk to, but even getting to the fast food place that I could see from my house was dangerous because the neighborhood was surrounded by wide roads and fast cars. Whenever my hosts wanted to get fast food, they'd drive there even though it was literally a stone's throw away.
The wider area was even stranger. A high school that you could only really reach by car. A 'proper' city nearby (Fort Worth) where it seemed like nobody thought to make it accessible to pedestrians. multiple cut-and-paste neighborhoods just like the one I stayed at, completely isolated and only accessible by car. And consistently a Walmart/Kroger's/ area every 20 mins or so, with one 'bigger' shopping area that had no character or charm but at least it had a movie theater and restaurants.
After that experience I understood why having a car is so crucial in the US, but I also started respecting more how difficult it is to avoid things like obesity or pill addiction. it felt so eery and unnatural.