Anyone else feel a storybook calm in the English countryside?

Question

When I watch videos of the English countryside, the scenery feels almost &lsquo;storybook&rsquo; or cartoon-like to me, the homes, the colors, the calm atmosphere.It makes me wonder why some places trigger this feeling of peace or nostalgia even if we've never lived there. Is it cultural exposure, childhood media, or something else? Has anyone else felt this way about a place they&rsquo;ve never been?

dhharker · Accepted Answer

Yes abolutely, that's one of the reasons why I live there. In some areas there are various laws (and pen pushers) to battle in order to make any changes to the built environment, often requiring places stay frozen in time, but also resulting in any new development which does happen being done in keeping with the existing architectural norms and usually to a much higher (and more expensive) standard than regular development elsewhere. This is why the Cotswolds looks like a movie set rather than a real place people actually live. Indeed for the people who actually do live there, the volume of tourists who come to see this has become a monumental pain in the arse. Strict rules have their downsides; for example preventing beautiful old buildings being brought up to date and maintained sensibly, and causing great expense and inconvenience to people doing things which won't have any appreciable effect whatsoever. The balance is not quite right, but the system is weighted towards preserving old stuff and maintaining the architectural "vibe" of locations so we at least get to enjoy that.
Historically buildings were built using the local stone. Not so much wood. Stone is a much better thermal buffer and doesn't burn down so easily. The colours vary from foreboding dark greys through various shades of honey to bright oranges and yellows. There's even some bluish ones. But as the laws in the beautiful areas require new buildings to fit in with old, the brand new houses are built of the same stone as the hundreds of years old houses next door. Not only does this look very nice, but perhaps gives the impression of the buildings fitting or blending into the landscape in some more natural or fundamental way - like these settlements have been here as long as the bedrock.
During the lockdowns when people were getting arrested for going outside there was a joke going around; a policeman stopped God in the Yorkshire Dales and asked him 'What do you think you're doing? You're breaking lockdown!'. God replied: Working from home.