How cars ruined our love of the countryside

From Kipling’s first car journey to JG Ballard’s motorway dystopias – our growing disconnection from the outdoors can be traced in literature

On a recent visit to Northumberland I climbed a steep hill so that I could gaze down at the little town of Rothbury far below: a huddle of stone houses with a church tower, the Coquet river winding through it on the green valley floor, the grey Simonside Hills rising behind. Seeing the town set amid its surroundings wasn’t just a nice view; it felt more important than that. It let me understand where I was in the landscape, and the experience was both atavistic and strangely moving. I stood there for a long time.

It’s difficult for those of us who live in urban areas – 82% of us now – to get a good sense of the land on which we live. Its contours are obscured by buildings, its marshes drained, its rivers often diverted or sent underground; what we relate to on a day to day basis are its manmade features, the texture of its surface, and not the land beneath.

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