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Bourton-on-the-Water

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Bourton-on-the-Water

Article

Bourton-on-the-Water is a recurring place in the Collected Agenda archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between July 27, 2025 and October 27, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as “I told them to leave me behind in Bourton-on-the-Water”; “I was in a small hotel in Bourton-On-The-Water”. It most often appears alongside England, London, New York.

Metadata

  • Category: Places
  • Mention count: 2
  • Issue count: 2
  • First seen: July 27, 2025
  • Last seen: October 27, 2025

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

Walk The Cotswolds
July 27, 2025 · Original source
Tuesday, July 22 I will be hiking from inn to inn here. This is the plan. It is a good plan, all things considered. 8:00am - Follow the river upstream through ancient trees passing the old mill with its waterwheel. 12pm - cut across a field of brambles and sheep towards Sezincote House, where grounds of an Indian estate rise out of the Marsh. It is quite spectacular and seems to be quite abandoned. A caravan decorated on the inside like a love seat sits behind a moat, behind barbed wire. We found a manor for dinner. We found a church before that. It was 1300 years old and it hit me with heavy quiet inside like I have never been so sure to be somewhere before. This is not unusual for people in your circumstances, I was told later. But it was unusual, I said. The door is locked and so you kneel outside. You find a key. You are the only one there and so you stay til almost dusk. You walk miles til almost dark. You are not religious. You have been saying something else. You have been saying a lot of things. You planned a certain type of life in New York. You planned a different type of life first. It looked like wheat fields and wild flowers. You cannot recall one second in which I have ever been bored. Maybe, you have never been bored. Maybe, you lack recollection. Mossy patch under the crabapple tree where I would like to fall asleep. It is kind of just this thing of waiting now. reduce Inflammation, incoming emails, art and life, take a deep breath in and hold it. Wednesday, July 23 8:45 am Because I'm getting sick, when I close my eyes there is no color. Open my eyes, and I told them to leave me behind in Bourton-on-the-Water 12:00pm Pacing three loops around Windrush Public Path and thinking about everything I have ever wanted. It is a bit like a fairytale. Wind in the Willow, Windboy, Back to Oz, I have wanted things like this. The river is nice because the water is clear but the bottom is dirt and fern. So, it's brown a bit but you can still see patterns. Patterns and circles and moss. There are flowers along garden gates. I don't mind when things are a bit precious. 1:13pm I am walking through this little village again now. I am listening to silly music. Writing now. I do need to finish my story. I felt so sick this morning. I thought some little things. I took a little nap. A necklace for me a perfume and a soap for my mother I am kind of glad I skipped the hike today. Dinner was nice last night. It's nice to eat scallops and salmon on spinach shaped toast. It's nice to be sincere in art and life and perhaps to never go to a party again. I put all my cards on the table. It is so good to be busy. I should take the bartending job and remember that is is good to be busy. But, before I even begin to consider these sorts of things, I should sort out my preoccupations. There are worse things. There was a month where I was not so busy. I am pacing through the English countryside now. There was a strange man on the path and it made me jump. I do not believe a life can just fracture and then split into segments, infinite. I do believe that it is just one life all at once. It is desolate but not sad, here. It is very difficult to imagine what the rest of my life will look like. Well, we'll see. I have stories to write. I will walk back to the hotel now and finish my story. That's fine. I quit nicotine and mostly alcohol and anything unhealthy so now it won't feel like my face is melting off. I have red light therapy and a desire to be good. 6:05pm I’m back in the room and I called my best friend, whom I miss. 8:57pm I went to dinner with my mother and my father. I was quite nice and not too much of a vile little bitch full of lots of vitriol and being very unpleasant. 12:56pm open the windows out over thatched hotel roof so the outside air matches in but I am not so lucky with equilibrium and there is still much motion. Thomas Pynchon “Entropy” Thursday, July 24 Winchim is a very ancient town, the taxi driver tells me. I have been here for a few days now and already my lungs feel pumped full of air and spirit and the moments of solitude feel quite still and nice. Being alone is no longer fire alarms immediately and then alert, abort, sitting in a bar with a sparkling water til close. None of this, anyways. None of it here. Sitting in the forest full of contentment. Sitting in the secret garden full of apple elderflower juice, black coffee, rye banana bread. Winchim has been on a downward spiral for the past fifty years, the taxi driver tells me. Something about Henry the 8th, the monasteries, the drought, a tremendous amount of damage. It was all on a selfish note, the taxi driver told me. The walk today was foggy and long and I liked it best. I liked the church on Tuesday best of all, but I liked the walk today. It is kind of plotless, this walking walking walking. I have never wanted chaos. I have wanted pure metabolic function and to stay up late. Friday, July 25 Church, lying under a beach tree, cricket field established by the author of Peter Pan. I went down to the hotel bar to read about Entropy (which I hope to not believe in. Downstairs, the evening festivities were moving into their final hour. I don't know if you're drinking or anything, the bartender said to me. Must I, I said. You can do anything you want, the bartender said. The bar was lined with portraits of polo sport and big yellow orbs. The fields outside were misty and gray and peppered with racing horses. The grass was soft and sweet and so, I'd stopped for a while. You will have to hop a barbed wire fence to avoid a small horned cow and his mates, an old man had said. You will have to learn to wait a while, my father had said. There had been another warplane, only this one over the pasture not the college, and I had not quit believing in signs and symbols just yet. Outside, the pub was bright, lethargic and chilly. The hotel felt something like a sanctuary. Royal green walls and no night terrors in foggy fields and self containment. And it's been nice to be brought back to the things that were mine first. They'll pick up the bags at eight in the morning. We'll loop back around to the marsh where we began. WHAT YOU SHOULD DO Travel advice for something quite restorative: I walked The Cotswolds via Mickledore Travel which is nice because I detest tours and organized fun of any kind, but this “tour” requires zero interaction with anyone outside of your travel companions and friendly strangers. Accommodations are booked across a walking route and every morning bags are picked up from a drop spot along the route and deposited at the next destination the following evening. Unburdened by baggage, you then hike to your next inn. There are little towns peppered along the route, as well as sheep fields, castles, horses, and ruins. It really is more of a long walk than a hike, which I find to be more pleasant than hut-to-hut backpacking or other similar adventures I have attempted in the past. You still are walking some ten to sixteen miles a day, so you will not feel bored or lazy.
Inline links: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!_CyN!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F623b1e47-66cc-463a-b6fb-f18ff7145043_1600x882.jpeg, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!5It-!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff7379e57-3e3f-4173-82e9-ea976cd835e5_742x320.png, Mickledore Travel
Autumn Secrets
October 27, 2025 · Original source
Printed pdf of Paris Review Anne Sexton poem that Celia keeps on trying to read to me out loud. The Anne Sexton is a thirty-six page poem, and Celia keeps telling me that it’s the most beautiful thing in the world. She keeps on reciting passages. ‘She didn’t have friends, children, sex, religion, marriage, success, a salary or a fear of death.’ and ‘Astonished light is washing over the moor from north to east.’ and ‘At this time of year there is no sunset, just some movements inside the light and then a sinking away.’ Stop trying to read this to me out loud, I keep on saying to Celia. I’ll read it later in my head. I’ll read it once I have a printed-PDF. I’ll suspend my disbelief and read your beautiful poem about art and love and loss and other things, too sometime down the line. Lying on my floor. Once I have a hard copy. Once I have everything I ever wanted. Tuesday, October 21 The screening of Darling (1965) at Film Forum is nice. All about a very beautiful and very selfish girl who cannot bear the consequences of her own actions. She whirls through London and Italy and is momentarily relieved, towards the end of the film, to learn that it is not too late. The scenery is black and white and lovely, and our heroine likes Italy because she finds it more religious, though she dislikes Italy on the other hand, because she mourns the distance from the real love of her life. Things escalate further. Overnight. In an instant. It is, indeed, she is dismayed to find, too late. The ending leaves me feeling quite uneasy. Probably because the souls of all the characters have been pretty much scrubbed and examined and turned inside out and back again, and the conclusion really has to be that these beautiful and mostly trying-their-best people, are pretty bad-to-the-core. Are you staying for the next screening, the staff at Film Forum ask us, well after the lights come on. We have stayed tucked into the seats at the theater. Kept my legs tucked into my sweatshirt in the theater. It has become, I’ve realized recently, difficult to determine the proper times for things. When to stay, when to go. No, no we’re leaving and sorry about that, we say to the staff at Film Forum. It is only two in the afternoon so there is plenty of time to pace around the newly and suddenly eternally rainy city. Looking for a hotel lobby. Looking for a wooden umbrella. A humidifier. Chamomile tea. A job. A meeting. Algorithmic knowledge pertaining to things like; how to spend a day, how should a person be, how to optimize health and intellect. How to buy a Life Well Lived. Wednesday, October 22 In July, I was in a small hotel in Bourton-On-The-Water. There was a chipped ceramic bathtub with feet on it and nice eclectic lamps and the air was humid and gray and cool in the evening, even in summer, this is kind of how things are in much of England, where the climate is somewhat more temperate. I made some decisions, then, which I remember now because they pertain in large part to promises I couldn’t keep. I promised to be a Secret Keeper, for one, and to move forward kind of sober minded and steadfast and without interest in petty resentments or high volatility reactions. I was lying on the floor on the phone, then, by an open window, in the thick of a week full of walks and cable-knit-cardigans. And so one imagines a different sort of life in the quiet mist, and one is very sure about it in the moment. And then back in New York, some solitude on the plane, shifting whims of my own, yes, but mostly of others. I was able to hold onto all of this for a while. Not for forever, though, because there were a few more weeks after that. And I did say everything, to everyone, back in New York. Mostly because I felt like I had to and because I did try to grasp at discretion and couldn’t, but now there are all these secrets spilling all about. I can feel them everywhere in the air. All the things I meant to hold close to my chest, I mean. It is ruining everything, if I’m being totally honest about it. I have tried to be more bright about things, but some basic facts remain. And before I tried to be more bright about things, I did try everything else. Thursday, October 23 Trying something else as in: Boundless Energy. The day flies by. Everyone is upset about the way things are articulated all the time, and so I suppose it doesn’t really matter. Explaining myself, that is. Saoirse teaches me how to breathe both up and down but also side to side at pilates training. The studio is full of light and very clean and very crisp and the movements, up and down and also side to side, remind me of being a dancer or a child or someone who is very quiet and precise. Afterward, Saoirse and I share chicken at the bar at Gramercy Tavern. A nice restaurant. The nicest one. The walls are decked in fall decor, and since Saoirse taught me how to breathe and move one hour ago, I have begun to feel quite alive. Are you nostalgic for a certain type of beauty, or for being the sort of person who feels of and entitled to beautiful things? Saorise wears a Burberry scarf and a Burberry coat and she is very composed, and so I trust her opinions. WHAT YOU SHOULD DO Monday, October 27 From 7:30pm at Night Club 101 — Domino Reading Series returns with Evan Donnachie, Armon Mahdavi, Erin Satterthwaite, Jade Wootton, Nick Dove, Izzy Capulong, and Chesea Hodson.
Inline links: Night Club 101, Domino Reading Series

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