This is the first week back in London after a winter holiday in Sweden. London is intense wherever you come from! Crowds all around you, noise, loads of people walking straight into you with their phones in their hands. Is a true joy sometimes! I really needed a quick escape at the end of the week, to get myself back into a state of relaxation so when my friend invited me I jumped into the Kingston bus and headed to Dorking! Surrey Hills to the rescue! It is indeed as they say, a place of fantastic beauty!

And wait until you get to the top of Box Hill and behold that view, breathing the crispy, just below zero air, of a sunny day in January! You will put whatever mental weight has been pushing down on your shoulders to one side and you’ll spend a few minutes trying to get the whole landscape in, with all the colours and nuances.

Is sometimes easy to forget, caught in our routine as we are, that these overwhelmingly beautiful places are less than an hour away from the busy life, work, commute.

I grew up in the country side, in the middle of nowhere. Actually, to be more correct, in the middle of Romania. Right in Transylvania, in a village where nature knocks at your door trying to get in! I still remember this November morning when we woke up to find a blanket of 60cm fluffy snow on the doormat. The wind pushed a rather heavy pile on the yard gate so we couldn’t actually get to school. What school? We couldn’t get out of the yard! That was one of the hardest winters, especially for the parents who had to maintain the house and get on the roof to push down the snow so that it doesn’t collapse all in the attic with the tiles! So yes, I grew up face to face with the calming green and the blue skies and the big snowflakes. Nature makes me feel at home! Whenever I am in the middle of the fields I hit the reset button, I relax, I stop caring about the small and rather non-important every day things!

If you want to get your daily exercise in you get to pick from a variety of walking trails, from a few miles to over 12 miles. We hiked for a few hours and stuck to no trail and somehow when we though we will be getting close to Box Hill & Westhumble train station we realised we are in Dorking!

But hey! Everything was so beautiful around us, it was a pleasure to get lost! Who can pay attention to the signs when there is so much else to look at?

We finished the day out with a long walk on the beautiful streets of the local residential area, very quiet everywhere, preparing ourselves to get back on trains and buses towards the buzz of the city.

What a beautiful way to end the week! Every day with blue skies has a special place in my heart but this one was even better, because I shared it with friends and I stopped the rush, I stopped the buzz!