What it is
Places shape what a day looks like: the light, the food, the pace, the language in the street. Living between two of them, Bristol in England and Burdur in south-west Turkey, makes both visible.
The difference starts with the ground. Burdur sits in Turkey’s Lakes Region, near Lake Salda, with far more sunshine than the west of England; Bristol is a river city on the Avon. The village of Güney, near Yeşilova, is where the ecological-living ideas on this site are being worked out.
Bristol to Burdur
Where the two homes are, and the distance between them.
Coastlines: Natural Earth (public domain). Coordinates: OpenStreetMap. The arc is the great-circle route.
Source: OpenStreetMap
Ideas to carry
- 1
Two homes, two clocks
Each place keeps its own time: seasons, meals, when shops close, when people visit.
- 2
The ground was here first
Landscape, water and soil decide more of a life than plans do.
- 3
Distance as a lens
Leaving a place is often when you first see it clearly.
Established What we know
Interpretation The older lens · Roman religion and feng shui
The Romans honoured a genius loci, the spirit of a place; feng shui reads land and water before building on them.
Reading
- 1977Space and PlaceYi-Fu Tuan
- 1958The Poetics of SpaceGaston Bachelard
- 1789The Natural History of SelborneGilbert White
Packing for Bristol
Packing for Burdur: same bag, very different sunglasses ratio
Connected subjects, projects and writing
- IdentitySubject · Origin
Perspective Living between two countries and languages shows how much of a self is shaped by place.
- History and institutionsSubject · Civilization
Perspective Settling in a new country is mostly learning its institutions, which is what MyLifeConsultant maps.
- Self-sufficient livingSubject · Frontier
Land, water, solar energy and growing food: living closer to the systems that keep a household alive.
- Travel and expeditionsSubject · Frontier
Journeys beyond the familiar map, and why nature and novelty reset attention.
- MyLifeConsultantProject · Civilization
A personal plan for work, housing, money, healthcare and everyday life for people moving to the UK, in Turkish and English.
- GüneyProject · Frontier
A mountain village in Yeşilova, Burdur, near Lake Salda: a community site today, and the ground for ideas about ecological, self-sufficient living.
- UK Settlement HubProject · Civilization
A broader home for practical knowledge about building a life in the UK. MyLifeConsultant is its first working piece.
- Between the UK and TurkeyNote · Frontier
Two places, two languages, and the useful friction between them.
Sources
- OpenStreetMap OpenStreetMap. Checked 5 Nov 2026.
- Global Solar Atlas World Bank Group / Solargis. Checked 5 Nov 2026.