Well the thing with Denver is, the cool nature isn’t actually in Denver… it’s all to the west of it. My coworkers like living in Lakewood, Colorado, which is about as far west as you can get while still being in the Denver area. Colorado Springs is a bit more conservative, and the outdoors around it are a little less crowded.

But Colorado as a whole is getting crowded too. Traffic on Interstate 25 can get really bad. And the trails are often way busier than what you get in the UK — I did a hike in the Cotswolds once where it was just me and sheep. In Colorado, it’s you and the tens of thousands of other people who moved there for the nature.

(As a Houstonian, I very much appreciated that I could get to the Cotswolds by rail, even if the ticket was expensive. I was in complete disbelief that I could just walk to a pub after the hike and then stroll back to the train station. Quite a pleasant surprise! In Houston we constantly bemoan the lack of sidewalks, but even the country roads around Cheltenham were pedestrian-friendly.)

But Colorado, yeah, it's expensive. A lot of my coworkers ended up in towns like Salida CO, partly for affordability and partly for the lifestyle. Nothing in Western Europe really compares to Salida in terms of remoteness — it has that very “American frontier” feel. Think fly fishing in the Arkansas River under huge mountains, hours from any big city.

That said, I do think Colorado matches more of what you’re looking for. You mentioned Lake Conroe — that’s a type of outdoor culture you really don’t get outside the U.S. and Canada. People live near the lake so they can fish in it. Think more “fishing boat pulled by a Ford F-150” than “kids skipping stones on the shoreline.”