After a week of rain, rain and more rain, it was time for an outing. Dan and I were meant to be visiting a friend on Saturday but, due to complicated Covid things, we had to postpone. (Don’t worry, we’re fine for now - in fact we got our third doses this week!) Instead, we brought my folks along for a walk at Mount Hedrick in the Avon Wilderness Park. Well, I say we brought them along, but really Dad drove us up there in “the big car” in case the roads were a bit crappy after all the rain. We had what looked like a 3-4 hour window before it was going to storm, so we started the walk earlyish - around 8:30am.

I’ve been trying to find my way around AllTrails. It seems to work OK for me on the browser, but I can’t log into the app. Anyway, I saw a couple of routes on there, but decided to make my own approx 10km loop based on data from AllTrails and from the info sheet from a Victorian Government website (which I now realise is from 2004, when DELWP was the DSE). On paper the walk looked pretty simple, and I just assumed that it would be a well marked trail. However, we missed a turn-off, which was not signposted, and ended up taking a bit of a detour on a path that was not marked on any of the maps. Although we were all fine in the end, it did add a couple of kilometres and a pretty steep - but spectacular - ascent to the top of Mount Hedrick.

Rather than doing a full description, here’s a list of things we discussed towards the end of the walk - things that went well vs things to learn from.

The walk ended up being approximately 12 kilometres long, with just under 500 metres of ascent, and it took us 5½ hours. We did go very slowly up the steep side of Mount Hedrick and other slopes, making sure my 70 year old (!) parents were doing OK! As well as the ups and downs, the surface of the trail included sandy gravel road, paths with lots of loose former river stones (ankle breakers), sections of slightly overgrown track, a few blowdowns to negotiate, and some fairly easy rock scrambling. The temperatures were in the mid-20s, and it was very humid.

The variety meant that although this walk was a lot more strenuous than last week’s, I didn’t have the same kinds of aches to contend with. Although I forgot to buy tape for my second right toe, I only got a small blister. Once again, I forgot to wear my sunglasses (even after I went back to get them!), but it was fine on the headache front - possibly because the path itself was often in shade or covered in leaves, rather than bright and reflective. I should remember to bring the poles for hikes like this - could have been quite handy on some of the uneven surfaces and hills. Other than that, just the usual residual achiness of feet, ankles and calves. In fact, the next day, I can really feel that my lower leg muscles have done a lot of ankle stabilising - ow!

I would definitely do parts of this walk again with friends. It could also be a good training walk with a loaded pack - maybe even doing a double loop of the original plan when I’ve worked up to that.

Dan and I usually go out for a walk on the 1st of January - start the year as you intend to go on, etc, etc. We’re currently staying with my folks in Gippsland (Gunaikurnai country), and convinced my mum to come along, too (my dad was at work, fire spotting in the hills.) One catch… the forecast was for 38 degrees!

Instead of postponing, we headed out very early to try and beat the heat. We drove to the Sale Wetlands (aka Sale Common and the Sale Game Refuge, among other things) and started walking not too long after sunrise. The low light came streaming through the trees and helpfully highlighted the many, many spider webs across the path.

Our count of creature sightings started early, with swans (black, of course - we’re in Australia!) and cygnets, a spoonbill hunting, a few rabbits and cows, crested pigeons, magpies, a swamp wallaby, wattle birds, magpie larks and herons. A pelican also flew overhead - our first sighting since we got here! Mum and I tasted some berries which we thought might have been midgen (midyin) berries but which our post-walk research tells us were probably coastal beard-heath (aka native currant). One for future foraging!

Unfortunately, big stretches of the wetlands boardwalk are currently closed due to flood damage, so we weren’t able to go out over the water. Instead we skirted the northern edge of the reserve along a gravel street, then went south on Flooding Creek Trail. The trail was a dirt and grassy vehicle-width track for most of the way. It was very pleasant walking through the trees, with views out over the swamp. (Well, it was pleasant apart from the constant spider webs on legs and arms, in hair and mouths!)

Dan and I first read about this walk when we stopped off at the swing bridge at the southern end of the loop a few weeks before. At that time there had been a lot of rain and we thought the path that follows Flooding Creek might have been, well, flooded. Turns out, it definitely would have been at that point - probably at least knee deep in places - but luckily we only encountered a few muddy patches to negotiate.

We saw plenty more swans and cygnets, ducks and ducklings, an egret, moorhens, swamphens and at least two types of cormorant. In the trees, we saw crimson rosellas, rainbow lorikeets, red-browed finches, blue wrens and other little birds. We heard - and eventually saw - kookaburras and butcherbirds, grey shrike thrushes and noisy miners. I recorded some frogs (I assume!) that sound like someone chopping wood or hitting a post with a mallet.

By the time we met the Dartyowan (La Trobe River), it was past 8am and getting warm. We turned west on the road to the swing bridge, past some lovely old trees. We crossed the bridge (it was due to open later in the day, but we weren’t going to stick around for 6 hours in the heat!), looked at the bark canoe sculpture and made use of the picnic benches for a rest and a stretch. Not too far from the bridge we spotted two kingfishers!

Here the loop turns back towards Sale. Because the boardwalks are closed, we followed the bike trail that shadows the highway (I think it might have even been the old highway at some point?). Along this stretch we found some big colonies of spiders in the shrubs, walked through two huge swarms of dragonflies, noticed a few different butterflies and moths, helped a brilliantly shiny stag beetle across the path and watched three huge birds - we are pretty it was a family of white bellied sea eagles - riding the thermals above us.

By now it was pretty hot in the sun, and the whining, buzzing sound of insects and crickets started to rise up from the grass (and stands of feral fennel!) to surround us. An unexpected gravel path took us on a little detour alongside the river and through what used to be a flood-prone caravan park. This stretch is planted out with non-native and non-indigenous species, including oak, ash, poplar, fruit trees and kurrajong, but the area also has many eucalypts and paperbarks. Before we headed back to the car we waved to a boat that sped past downstream and watched a couple of grey currawongs and a pretty little grey fantail.

It was about 30 degrees by the time we got home. My dad called us from the top of his fire tower as we walked in the door to let us know that we’d got out just in time, as there was a fire near the common! Luckily, there was plenty of water around to put it out with…

As well as being our New Years Day walk, this marked the start of my training for a longer trip I’m hoping to do later this year, Covid and lockdowns permitting. The plan is to walk the Heysen Trail in South Australia from north to south, starting in August. The trail will take about two months to complete, depending on how many kilometres I walk a day and how many rest days I need to have. I’m starting from low-ish walking levels (for me), so I’m building up slowly - starting with weekly ~10km walks in January and gradually increasing to more hardcore overnighters later in the year.

When I blog these walks, I’m going to keep a record of a few bits of physical fitness at the end - feel free to skip the section after these photos if that isn’t your thing.

We completed the loop in almost exactly three and a half hours including rest stops and taking lots of photos, and I estimate we walked a bit over 11km. It was almost entirely flat, with surfaces ranging from grass and loose gravel to dirt road and sealed path.

The lack of variation in ascent/descent meant I got quite a sore lower back - mitigated slightly by stretching. I have been having trouble with a pinch blister under the second toe on my right foot, and this appeared towards the end of the walk. I might need to try taping this toe (and its neighbour) in future. Other than that, just some the usual slightly sore feet. My right knee didn’t play up, but I need to remember to stretch out my calves more regularly, especially early on, to avoid knee issues and next-day tightness. Also, note to self: wear your sunglasses to avoid headaches later in the day!

In February 2020, I headed up to London and joined dozens of volunteers helping Dan Raven-Ellison kick off the Slow Ways project. The idea behind this project at the start was to use the current OS rights of way map as well as Google street view/satellite imagery, local knowledge and Open Street Map to find walkable, direct routes between as many UK cities, towns and villages as possible. Eventually, we’d end up with a spiderweb-y network of routes linking these towns or hubs, with most of those hubs offering some combination of public transport links, accommodation, grocery shops and/or eateries.

The Sussex Diamond Way is a 60 mile, waymarked path in East Sussex, running from Heathfield in the east to Midhurst in the west. The route was created by the Sussex Ramblers in 1995 to mark their 60th anniversary (hence 60 miles) and it takes in some of the varied, picturesque local landscapes - kind of like the low weald equivalent to the High Weald Landscape Trail.

We walked quite slowly, making sure every written direction was correct - going both ways - and affixing the markers to fingerposts and marker posts (and only those posts - not to gates, stiles and other path furniture, which belong to the landowners rather than the council). It was also surprisingly tiring, especially when affixing markers higher than my shoulders over and over again. (Thanks for your help, Dan!)

I’d seen a couple of markers for this path over the years, and noticed it on lists of long distance paths in Sussex, but I’d never purposefully gone out to walk any of it. More fool me - it’s a really beautiful trail. Just in our short stretch, we found broadleaf woodlands full of bird life, farm tracks with friendly sheep, art and sculptures in gardens, meadows churning with butterflies, a viaduct and bridleways along quiet back lanes. And further west, of course, the path goes through Ashdown Forest, which is always high on the list for visitors to the area. If we had been staying in East Sussex for longer, I would definitely have added this to the list of trails to walk in full. Oh well, something to do when we come back to the UK!

Erin sent out two templates for aspiring zinesters to use, then he and his partner printed and folded many, many, many zines to send out to friends. My parcel is waiting in Australia - I'm looking forward to seeing all the hard copy zines when we get back there in a couple of months. In the meantime, I'm enjoying the digital versions. Erin also had a live stream to go through all the zines, but it was at 3am UK time, so I had to watch it the following day.

I made a zine for the party! I'd just been on a wonderful three-day walk with my friend Gemma over the South Downs, meandering slowly from Brighton to Eastbourne. We aimed to take it easy and really soak up the atmosphere, only walking about 12km/7.5mi per day. Our main preparation seemed to be bringing way more food than we needed. It was delicious, and we weren't carrying camping gear, so I'm not complaining!

One thing I'd wanted to do on the walk was to make some art along the way, so I took my sketchbook and a pen and did some contour drawings. In the technique I like to use, you look at the subject of your drawing but not at the paper while you use one continuous line to draw what is in front of you. It's a fun way to make you slow down and really look at whatever is in front of you, and the results are often kind of surprising.

My sketchbook is square and the zine format is oblong, so these are crops of photos of the images. Usually I spend about 5-10minutes on each drawing, so it's not a huge time commitment when walking or travelling in general. It often takes me a couple of drawings to get into the swing of things - and some scenes are trickier than others.

Anyway, the walk was fun and making the little zine was fun, and Erin's idea for a postal zine fair for his birthday was super fun! I just thought I'd share something I've been up to in addition to packing up our lives and getting ready to move to the other side of the world!

This will eventually be a comprehensive review, as I didn’t find too many when I was researching. I will add to the review (and add more pics) as I spend more time with/in the tent. If you have questions that I don’t cover here, feel free to leave a comment and I’ll try to answer it. What I won’t do is give my own weight measurements, as I don’t have a sensitive scale. If you’re wanting the specs, they are on the Tarptent website. In brief, the tent weighs a bit over 450g, not including stakes, extra cords, etc.

Before I get into the realities of the shelter, I thought I'd share some of the considerations and concerns I had before getting the tent. For other people thinking about it (or a similar tent), I hope this might help. Also, I thought a lot about it, and what's the point of all that agonising if I don't record it?!

Do I really need another shelter?
There’s a reason I didn't buy a 1 person tent sooner.  Between the two of us we already have:

• A 2.5 person, 2.8kg tent Wild Country Aspect (which we use for car camping)
  
• A 3 person, semi-freestanding, 1.7kg Alpkit Ordos (which we use when we are walking together, e.g. on our Snowy River trip)
  
• A Rab Siltarp 2 flat tarp and two Alpkit bivvy bags (often used in conjunction for solo or duo overnight walks in the UK)
  

I’m happy with my tarp/bivvy set up for solo overnighters in the UK. The tarp is flexible and easy enough to set up with hiking poles. But it lacks one thing: protection from little animals. When we head to Australia (fingers crossed!), I am more keen than Dan to do a bunch of overnight hiking - and while the occasional slug or grasshopper in the UK doesn’t really bother me, I don’t fancy sharing a sleeping bag with clouds of mozzies, troops of bullants, flies, spiders and snakes. A 1 person, fully enclosed shelter is ideal.

Why this tent?
I wanted something:

• Really light - lighter than my current tarp combined with a separate bug net
• Simple - not many things to go wrong, no extra struts needed, a design I could understand
• One piece - no pitching an inner then an outer or vice versa
• Pitched with hiking poles - a simple way to save weight, and I’ll always have them on me if doing a long walk

I also wanted to try something in Dyneema (aka DCF, aka Cuben Fibre). Dyneema has really taken off in the USA with hikers and in the cottage industry of ultralight gear as it is super lightweight, tough and extremely waterproof. It doesn’t sag in the rain, which is one of my pet peeves with pretty much every shelter I’ve used, and it doesn’t wet through.

For ages, I’ve been looking at all the Zpacks tents on hiking YouTube and pondering the pros and cons of designs. The Duplex is kind of a classic, and I thought I might eventually go for that. I held off because it was so expensive and because Zpacks customer service has an … uneven … reputation, which is not something I wanted to deal with if I was having issues with a tent while in another country. And then I heard whispers that Tarptent was now doing Dyneema versions of their tents. I headed over to their website and the ProTrail Li (ProTrail = the design, Li = Dyneema version) immediately caught my eye. I’d been saying to Dan that what I wanted was “basically a tarp with bugproofing”, and this seemed to be it.

Considerations
Because the ProTrail Li is a relatively new tent and lots of people have been in lockdown since it came out, there aren’t that many detailed, longer-term user reviews. I specifically sought out critical reviews to help me understand the issues I might encounter. It’s an extremely expensive tent (for me), so I wanted to be sure. Here are the things people mentioned and/or that I specifically worried about, which you might want to consider when making your decision.

• Length and height. A lot of taller people worry about this, but I did not. (I am short - approx 165cm - and this is one of the only hiking-related benefits! The rest of the time, it’s all trousers/leggings/rain pants that are 30cm too long, rushing to catch up with long-legged friends, raincoats made for Mr Tickle… Oh, but I can just about curl up on a ¾ length sleeping mat, so that’s fun, too.) Anyway, I figured that I’ve spent enough time sitting under tarps at hiking pole height that it will be fine to sit at the front of this tent.
  
• Width. I didn’t see this mentioned as often. I’m a side sleeper who moves around a lot, and I was concerned that I would end up hitting the walls with my knees and feet and getting my sleeping bag wet with condensation. One reviewer said they sleep on their side with their arm outstretched and they had plenty of room for their arm at the wide/door end. This was helpful, but I was more concerned about the narrow/foot end. In fact, this was probably my biggest concern when buying the tent (having not seen it in real life).
• Livable room. Really a combination of the above, but also consider things like: if I’m stuck in the tent for a whole day and it’s absolutely pissing down, would I be comfortable? How will I get dressed/undressed? Is there enough room for everything I want to bring inside/under the vestibule? Can I cook while remaining sheltered from the rain? Where will I hang my socks to dry? Is there a pocket for my phone/book/glasses? The appeal of the ProTrail design is its simplicity and weight, but in comparison to something like the Duplex, you are getting less liveable space and fewer storage/hanging options.
• One piece set up. As noted, I wanted a tent that did not require separate erection of an inner and a fly - it’s easier, quicker, and less likely to get wet when put up in the rain. However, this means less flexibility in the pitch and no bug-net-only pitches for watching the stars!
• Condensation and ventilation. People say that condensation is more of an issue with single wall tents. I think it’s only more of an issue because it’s easier to hit the wet inside walls of the tent without another layer (of net or fabric) in the way. All the double wall tents I’ve slept in have had mesh overhead and ended up with just as much condensation on the inside of the fly/outer wall… only it’s harder to reach to wipe down. The ProTrail has a small-end storm window, which should help with ventilation, as well as having the net sides between the bathtub and wall. I’ll probably also keep the vestibule open when possible as I like to be able to see outside.
• Front/end entrance. Some folks have a very strong preference for a side entrance, a door that runs alongside your sleeping position, rather than an opening at the end. This is not a dealbreaker for me, especially if I’m solo and not having to negotiate entry/exit with another person, but if you're less flexible you might find it awkward.
• Packability. While Dyneema is super light, it doesn’t actually pack down as small as the same quantity of, for example, Silnylon. This can be an issue when you are carrying a smaller pack. TarpTent suggests that by folding and rolling the tent carefully, it will fit horizontally in most packs. We'll see!
• Transparency. The weight and type of fabric used means that the tent is translucent. From the photos and videos, you could definitely see the general outline of what was inside the tent. You would probably be able to tell if someone was clothed or not. I am not necessarily planning to use this tent in a busy campsite, but that’s something to consider.
• Other fabric issues. I've heard that Dyneema is noisy in the wind or when you move in it. Some people say it’s not actually that resistant to piercing damage (e.g. rocks underneath, twigs falling on the walls). Anecdotally, it deteriorates when left up in bright sunlight for too long. If you're getting any kind of lightweight or ultralight gear, you need to pay a bit more attention to treating it well and understand that it might not be as durable as equipment made from other materials.
• Hiking pole setup, not free-standing. If you don’t use hiking poles, you need to buy alternative poles for the tent setup. I use hiking poles (or don’t mind carrying them anyway). There is also a good argument for using a free-standing (or semi-free-standing) tent that will go up and stay up without being staked out. This is especially true if you’re going to be in places with very hard or very soft ground, for example. Unfortunately, the price to pay with all such tents is weight and size: you must carry poles for the tent. It’s a risk I’m willing to take… let’s see how that pans out!
• Pitch difficulty. A few comments suggested that the ProTrail Li is a bit more fiddly to get right than the non-Dyneema version. “Easy to pitch, hard to pitch perfectly,” seemed to be the vibe. This is something I worried about, because I get very irritated when my shelter is not quite right. However, I’ve also spent enough nights under dodgily pitched tarps to understand the difference between a pitch that is ugly-but-functional and one that’s flawed enough to collapse. I can cope (I tell myself).
• Wind and guy out points. Related to the above, some commenters had issues with this design in a cross-wind. The long side walls can cave inwards, pushing against whatever’s in the tent (and potentially blowing the outer wall over the side of the bathtub floor, emptying the rain straight into your living space - though I’m not sure if this has ever happened to anyone). Common mitigation suggestions are to find the right site, to angle the foot of the tent into the wind and to pitch everything nice and taut. Well, that’s easy enough to say, but sometimes you don’t have much of a choice where you set up and sometimes the wind changes direction. The tent has tabs where extra guylines can be attached on the long side walls, but these are located close to the head and foot of the tent, rather than in the middle (presumably because these are the points/seams that can take the stress, whereas the mid-point has no structural support). The guylines and stakes are not provided for this, but I have plenty of cord and stakes if needed.
• Cost. It’s an expensive tent. Shipping is expensive. Customs/import tax is expensive. But I couldn’t find a Dyneema tent closer to home or for less money. (Though if you’re in the UK some people have had luck - and a long wait - with TrekkerTent.) When I went to plce my order, there was a “Blem” version available - that is, a tent made with cosmetic blemishes in the Dyneema. These are taped to ensure durability, and it saves US$50.

With all that in mind, I spent another week or two agonising over whether I should press the ‘order’ button...

Obviously, I bought the tent. And then I sat back to wait. I used the cheaper shipping option, expecting it to take a couple of months to get to me. But in the end, it took less than 2 weeks! I immediately set it up on the lawn. The next day, having mulled over some of the issues I encountered, I tried again.

All in all, this was a successful start. I was pleased with my research, which had let me know what kinds of issues to expect (e.g. the wind, needing to practice/fiddle to get a really good pitch), and had given me a good idea of any limitations of the shelter. As I said, one of my main concerns had been about width/space, especially at the narrow end, but that seemed fine. I enjoyed being in the tent, and it felt like just what I wanted - a tarp with a bit of extra protection. I look forward to seeing how it goes when I’m using it for real!

Well, that pandemic certainly happened and is continuing to happen. I had great plans to post here every month, but that fell by the wayside. Here are some things I've done this year.

Audio

• My piece "A Cartography of Trespass" was published in Elsewhere Journal (this piece first appeared in Queer Out Here Issue 04)
• Took part in the earlier weeks of Audio Playground, creating short audio pieces in response to prompts
• And then in November one of my Audio Playground pieces, "The Shape of You in Her", was picked up by Short Cuts on BBC4 - one of my favourite shows
  
• Allysse and I published Queer Out Here Issue 05 (Side A and Side B)
• Dan and I did some backing instrumentals and vocals for our friend Martha's cover of Folsom Prison Blues
  
• Not me, but Dan did a whole bunch of musical stuff - I am properly addicted to this cover of Kokomo that he took part in
  

Craft
I decided in January that I'd try to do a bit of crochet this year... now it is out of control! Having not done anything other than granny squares and a couple of other amateurish attempts at furnishings in the past, I ended up learning a bunch of new stitches, joining some workshops (pre-lockdown), learning how to read a pattern, learning Tunisian crochet and making:

• 15+ beanies
• 3 shawls
• 3 scarves
• 3 cowls
• 2 pairs of gloves
• A pair of mittens
• 13 x 30cm squares for a blanket (it will have 25 when complete)
  
• Two washcloths
  
• A onesie for a teddy bear
• A cushion cover
• Another blanket in progress (my "in-between projects" project)
  

I've developed an alarming yarn addiction. As a result of having lots of yarn and equipment around the place, I've also darned a bunch of socks, yay! I've been taking part in a weekly Zoom stitch & bitch with folks in Australia and the UK, which has been nice. I also did a weekly coffee & crochet session with some colleagues during lockdown, which turned into a semi-regular crafternoon when we went back to work.

Art
During the proper lockdown (the first one), I had a daily drawing session with a friend in Melbourne via Zoom. This meant that every morning I would sit down and draw for about half an hour before I had to log in to work. This was probably the nicest thing to come out of lockdown. I really saw an improvement in my drawings over the 5-ish months of practicing every day, and I had a lot of fun doing it. Since then, we still do weekend sessions. The things this short daily practice really helped with were overcoming the fear of the blank page, overcoming the need for perfection, and allowing experimentation. Things that never change: not knowing what to draw! It was also really, really nice to have a low-key social element every day.

Sea swimming
As summer kicked in, we wanted to make the most of our proximity to the beach so we drove down whenever the weather was good. I bobbed around and floated and played in the breakers and did somersaults in the water. We usually went early in the morning, before work, to avoid any crowds - but to be honest, people were pretty good at keeping distanced. A couple of times our friend met us and we spent longer on the beach and got chips for lunch. Good times. My final sea swim was in September on the way home from work (schools are open again now), during golden hour as the setting sun lit up the white cliffs at Birling Gap. That was probably my stand-out visual memory of the year - it's when I took the pic at the start of this post!

Travel

• Did not go to Australia at Easter.
  
• Did not go to Portugal in August.
• Did go to Devon on a socially-distanced family holiday with Dan's family. We went cycling for a day and did some walking on the Tarka Trail. We randomly met Blanca (from Blanca on a Bike) on the side of the trail one day! I also found a little river to paddle in - and then, after it rained a lot, it was deep enough to submerge myself in. It was freezing. On the way home we had a cup of tea with the best view and weather of the trip!
  
• I went for an overnight walk after work one Friday in September, camping on the South Downs overnight and then meeting Dan for an early lunch on the Saturday.
  
• We went camping for a weekend near Bristol with Allysse in October. On the way home I paddled until my feet went numb (so, less than 5 minutes) in the River Wylye.

Misc

• Published my short piece "The Dogs" in Confluence Issue 11 - this is a piece that draws on some of our experiences of the Snowy River adventure a few years ago
• Did a poetry writing course on FutureLearn, which I really enjoyed (I also liked the poems I wrote as a result, but they have not been accepted for publication anywhere yet)
• Did a few nice walks with people when it's been allowed - family in Devon, a colleague up Mount Caburn and in Abbot's Wood, an old friend at Sevenoaks and on the North Downs, another friend on the South Downs, another at the beach
  
• I did another, shorter version of the after-work Friday walk, with Dan picking me up a couple of hours in
• Tried joining a queer Zoom choir, but it didn't work for me
• Watched a few plays and musicals when the first lockdown had lots of places putting things online
• Bought a pair of trail runners to wear instead of walking boots (and without my orthotics) - this is still an experiment in progress, but I'm enjoying them a lot so far
• Dreamt about long walks that I want to do, mostly in Australia
• Have read hardly any books - I just haven't been in the mood
• Discovered a new favourite local wood to walk in - when the weather was OK, we'd drive there, walk up to the top of the hill and make a cup of tea under a beech tree, enjoying the views out towards the next hill and village
• Became completely obsessed with a Chinese drama called The Untamed (and to a lesser extent another Chinese drama called The Sleuth of the Ming Dynasty), fell back into fandom and started learning Chinese (Mandarin) on Duolingo. (To be honest, I probably spent more time on these shows than anything else outside of work for a good couple of months!)

All things considered, with the exception of the fear and grief of the fires in Gippsland at the start of the year, 2020 has not been terrible for me. Nobody close to us has died of the virus, which is kind of astonishing given that 1 in 1000 people in the UK have died of "Covid-involved" causes (that's 1 in 1000 people, not 1 in 1000 deaths). Dan and I are very lucky that we have both kept our jobs and that lockdown life doesn't affect us too badly. It was actually quite nice not having to go to work during the first lockdown (we saved a lot of petrol money and 2hrs a day on the commute!). Apart from not being able to go on our two planned international holidays, it's mostly just been a case of just not seeing many friends/family in person, not going to restaurants and not doing our monthly group walks. But as I say, we're the lucky ones, especially given the complete ethical failure of the UK government to care for its population.

I hope you have managed to have as good a year as possible given the circumstances. Here's to a better 2021.

Last month I linked to some new-to-me music, this month I'm sharing some interesting audio pieces - documentaries, podcasts, projects, field recordings and so on.

I'm pretty obsessed with audio, and the rise of podcasting/sound hosting has been terrific for finding new and exciting stuff to listen to. But there are also a lot of unedited conversations (e.g. hours of boring rambling), unmixed audio (e.g. wild variations in volume, poor balance and EQ), poorly considered projects (e.g. producers who have a great idea but soon find it is only one idea and abandon podcasting after a couple of episodes) and samey content (e.g. Skype/Facetime interviews). I can completely understand why folks might choose to stick to a handful of reliable, relatively mainstream podcasts instead of venturing out and sifting through huge piles of stuff to find other things they like.

But there is so much to listen to! Art projects, sound walks, field recordings, essays, abstract music, installations, weird and indefinable things . . .  So here are a few bits just to get you started, things I've listened to and enjoyed over the last month or two, mainstream and slightly more obscure. When I've recommended a larger project, I've tried to include links to specific pieces or episodes, because I know that it can be a bit overwhelming otherwise.

I hope you find something enjoyable to listen to here (I'd recommend headphones for most of the pieces) - and please feel free to send me links to things you've listened to and loved of late!

Short Cuts is one of my favourite places for hearing interesting, short audio pieces on a regular basis. The format is usually an introduction to the episode’s theme from presenter Josie Long, three diverse pieces with brief links, then an outro. But within that structure, you might hear anything! Two episodes (of many) that I’ve loved are Deep Time (“A solar eclipse repeats over and over, a musical key unlocks lost memories and a life marked out in books”) and Sports (“From rally car driving to the healing power of climbing”). Find more great stuff from the production team at Falling Tree on their SoundCloud.

While I won’t be in Kuala Lumpur any time soon, I was intrigued to hear about this site-specific soundscape work. Yonatan Collier recorded areas of this re-greened ex-suburb jungle park, then manipulated those field recordings in various ways and mapped them out in an app, which plays the altered sounds back to listeners as they move around the site. Watch the video below.

A beautiful audio essay from Kitty Macfarlane and producer Rosie Boulton. It moves from the music of John Tavener's "The Lamb" to the Steart Marshes nature reserve, from the poem by William Blake to birds, from the making of landscapes/places by nature/people to ethical musings: everything combining in memory and running as tidal streams into other places and pieces.

A long-running online audio project and map - people submit field recordings of places and they or others also create remixed or reimagined pieces taking those field recordings as the starting point. Sometimes these are subtle and ambient remixes, sometimes they use only the content and chop it up to create beats, tunes and textures, sometimes they add entire bands and other sounds to respond to the initial recording. One place to start with the remixes is the Sounds of the Year albums (e.g. Sounds of the Year 2019). But I prefer to listen to both the field recording and the reimagined sound, so if I hear something interesting on one of those albums (e.g. Church Bells were the Internet of the 1500s (Hanoi, Vietnam)), I’ll go and find them on the website (e.g. Church bells were the internet of the 1500s).

I can recommend the first season of Within the Wires - it’s the only season I’ve listened to! This is a story told via a series of relaxation cassettes - as you listen, it becomes apparent that the person listening to the tapes is imprisoned in an institution and the person producing the tapes is trying to help them escape. This is one of those ones where you do need to start at the start and listen through, as it's a serial narrative.

One of my favourite pieces in the most recent issue of Queer Out Here was Allysse Riordan’s piece I Am Still Breathing. Allysse created this rich piece entirely from sounds found on the free music archive, which shows you don’t always have to be a field recordist or musician to create interesting soundscapes and stories.

I spent a very enjoyable few hours the other weekend listening to all of the pieces on the Sounding Aldborough / Soundmarks Soundcloud. This is a fascinating archaeology/art project, based around a dig in the Yorkshire village of Aldborough. The pieces include a series of episodes during the dig with interviews with historians and volunteers, a series of site-specific compositions created by Rob St John based on field recordings taken around the area, and a documentary about the entire process. If you only want to listen to one thing, it's probably best to go with the Soundmarks doco.

My love of this programme is pretty well documented by now! It’s such a great show, presented by the excellent and enthusiastic Dr Ann Jones. One of my favourite things from Off Track is the podcast-only series Earworms from Planet Earth - crammed full of listener-contributed field recordings, with occasional comments from experts identifying what we can hear (it’s a frog).

Maybe I’m a bit late to the party on this one. I haven’t listened to all the episodes yet, but I’m really into these audio stories from George the Poet, spoken mostly in rhyme, with blends of music, soundscapes, acted scenes. One early episode that I loved was A Grenfell Story - it both is and isn’t what you might expect.

This is a gorgeous album of field recording-based audio curated by Stéphane Marin/Each Morning of the World. From the wall of cicada noise pre-storm to the chiiiw-dikka-dikka-dikka-dikka of a pedestrian crossing, from Australian frog choruses to markets in Port Moresby and a band in Vanauatu. Start from the start, or if you just want one track, try out the chatty currawongs and faint musical drone of Morning Caucus or the butcherbirds in Byron Bay Hinterland (because I like birds). I found this via A Closer Listen - keep them on your feeds for more great suggestions.

Bonus round - Audio Playground is a chance to make your own audio and listen to short responses to weekly prompts. Sarah Geis has set this up, and I'm loving it so far! Listen to responses so far (including mine!) here. Why not join in?

So, which bits did you enjoy most? What else have you been listening to lately? Let me know!

Over the past few years I’ve taken more walks and trips without the camera. It’s been a way to take the pressure off myself to “produce” something and helped me focus more on the experience of being there. But I’ve also started to miss taking photos with a proper camera (well, a non-phone camera). I like having a zoom! And a better quality image to look at! Also, if I am conscious about using the camera, rather than just walking around with it in my hand taking photos the entire time, it can help me slow down and notice things in a different way - especially details.

With that in mind, I took the camera on my walk into town the other day. Although the trip was otherwise a bit of a failure (I went to pick up a prescription but it hadn’t been sent through yet, I went to get some more yarn for crocheting a beanie and bought the wrong one), I enjoyed making it into a slow, meditative adventure. I also got to pat two cats on the way home, both of whom saw me coming from ages away and ran up to me to say hello!

I loved watching the changing light as the sun started to set. It’s starting to stay lighter a little later in the afternoons, now, which is a relief. It had rained that morning, so there were puddles on the ground and in the hollows of fallen tree trunks, reflecting the colours of the sky. It was very beautiful.

One of my desires for the new year was to listen to new (or new-to-me) music. Thanks to friends who answered my plea on various social platforms, I've now got heaps! And what's the point of enjoying all this music without passing it on? Here are 10 tunes you might enjoy.

In the past I've asked for recs for artists or albums, but this time I asked for one song only. This has worked out much better for me, and I've been able to create myself a little playlist/mix tape. I haven't included all the recommendations here - not because I didn't like the songs, but because there were just too many, and some of them didn't quite fit with the vibe of this particular playlist.

This playlist starts slow and simple, with this abridged version of "Across the Blue Ridge Mountains" in two voice a cappella style. You can really hear the Scottish/Irish folk heritage here. You can find a live version with more story verses on YouTube - or buy the Sails of Self album.

Leaning into the Irish folkishness! I loved the arrangement in "The West Coast of Clare". It sounds so simple yet each instrument weaves me through and beyond the lyrics into wistful imagination. (The title is a line from Loreena McKennitt's "The Old Ways", which I think makes an interesting conversation partner to this song.) Find out more about Dervish on their website.

While "The Wild Rover" is a traditional folk song, the arrangement is not - it's very contemporary. The sharpness, the drone, the assonance, the slow build of instrumentation and intensity. The video is also disconcerting and I like it! More about Lankum, including tour dates, on their website.

The landscape link to the last video is hard to ignore here! "Maalie" is from Erland Cooper's 2018 album Solan Goose, part of what appears to be an ongoing love letter to Orkney, his home. This gorgeous short piece builds from the gentleness of a still morning to the exuberance of birds, clouds, wind, sky. Read an interview with Erland Cooper here, or visit his website to explore his other projects.

"Nautilus" was such a surprise and a delight! As with the previous piece, this explores repetition - this time over a chromatic scale, with a simple bassline and driving rhythm. It's such a big sound, and I am so here for the tuba - who knew?! It's worth listening to the whole mini-concert if you're interested ("Nautilus" is the first song). Anna Meredith's website.

Oh yeah, we've been heading here, and now it's time for some proper techno! "Cosmic Ratio" was recommended as a "wake up", and it definitely is - it makes me so happy I can't stop moving. More from Enrico Sangiuliano here.

OK, let's get some lyrics back in the mix - and let's start with some particularly good ones. I love the energy of "Final Form", love the film clip and only have one criticism: I wish there was more of it! More about Sampa the Great (and this song) here and on her website.

Oh my god, speaking of film clips . . .  As I said to the person who recommended "So Hot You're Hurting My Feelings", I am so distracted by the amazing crappy-90s-fantasy-TV-show aesthetic and weird dancing that I can hardly remember the song itself! Interview with Caroline Polachek here or check her website for tour dates.

"The Dying Song" by Montaigne has been stuck in my head since I first heard it - such a bouncy, cheerful tune. The person who recommended it said it was a kind of Bollywood nihilism, and I'd say it's like Regina Spektor singing about playing Dungeons and Dragons, and I think these are both equally valid descriptions.

After this festival of energy, let's go out gentle and weird with "The Barrel". This one is my own cheeky recommendation, and another clip that's definitely worth watching. Also recommended: everything else Aldous Harding does, much of which you may be able to find through her website.

I hope you've found a song or two to enjoy here! If you fancy it, leave me a comment with a link to one song you're really into at the moment (yes, just one!) and let me know why you like it.

"I've been thinking a lot about trespass. About being, as queer people, in places we're not expected to be, places we're not welcome, places we're not allowed."

If you follow me on social media, you can hardly have missed that Queer Out Here Issue 04 was released earlier this month. If you had missed that, well, now you know! I'll pop a preview of the issue below. My contribution to this issue, "A Cartography of Trespass", was a lot of fun to make. An abridged version of the piece appears in the zine (starts at about 1hr 7mins, here's the transcript), and the unabridged version is embedded at the end of this post.

Allysse and I challenged people to experiment with their submissions for Queer Out Here Issue 04. We tend to get a lot of single-person-talking-into-a-phone submissions and, while there's nothing wrong with that style at all, we hoped to encourage people to play around. I tried to rise to the challenge and push myself beyond my usual audio production style. I ended up doing this in a number of ways.

Collaboration. I've been wanting to involve other people in my audio pieces for a while now. (I mean, there's only so much I can stand listening to my own voice - also, I'm talking all through issues of Queer Out Here, so listeners are probably also sick of it.) For this piece, I decided to get other voices to read pins from Queering The Map. First of all, I got the OK from Queering The Map to incorporate the content (which is submitted anonymously from people all over the world - so there's no way of getting those people's consent!), and donated my thank you payment/gift to them. Then I put a general call on Twitter for people to do the readings. That didn't work, so I approached friends of different backgrounds to help out (payment in an "I'll buy you a drink one day" currency). Guess what? Loads of people hate the sound of their own voices and don't want to read things! But a few people helped out. In addition, I wanted to include field recordings of specific places in Melbourne (or in Australia generally), and my friend Emily went out of her way to collect some for me. All of this involved a lot more interacting with people than what I've done to create audio pieces before - even typing it up in retrospect makes me feel a bit anxious!

Editing. I use GarageBand to do most of my sound production. It's there on my laptop, it's free and it does the basics. But there are definitely parts of it that I don't use because I don't know they're there or I just don't know how. For this piece, I challenged myself to try out a few new effects or design processes. I loved the pitch shift/layered voice idea that I heard in a piece called "Totality" by Mae-Li Evans with Calum Perrin (starts about 19 minutes into this episode of Short Cuts), so I thought I'd give that a bash. I wanted to learn a bit more about looping and different filters. I thought of effects I wanted to make and then googled descriptions of them +garageband to find out how to make them. Sometimes they worked well, sometimes less so - but that's all part of the learning process. I ended up limiting myself to a few effects as I didn't want the piece to end up like a PowerPoint presentation that uses every single transition effect.

Theme and structure. I have been intrigued by ideas about space and identity since I discovered queer cultural geography when I was doing my PhD, and over the last year or so there have been a number of articles I've read, or things other people have said or done that have caused me to revisit these ideas. I don't have the time or the determination needed to "do" academic work outside of the academy, but I wanted to create a piece that touched on these themes, even if it didn't delve deeply into them in an academic sense. I wanted to make something that was interesting (to me) but entertaining (to someone who might not share my niche obsessions). This piece kind of sprawls its way through four main spaces (online/inside, the woods, my memories, the map), touching on different aspects of space/queerness/trespass at each stage, moving on to the next thing without necessarily providing a summary or key argument about the last. I wanted to leave ideas open-ended, open to further conversation and exploration and criticism - something that isn't a mode that academia is particularly good at teaching (or wasn't a mode I was particularly good at learning). This openness of structure, as well as some of my openness around the content, makes me feel vulnerable. Yes, it's partly an experiment, but it's also a piece of art that I had to commit to and invest quite a bit of time and energy in. What if people think the way the piece moves through ideas is lazy or superficial?

Here's the unabridged version of my piece "A Cartography of Trespass" (also embedded below). I'd love to know what you think of it, if you find something particularly interesting, if there's something that echoes your experiences - or if it's wildly different. As I said in my notes for Queer Out Here, "This is a conversation opener rather than a definitive statement: my experiences and thoughts on this topic come from a position of white, able bodied and relative class privilege. Other people in other places will have very different relationships to space, place and trespass - and I would love to hear responses in that vein in a future issue."

"What is a resolution anyway, apart from an attempt to close off narrative options? A locked gate - to climb? A no trespassing sign - to ignore?"

(N.B. Almost all the pictures I've taken have been of fungus with the phone while out and about . . . So, ah, sorry if you aren't into mushrooms?)

We lived in Finchley for the better part of a year when we first moved to the UK. At that point, all I wanted to do was get into the country and traipse through fields and woods, over hills and farms, away from the city. Although we visited lots of city green spaces, they always felt a bit like second best. This extremely wet autumn, though, I’ve come to appreciate the parks and woods and paths of North London a little more.

London has been designated a national park city. Despite the enormous population, there’s green dotted all over the map. Some of those spaces are sports grounds and golf clubs that might only be accessible via public footpaths or not at all, but there are also playgrounds, woodlands, rail trails, gardens . . . In North London, as well as your suburban pocket handkerchief scraps of grass, there are big, sprawling open spaces like Hampstead Heath and long corridors like the Dollis Valley Greenwalk.  There are allotments to walk past, reservoirs frequented by migrating birds and in certain places the city simply gives way to farmland. Also, some of those little patches of green are full on woodlands, and some of the cemeteries are overgrown wildernesses.

I’m not going to lie, probably the main reason I’ve enjoyed the parks this year is because I haven’t wanted to get my feet wet. A lot of country paths around our area have turned into boot-sucking bogs. In circumstances like these, it’s quite a relief to know that you can visit a park and wander for a couple of hours through the trees on hard-packed trails where your feet stand a chance of staying dry.

One day we ventured out for a circular walk from Muswell Hill. We hopped onto the Parkland Walk, a rail trail of which the northern branch runs southwest from Ally Pally to Highgate Wood. Alternatively sinking between embankments and crossing high bridges with views out over the city, the path can be like a highway during summer holidays but quietens down as soon as the weather turns a bit colder. Highgate Wood and neighbouring Queens Wood are some of my favourite refuges in North London - beautiful beech woods, broad paths (and little winding trails leading to adventure), play equipment, rope swings and the cute little cafe in Queens Wood where you can eat a hearty lunch looking out into the trees. On this particular walk I got rather distracted by mushrooms! From Highgate Wood, Parkland Walk goes south east to Finsbury Park - but we cut back between the Crouch End playing fields before returning to the top of the hill via as many back streets as we could.

But not all our outings have been like that. There are also little spaces that don’t need much energy or planning: a 15 minute break for some fresh air can take us through the little wood at the end of the road and back to the front door. Or you can jump on the short section of rail trail that picks up where the Mill Hill East branch line now stops and spend half an hour so going up and back. Or there’s Little Wood and Big Wood in Hampstead Garden Suburb, which are perfect for a shot of nature if you can’t decide which bit of nearby Hampstead Heath you want to tackle - you could sit in the Little Wood amphitheatre and watch the squirrels or you could combine the two parks and spend an hour enjoying the autumn leaves.

I mentioned last time that autumn was upon us, and the abundance of fungus we spotted on our weekend walk has confirmed this. We saw loads of different mushrooms. Porous, gilly, brackety, bright red, rusty yellow and orange, even a few dusky purple ones. And then, on a quiet side path . . . was that a beefsteak fungus?!

The only other time I’ve noticed these has been after rain, when the fungus is covered in a slimy, bright red film. I googled some identification guides to check I wasn’t about to poison us. I learnt that the beefsteak (Fistulina hepatica) usually grows on oak or sweet chestnut - I looked up and, yes, there were the oak leaves, up above a layer of beech leaves. I poked the fungus, it felt fleshy and some reddish-brown liquid (the "blood" of the beefsteak) squirted out. I took blurry photos of the underside and the colour seemed right. “You are unlikely to confuse this species with anything else,” said one website.  And so, we took it home.

(After we’d taken it, I saw a few very young specimens on the opposite side of the tree trunk. It was definitely a positive identification - these had the classic look that gives the fungus its other name - ox tongue fungus.)

The fungus was pretty clean. I gave it a quick brush and rinse anyway (it was growing close to the ground, and who knows if a dog had visited earlier in the day?) and trimmed off a couple of minor bits of damage. I cut it in fairly thin slices. Incidentally, my wooden chopping board now has some artistic stains on it.

The inside has the most gorgeous patterns. It is pinky red and white when first sliced and goes slightly yellower as it oxidises. We tried a raw sample. It had a sour, faintly bitter, mushroomy flavour. The texture ranged from firm and crunchy to very gelatinous at the edges and top. This is definitely not one for people who have issues with texture.

If eating it raw, I wonder if you could slice it extremely thinly, do a kind of quick pickle, and use it as a garnish for salads? Or perhaps use some kind of olive oil marinade and add it to antipasto?

I had my mind set on cooking the mushroom, though. There are a number of suggestions online, often including marinating them for a while, soaking in milk to remove bitterness, having them in casseroles, making creamy sauces, and so on. If I find another one, I might try something like this. But I really wanted to get to know the mushroom a bit better, as this was my first time cooking it, so I went for the old classic: fry it.

It looks really meaty when it starts frying, as the red juices leak out and coagulate slightly (as you might expect the blood from meat to do). Check out the video! Blah, blah, science, science, proteins maybe?

I fried the slices on a low heat, changing fats with each round to see if it made a difference. For what it’s worth, I think I preferred olive oil over butter or sunflower oil. I tried a few samples as I went along and found the flavour fairly insipid - still sour, but not particularly mushroomy. I added a bit of garlic, for interest.

I also salted half the slices to see if that made a difference to the flavour and texture. The salt enhanced the flavour, but didn’t seem to do a lot for the texture (I expected it to draw more liquid out and decrease any sliminess, not that there was a huge amount to begin with).

After I’d cooked the lot, we decided to run with the sour flavour. I roughly chopped the slices and mixed them with sour cream and chives - a kind of Eastern European toast topping. Pretty yummy - and it even turned the sour cream a little bit pink! If I’d cooked them less, I imagine the cream would have turned even pinker.

Dan seemed to like the beefsteak mushroom more than I did, but I still think it’s pleasant enough. I also know from foraging experience that flavours can vary wildly depending on where and when something’s collected - maybe another time I might meet a less sour, more mushroomy beefsteak. Regardless, the novelty factor of the visuals makes this mushroom worth foraging at least once.

As I write, I have been in the water every day for the last four days: sea swimming three of those days, in a smooth blue expanse that glints out to the hazy horizon; river paddling once with a friend, in a clear, young river surrounded by fish and laughing children.

Last week, I spent five days walking with Allysse through Wiltshire, experiencing everything from epic downpours to hot, lazy afternoons, camping in fields and woods and skinny dipping along the way.

For the two weeks before that, we were hosting my sister from Australia, taking her walking in East Sussex, dropping in on National Trust places for a history fix, visiting London and blissing out with gorgeous hill walks, whimberry picking and a river dip under darkening skies (for me) in Wales. It’s been a good summer holiday, the biggest gift of which has been slowing down, doing one thing at a time, not trying to fit things in around other commitments.

Looking out the window, I can see the rowan berries are hanging scarlet and the beech trees have set a golden fire in their topmost leaves. Along the roadsides, elders are drooping with berries and apples cast their fruit to the yellow grasses. The latest generation of robins is singing and families of other small birds are feasting at our neighbours’ feeders. Local friends are foisting excess produce from gardens and allotments onto whoever will take it - beans, zucchinis, a handful of potatoes. Early autumn is as beautiful as late summer - perhaps even more so, in its bounty and colour.

I have not blogged often over the last year or so, and it has felt like an obligation or a chore rather than a fun hobby. I recognise that I have unconsciously developed some entirely self-imposed rules about what a blog post should be, how many words, how many photos, how much structure, and - most stiflingly - how “important” an event needs to be to blog about it.

I hope that as the seasons quicken, as trees bear fruit and let go, colour their leaves and let go, that I will be able to emulate this. To let go of unhelpful patterns and reflect on some smaller delights of life.

And when I say "now", I mean back at the end of May/start of June. It's taken me a long time to muster the energy to edit photos and blog, as things have been pretty stressful at work. But I promised myself I'd get something out before the summer holidays started at the end of July (I have one more day of work, this Tuesday!), so here it is.

We started by driving to Seaford (the end of the walk), then catching a bus along the coast to Brighton and another inland to Lower Beeding (the start of the walk).

After a winding trip down country lanes, we jumped off the bus at Leonardslee garden/park and found what our map said was the start of the walk. There was no sign that this was the terminus of a long distance path, but a few minutes in we found our first official Sussex Ouse Valley Way waymark. We wandered down a muddy track ("Lorrys and Vans will / Get stuck if you go / down / here !!!!!!!!!!!" said the sign) and past the gardens, enjoying the overhanging rhododendrons and glimpses of more through the fence.

It was lunch time when we started, and drizzly, so we stopped in the outskirts of a beech wood for a snack.  A peaceful break, except for the sound of dozens of police dogs barking and howling in their training fields back over the valley.

We'd hoped to stay dry-ish, but walking through a field of recently-drenched young wheat put paid to this. Water leaked through my shoes in the first few steps, and more dripped down my legs, soaking my socks from above. After a little while I gave up being bothered by the squelching, knowing it was a short day and we had a nice Airbnb to look forward to at the end of it.

I didn't take a huge number of photos on this first day, as it was drizzling on and off. It was interesting to be on a path that I hadn't really researched (often I'll map them out myself, but we had a downloaded GPS route for this) and following waymarks more than the map (the path was pretty well signposted). I had a much less clear idea of where I was - and I had no idea whether the streams we passed or crossed were the Ouse or minor tributaries.

In the photo below (which may or may not be the River Ouse), you can see the rust-red of iron in the water on the right. I've talked about this phenomenon before  - the photo below is a much less spectacular version!

When we reached Slaugham (pronounced Slaffem, we think - while Laughton in East Sussex is pronounced Lorten) we took a quick break in the church, resting our feet and getting out of the rain. From there, we took a long, unpaved estate drive up to Handcross, passing the interesting structure below, then walked on to our Airbnb. We upgraded to the family room with its own bathroom so we could wash our socks and dry them on the towel rail without forcing anyone else to look at (or smell) them. We watched a horse and chooks from the window, patted the cute house dog and binged on the last few episodes of Killing Eve Season 1.

Our friendly host gave us a lift back up to town so we didn't have to retrace our steps up the road. That was especially nice as we knew we had a long day ahead.

We set off in intermittent sunshine, heading straight into Nymans. We'd visited before, but we'd stuck to the gardens and the house then, rather than exploring the woods, so it was lovely to have a look around as we went through. We were almost the only people there so early. It was just us, the chatty birds and the tall trees.

Out the other side, we followed roads and paths into Staplefield. We'd read in the notes on some website or another that the Sussex Ouse Valley Way was on 80% sealed paths, so we were keeping note of what was underfoot. Although we did seem to follow a lot of country lanes during the first couple of days, we felt there was a good mix with dirt footpaths and grassy fields.

After passing through some farms - saying hello to the rams (above), ducks, flitty birds, horses (very keen to see if we had snacks for them), ladybirds and so on - we came to one of the key landmarks on the trail. The Ouse Valley (or Balcombe) Viaduct features on the waymarkers for this path. I remember going over the viaduct on the train down to Brighton the first time we visited, and again when we first moved to the UK back in 2011. I've always wondered what the structure would look like from underneath. Turns out it looks pretty great!

Having seen hardly anyone all day, about two minutes after we stopped for a snack and a lie down several people appeared - a solo walker, a solo sightseer and a family party that looked like they were going to stay for a while. So, after taking our pictures, we headed off.

And then . . .

. . . our first officially signposted crossing of the Ouse! It's always nice to know you're on the right track. Our next stop was to be lunch at Lindfield, a town outside Haywards Heath. From this section, my strongest memory is of passing through a wood where some kind of conifers were being harvested. The cut wood gave out such a sweet smell - almost like strawberries! We approached Lindfield via the cultivated surrounds of a golf course, then a bit of lane walking and some paths through farms and behind houses before we popped out on the street.

We headed into one of the pubs (on the recommendation of the walker who had passed us at the viaduct) and had a decent lunch. It was a short detour off the path, but we both needed the rest and it gave us a chance to dry our socks and shoes again.

Nearby clouds were threatening rain as we headed off after our break, but all we got was a very muggy atmosphere, ensuring we worked up a magnificent sweat. I started to worry that I'd only bought one shirt . . . was I going to get extremely smelly?

Looking back on this day, it seems very long! It was about 25km (15mi) in total, but it feels even longer than that. There are whole sections I've skipped in this post - we went through woods and farms, stopped at a pub near the river just as it was closing (they still sold us a nice cold drink) and admired all the late spring flowers (I have decided May is the prettiest month of the year in these parts).

We also passed quite a number of campsites, from small ones that looked mostly like a field right up to Wowo Campsite - a sprawling, multi-field affair with all kinds of glamping/camping facilities and even visiting food trucks. WoWo is where we left the official path and detoured to our Airbnb for the evening.

It was only a mile or so, but it felt like forever. My feet were very sore, and I was very happy to jump in a bath before settling down for the evening!

Morning broke and back we went - down the road, up the lane, into the fields, through the campsite . . . and on to the Ouse Valley Way! There was rain forecast for the morning, but it was meant to clear up into a nice afternoon.

I don't seem to have many photos from the first couple of hours. But we did take a few pictures of old machinery. This one's for you, Dad.

Early in the day we passed the Bluebell Railway station near Sheffield Park. Through the morning we would sometimes catch the hoot of the steam train in the distance. As predicted, it did have a good old rain at one point. We'd made it to Newick and I'd just bought a new packet of plasters to tape up all the weird and wonderful blisters I was getting as a result of walking long distances on my (still relatively new) insoles. We took the rain as an opportunity to have a snack and tend to our wounds under cover of a handy bus shelter. Soon enough, the rain turned into a light drizzle, and we set off once more, down country lanes, then up, up, up a hill to a lovely view. We could spot the South Downs, now, and started to get more of a sense of where we were.

The terrain felt more familiar, too, as we dropped back down into the Ouse Valley. We followed packed chalk tracks through what I believe was a large estate . . .

. . . and made it back to the river! Now, this was starting to be recognisable as the Ouse we knew. Maybe a little narrower, but I could imagine a line stretching from here to Barcombe Mills (where I sometimes swim), to Lewes, to Southease (a section we've walked before), to the sea. We were entering another stage of the walk.

I was surprised to come across Isfield Lock, which is the subject of a long-term restoration project. Because we hadn't actually spent that much time beside the river during this walk, we hadn't seen/noticed any of the 20 or so locks (or the remains of them) along its length. Information points and pamphlets at the lock informed us that the Ouse had once upon a time been 'improved' and made navigable all the way up to Balcombe - and that materials for the Balcombe Viaduct had been shipped in up the river.

Receiving this information so late in our walk made me wonder how much more interesting history we'd been missing out on - perhaps we should have bought a guide book after all! I had first heard of the path when reading Olivia Laing's To the River several years ago, but I don't seem to have retained much in the way of historical trivia - only a lingering sense of summer atmosphere, languid rivers and some background knowledge about Virginia Woolf, who drowned herself in the Ouse downstream of Lewes. (I recommend the book, by the way.)

Our next stop was going to be lunch at the Anchor - a pub that sits on the river seemingly miles from any village or town. We were getting hungry, but that didn't prevent us from stopping frequently to admire the scenery, make note of landmarks we knew appearing in the distance and (at least in my case) remove our boots for a bit of blister-doctoring. (Warning: feet picture coming up!)

Ha! I'd forgotten about these pictures. The one on the left was at the lock, warning of sharp edges and deep water. I thought it looked like someone entertaining several snakes. The one on the right is amusing because in the UK "OAPS" would usually mean "Old Age Pensioners" rather than "Ouse Angling Preservation Society". This river is not for you, old people.

We finally made it to the pub and scoffed down our food while sitting in the beer garden. We'd seen a few folks in hire boats upstream, and smiled to ourselves as they returned to the landing and stepped ashore with more or (usually) less grace. It was starting to warm up a little, and the rain was forecast to hold off, so it was a good opportunity to once again air out my feet. You can see how the insoles are directing my feet in new angles, creating friction in places that are unused to it. Pretty symmetrical, though. (P.S. More tractor!)

We were on a familiar section of the river now, heading down to Barcombe Mills, where I started wild swimming last summer and have continued to go for dips after work this year. After Barcombe, we made for the pretty hamlet of Hamsey. There were more people out and about in the afternoon which was nice to see. On the way we were passed by a small and very energetic dog who did not agree with his owner about where he should walk. We were serenaded to the tune of, "Bruce! Bruce! Come back!" as we traipsed along beside the fields.

I was getting quite tired and sore. I had somehow miscalculated both of the last two days - forgetting to add the distances to and from our accommodation. An extra 5-6km might not sound like much, but if you're limping along at less than 3km per hour it means an extra two hours on your (my) poor, knackered feet! Fortunately, the sun was out all afternoon, making for perfect lying-down-in-a-field weather. I had to make the most of it.

It was an enjoyable path into Lewes. We stopped for many breaks to admire the views. And after we'd struggled up the steep streets into the outskirts of town, we were very pleased to find our Airbnb was actually its own mini-apartment, with an amazingly powerful shower, full kitchen, a shared patio overlooking the garden and a comfy couch from which to watch West Side Story.

The final day of our walk dawned sunny and warm. We wandered back down the hill into town and popped into the supermarket for a few snacks to help us on the way.

Oh! But before we went to the supermarket, we spent a good while watching ducklings on a pond. We also saw tiny moorhen chicks, which are the cutest, fuzziest things ever.

Back to the story: we followed the river through Lewes!  The river is tidal here (it is tidal below Barcombe Mills), and there are a lot more boats, which meant some new and interesting things to look at.

This was the first town of any size on the river, too, giving us a view of a different riverside environment. The sounds of a busker on the bridge drifted down the water, bouncing off the brick and glass of old industrial conversions and new apartments.

The trail was well signposted through Lewes.

We'd walked the next section before, so we knew more or less what to expect. The path itself is also very straightforward, which allows more time to soak in the view. The tide was coming in as we were going out, creating interesting currents and eddies.

We saw a couple of SUPers and kayakers catching a ride on the current upstream, which seems like it would be a fun day out - catch the tide up to Lewes for lunch, then head back. The current was quite powerful and they were pretty speedy. I hope they were sticking to the 5 1/2 knot limit!

I like these flowers - they're called bladder campion.

Last time we walked here, we followed the river all the way to Southease. This time, we followed the official Sussex Ouse Valley Way, which diverts from the riverside about a mile upstream of Southease and detours through the small village of Rodmell and past Monk's House, where Virginia Woolf lived. We still haven't managed to visit the house, despite it being one of our nearby National Trust properties. One day!

We stopped in the shade of the trees in the churchyard at Rodmell, enjoying the view of the South Downs on the other side of the Ouse valley. And then we decided we'd head over to the YHA at Southease for lunch. I had nachos, which were adequate. It felt very civilised to have all of this in what feels like the middle of nowhere. We wondered if our friend in Brighton would like to walk over the hills from her place to Southease for lunch one day, then take the train home. (Spoilers: she did like, and we ended up doing this last weekend. It was great.)

After refreshments (and a re-plastering of my blisters), we were ready to set out again into the blazing sunshine. It was a stark contrast to the weather on the first day - and I was glad it had happened this way around, because there is no shelter to speak of in this section, so rain and wind would have been miserable. We followed a crowd of people heading into Southease for a fair on the green, but turned off south along the river before we got distracted and had to buy a second lunch and several jars of jam.

Instead of heading straight along the river, there is a short but noteworthy section that detours up a small, tucked-away valley (where I got to pat an enormously fluffy cat that was hanging out on a wall), climbs up a hill (we did a bit of paddock bashing here, as we couldn't quite figure out the route) and falls down the other side (through some extremely verdant nettles and brambles).

It was a fun mini-adventure on a path that had otherwise been pretty well maintained. It also gave us some views out to the sea. (Can you spot the walker - or the path?! - in the photo below?)

Slightly scratched and lightly stung, we made it into Piddinghoe. There, we did our walker-ly duty of visiting the church and admiring its stained glass windows, its fishy weathervane and its round tower (Southease also has a round tower, but we'd seen that several times before).

Back on the river, we struck out towards Newhaven. The unique building below welcomed us. We've always wondered what it was, as we've often seen it from the top of the surrounding hills. Turns out, it's an incinerator. They burn household waste and generate electricity there. I mean, if you're going to have an incinerator be the iconic structure of your town, you might as well make it good looking.

Newhaven is truly a lowlight of the walk. OK, I'm sure it didn't help that I was sore and hot and very, very ready for the day to be over, nor that the path passes through some less desirable streets, but the town felt dirty, ugly and run down. Soon enough, though, we crossed the rail line and took the diverted track out through a road construction site and onto the foreshore.

I'd vaguely wondered why the path ended at Seaford, to the east, when the mouth of the River Ouse is in Newhaven. Perhaps because it is nicer?! However, as we made our way along, the lagoon of Mill Creek to our left gave us a clue: this must have once been the path of the river itself.

This suspicion was soon confirmed by some information boards along the path. We also passed the foundations of what had once been a hospital or recovery centre for disabled boys who had undergone surgery. It was torn down in WWII as the powers that be thought Germans might invade here and use the buildings as cover. Tide Mills, the village the hospital was near, was condemned as unfit for habitation a few years beforehand. It all seems rather bleak, even on a warm, sunny day. It must have been dire in winter.

Eventually - finally! at last! - I got to do what I'd been dreaming of since Rodmell: take off my shoes and socks and go and stand in the sea. I love doing this anyway, but it was such a relief to numb my sore feet in the chilly water and to say thank you to them after the beating they'd taken over the last few days. I stood there for a good long while, wavelets breaking around my shins, gazing out to the boats and ships on the English Channel.

From there, it was a hop, skip and a jump to the end of the Sussex Ouse Valley Way on the outskirts of Seaford. This end had an information sign, and even a fingerpost pointing back to Lower Beeding. It said it was 42 miles, but it felt like we'd walked a lot further than that (and to be fair, with all the detours to accommodation and lunches, we definitely had). We snapped a happy selfie and immediately made a beeline for the icecream van before hobbling back to the car and driving home.

And so that is the story of a pleasant three and a half day walk along the Sussex Ouse Valley Way. I would recommend it to people who'd like to walk a well marked multi-day path, or who have a long weekend and want to thru-hike (as the USAns might say) a trail, or who are generally interested in the landscapes of Sussex.

Often, as I map out my walks, I’m wondering if I could put in a couple of extra kilometres before stopping at that pub for lunch, or whether it’s possible to visit both the lookout and the river beach in one day, or if it’s worth the sore feet of an extra five miles to make it to a particular B&B. “Twenty-five kilometres, should be fine!” I think to myself - not taking into consideration the early winter sunsets, not remembering that I haven’t done a long walk for a few months, forgetting to build in time to picnic, forage, soak my feet in a stream, get lost, snooze in the sun, watch birds or rabbits in the grass . . .

But at the start of the holidays, I didn’t have much of a plan. Dan was going to drop me off somewhere between home and Brighton in the morning and pick me up after he finished work. As long as I could let him know where I was at about 4pm, it was all good. I remember with great fondness my mapless walks of a few years ago, so I thought I might do something similar.

The landscape was wrapped in fog as we pulled off the A27 opposite Housedean Farm. I waved goodbye to Dan and set off up the side road to join the South Downs Way. I had a vague idea that I might want to walk north over the Downs and through the fields and villages beyond to the River Ouse, then follow the Ouse Valley Way back to Barcombe Mills or Lewes - which would be a long walk, but I was going to be out for eight hours, so it wouldn’t be unreasonable.

A tractor passed me, trailing the smell of cowshit, I snapped a photo of the highway as I crossed over it, I smiled to a couple of hard-faced bike commuters and then I turned off the road and began the climb up onto the hills. The sheep didn’t seem to want to get off the path, so I stepped slowly around them. I saw a couple of house martins (I’m pretty sure - they didn’t sound like swifts or look like swallows). I tried to make out surrounding hills through the fog.

After cresting this hill, the path goes straight back down through a wood. I ducked off to wee amongst the violets and noticed that the noise of the A27 had already started to fade. A big bird - which I assume was a buzzard, because I heard them calling soon after - launched itself off a high branch and disappeared above the almost-budding canopy. I decided to stop for a bit and found a convenient tree to sit on.

I like to play a game, sometimes, where I close my eyes and listen. I imagine I don’t know where I am and that I need to figure it out through sound alone. “What are these sounds telling me?” I ask. Birdsong - lots of small birds probably means lots of bushes, trees, places for them to hide and things for them to eat. Distant traffic - probably not a town or city, but not too remote a place in the countryside. Sheep - near or in farmland. The chock-chock of a pheasant and the cat-like calls of a buzzard - definitely not in Australia! Slight echo on the pigeon calls - a valley? A scuffling sound - maybe leaf litter and trees, possibly a wood? No human voices - could indicate location, time of day, time of year. The rattle of a woodpecker - definitely a big tree somewhere nearby. Distant seagulls, a plane overhead. . .

As I sat in a kind of meditation, I decided I was going to move deliberately slowly for the rest of the day. I set myself a different kind of challenge: to walk no more than 8-10 miles (13-16km) the whole day. One mile per hour, on average.

I left the wood and followed the green path into a little valley and up the other side, through fields, past rangy hedgerows. I noted all the plants I could see on the ground beside the path: nettles, rats-tail plantain, ribwort plantain, young hogweed (possibly?), dandelion, silverweed, sorrel, cleavers/goosegrass/sticky willy, violets (purple and white), thistles, bugle (I think - it's the one that looks like furry mint and smells like weed), lords and ladies, dock, a very curly leafed thing I don’t know. . . and plenty of grass, of course.

It felt so luxurious to move so slowly, with such attention to my surroundings! As I climbed through fields, skylarks called noisily all around me. They fly like they sing, skylarks, fluttering and chirring like noisy, hovering bats. I saw a silhouette of a walker through the fog, heading along an intersecting path. I slowed down even further to avoid them, wanting to hold onto my own space a while longer. My plan was immediately scuppered by a tractor that appeared to spray the field beside me. Oh well. The fog - or was it just low cloud? - hadn’t quite lifted off the hills. A bridleway cut a white line through fields of oilseed rape and winter wheat. Classic chalk downs. I sat beside a recently-laid hawthorn hedge to stretch my calves and eat a square of chocolate.

At the top, I found a trig point (well, I was expecting that!) and a little plantation that seemed perfect for another sit down. I found a log and made myself a substantial snack of crackers, cheese, tomato and freshly-picked weeds. As I munched away, I listened to the hum of traffic on the Ditchling-Plumpton road and thought about where I might want to head next: east towards Lewes, north off the downs or west along the ridge to Ditchling Beacon and beyond. I felt called in a Ditchling-ish direction, knowing that if I got hungry I could pop down into the village for a cuppa and a sandwich and so, after sitting for a while and thinking about nothing in particular, off I toddled.

Back on the South Downs Way, a sign informed me that I’d come 3 miles from the A27 and that it was another 2 miles to Ditchling. More people seemed to be out - several dog walkers, a handful of cyclists, a couple of folks that looked like they might be walking the whole path from Winchester to Eastbourne. I thought about walking it myself - it’s about 100 miles (160km), so would make a good week-long outing. I feel fairly comfortable wild camping up on the downs, too, so I wouldn’t need to book accommodation or be always tied to campsites (though if they were close enough of course I’d stay there - always nice to have a loo and perhaps a shower!).

I also thought that it would be a good place to encourage people to join another project idea I’ve been mulling over for a while: The Slow 100. My idea is that, for a lot of people, walking 100 miles (or 100 kilometres, for that matter), seems wildly out of reach. But what if you could do it slowly - like 10 miles or 10 kilometres a day over 10 days? Stopping for morning tea, lunch, afternoon tea, to take photos or do some sketches, to lie on the grass in the sun, to pop into a tea room or get an icecream from a van in a hilltop car park? You could do it over a week and two weekends. If you had a bunch of folks interested, you could hire a people mover and get someone to ferry you to and from your accommodation to make it even more accessible. I think that's something that many people (not everyone, of course) could achieve. Such were the things I pondered as I wandered.

Wrapped in my own thoughts, I was surprised when Ditchling Beacon appeared ahead. I’d been walking faster than I’d meant to! I stopped to get a pebble out of my shoe and to rub my feet - they were a bit sore as I was breaking in some new orthotics, which were tilting my heels out at a rather more drastic angle than my old ones! - noticing how the temperature was perfect for walking, how I wasn’t hungry or thirsty, how there was hardly a breeze and how the fog-haze-cloud-whatever was stopping the sun from becoming too hot. The skylarks were still going. I wasn’t at work and wouldn’t have to be for another two weeks. I felt so happy!

I dithered around before and after Ditchling Beacon, sitting for a while in the chalk hollows and tumuli to look at the view below, watching some goldfinches in the gorse and a kestrel above, holding the gate for a horse and rider and airing my feet out in the just-emergent sun. I also stood for almost a quarter of an hour watching a pair of yellowhammers pottering around on open access land. They are such spectacular little gems of birds that I gasped out loud when they first flew in. I’d sometimes lose them behind a patch of grass, only to find them again immediately as a bright yellow head popped up in front of me.

Having managed to while away a bit of time, I decided I’d head into Ditchling village via Burnhouse Bostall. I briefly considered going a mile further to the windmills, but knew if I did I’d probably end up breaking my 10 mile limit! So, down I went, taking the time to go off piste through some pretty scraps of woodland, where rabbits nibbled and butterflies flitted. I said hello to some horses. I stopped to pour out a little bit of water in front of a grounded bumblebee that looked a little sad. I admired the way the breeze had scattered blackthorn/sloe petals like confetti across the dried-mud footpath. Again, I realised how luxurious it felt to allow myself this time and presence - not to rush, not to be anywhere in particular, just to enjoy myself and the environment.

Eventually I made it into Ditchling. I called Dan and decided it wasn’t worth going to a cafe before he came to collect me. Instead, I sat on a bench in the sun on the sunken lawn by the church and museum and I watched a very energetic chihuahua run away from its owner (over and over again). That dog was having the time of its life. And frankly, that day, so was I.