Bam! Shocked light flooded the road. A sensor-activated security system. I told myself there was nothing to worry about. We were just two people out for a late evening stroll. Along a dead-end road. Carrying large backpacks. Nothing to see here.

​The cemetery gates were open and we slipped through in the deepening dusk. There was a light on inside the chapel and a van by the door. We aimed our feet at the grass instead of the crunchy gravel - but halfway down the path, we froze. The chapel door opened and the beam of a torch swept through the trees. We were hidden behind a bank of shrubs, but had they heard us? I held my breath and listened with all my ears. Footsteps, probably between the door and the van. The bibip-bibip of an alarm being set and the rattle of keys. Silence. We stayed still. An animal scuffled in the trees. We waited. Surely they must have gone by now?

“Come on,” I whispered. We continued down the hill.

Vrr-rummm! The van revved to life, headlights making bright tunnels through the headstones above us. Wheels crunched along the path to the other end of the cemetery, then the headlights swung around and the van came back up. Probably a final check for sneaky people like us, I thought. And now they’ll lock the gates. No escape! We waited, but didn’t hear any other movement from above, so we padded through the night to find a spot to settle down.

​I’d been thinking about wild camping in a churchyard or cemetery for a while. Cemeteries are usually peaceful places and, as they’re often locked after dark, they’re probably quite safe.

At least, that’s what I’d thought. But lying there swaddled in my bivvi bag, watching the very last wash of light fade through the trees, I heard a snatch of laughter. It suddenly occurred to me to wonder: what other sorts of people might want to sneak into a cemetery on a Saturday night? My heart kicked up a notch. What was that? Torches and muttering voices. But they passed by: just a couple of walkers on the footpath across the stream. I was all nerves. “We can always go home,” Dan whispered. I thought about my warm, comfortable, safe bed. But of course I didn’t really want to leave.

I didn’t think I could sleep, though. A barn owl shrieked in the distance. And, much closer, a strange, mellow, yipping sound came first from one direction, then moved towards the chapel. A fox cub? “Whatever it is, it wouldn’t be out if there were other people around,” Dan reassured me. I felt like a total wimp.

To distract myself, I listened to the cars passing on the main road and the aeroplanes curving overhead. Those noises, at least, did not belong to anyone who might come and kick us out, or tell us off, or make us take part in their secret cemetery ceremony. I concentrated, following the sounds of the motors as they grew and grew, then faded, faded, faded and were gone; grew and grew, faded, faded and were gone; grew, faded; grew, faded . . . I slept . . . ish.

Every hour or so I woke up with a cold nose and a crick in my neck. Wild camping is definitely easier when you’ve been walking all day, I decided. The trick is to exhaust yourself to the extent that you don’t care about the awkward lumps under your mat or the way the sleeping bag liner twists around your ankles. I thought about our next walking and camping adventure. Perhaps we could finish one of the long distance paths we’ve started over the years. What would work for the October half-term? The Grand Union Canal or the Thames Path? That walk from London to Norfolk (we hadn’t quite got to Cambridge)? The Ridgeway, the Southwest Coast Path, the Wye Valley Walk, something else completely? I fell asleep again.

​It was half past five when I woke for good. My nerves immediately kicked in. Were we locked inside the cemetery? Would we have to climb the gates? How could we sneak out without anyone noticing that we’d snuck in? Was there some other way out of here? I clearly wasn’t going to get any more sleep. We packed our things away, then wandered back up the hill and into the dawn chorus. My spirits lifted with the birdsong and lifted again when we found the gates wide open. They hadn’t been locked after all.

​On the way home, we spread our damp picnic rug over a wooden bench and waited for the sun to rise. The horizon turned from a dark smudge of apricot to pale green. Mist was rising from the valleys. The purple clouds were fringed with hot pink. Chattering jackdaws converged above us, coming in twos and threes and fives before heading south. A lone heron passed overhead, its loose, slow wingbeats hushing the field, the road, the houses. A rooster crowed. The sun was up. It was time to go to bed.

This sleep-out was part of Alastair Humphreys' Year of Microadventure. It also kind of fulfils our September  microadventure challenge (the theme was sunset/sunrise). It cost us a whopping £0.00.

I jest.

I began In Which I with the aim of building an online portfolio/archive so potential freelance clients and employers could see that I was indeed capable of (a) stringing a sentence together, (b) writing about different subjects and (c) producing/collating content on a regular basis. I think I’ve succeeded in that. I update once a week on average, have an online record of my monthly walking column for the Battle Observer (I’m a bit behind uploading these, so expect a few more soon) and have published many of the articles I’ve written for the Hastings Independent.

I never expected to join any particular network of bloggers. I thought my subject matter would be too diverse and impersonal to appeal to any niche apart from the good old “people who know me” audience. After all, there aren’t that many people who are really into tea and wild camping and veg*n recipes and walking and local community news from Hastings, East Sussex. But in fact, it turns out the majority of my blog this year has been fairly outdoorsy and there’s a bunch of people who seem to enjoy that. Joining Alastair Humphreys’ Year of Microadventure challenge (wild camping) and coordinating my own themed monthly microadventure challenge (not just wild camping) has also meant that I’ve discovered loads of people who share similar interests. Bonus!

Back in October last year, I kind of implied that I'd give you some updates on the analytics front. Uhhh, better late than never? Sorry!

Since I started In Which I, 57% of my visitors (‘new users’ rather than ‘sessions’ for those familiar with Google Analytics) have been from the UK, 13% from the USA and 6% from Australia. I’m surprised there’s more USAn visitors than Australian, given I have a large family/friendship group in Australia. Perhaps this is partly to do with spam referrals - I had to filter a couple of USA locations early in 2015. But while the number of Australian visitors (new users) is quite a bit lower, the number of visits (sessions) from Australia and the USA are fairly similar, demonstrating that my trusty band of Australian friends is much more likely to visit this blog repeatedly.

In terms of referrals, 31% of visits (sessions) came via Twitter and 43% via Facebook (this includes m.facebook, lm.facebook and l.facebook traffic, for those playing at home). Other major referrers were this Alastair Humphreys post and Martin Black’s microadventure round-ups.

Now that I’m officially allowed to stay in the country (phew) - and now that summer is over - I’m beginning to look for a job. I’m planning to take a couple of months off from my walking column at the Battle Observer, so there might not be a November or December walk article. At the end of 2015, I will also finish the two year of microadventure challenges. But I’m not planning to stop blogging. I’m just hoping to take a step back and think about what I might want to do and write about next year.

So, is there something I’ve touched on before that you’d like me to revisit? Something you are especially interested in reading about? A new hobby you think I should take up (lacemaking, campanology, kitesurfing)? An old hobby you think I should knuckle down and do something with (music, creative writing, filmmaking, media criticism)? I can’t promise I’ll get around to it, but I promise I will consider your suggestions. Even the outlandish ones.

There is one other change afoot. Up until now, all of my post titles have been an extension of the blog name, so they can all be read as “In which I [x]” (e.g. In which I sleep in a ruin in Suffolk, In which I make room for nature with #30DaysWild, In which I forage for and cook with Alexanders). Did you notice? While it’s kind of fun, I’m growing tired of the formula. So, I hereby give myself permission to mix it up a bit, starting with this post.

No self-respecting long distance walk write-up is complete without a kit list. That's a lie, but never mind: here's our kit list, route map and a video from our walk across Wales.

I walked 250km (150mi) of the South West Coast Path in September 2009 carrying a 14kg bag, plus water. We stayed at a B&B every night, so that didn’t even include any sleeping gear or a shelter. At the time, I though lightweight kit was the preserve of people who drilled holes in their spoon handles and cut the pockets out of their shirts to lighten their load. If I’m honest, I derived a kind of pleasure from how heavy my bag was: I felt like a Real Walker™.

These days, while I’m not rich enough to own ultralight everything and not dedicated enough to cut my toothbrush handle off to save weight, I’ve definitely come around to the pack less, pack lighter/less weight, more fun way of thinking. I know there were reasons back in 2009 for taking a pair of jeans and a third shirt (evenings and days off), a laptop (I was obsessively committed to keeping in touch), eight pairs of undies/socks (one a day and a spare for washing day) and a huge first aid kit (just in case), but in hindsight it seems ridiculous. We still use the same packs as we did in 2009, so for our walk across Wales I was interested to see if we could take everything we needed - now including sleeping gear, a shelter and a good amount of food - while staying under our 2009 pack weight.

The morning we set off from Aberystwyth, we weighed our bags on our Airbnb hosts’ bathroom scales. My pack was 9.8kg and Dan’s was 10.4kg (both before adding water). This is hardly ultralight, but it’s an improvement. As we replace gear over the years, our pack weights may decrease further. And you never know, maybe I will become a gram weenie.

“So, what was in your packs?” I hear up to three people ask with mild curiosity. Well, wonder no more, my friends. Here follows an exhaustive kit list. Things marked (J) were carried by me, things marked (D) were carried by Dan. We carried our own set of everything else.

• Backpack, rain cover, plastic bags
  
• Walking poles
  
• Clothes - shirts x 2, jumper, leggings, shorts, underwear x 3, bed socks x 1, waterproof jacket, walking boots, thongs/flip flops, sun hat, beanie
  
• Walking socks (D x 3, J x 2)
• PJs (D full - J trousers only)
  
• Merino thermal t-shirt (J)
  
• Tarp, pegs and cord (J)
  
• Sleeping gear - bivvi bag, sleeping bag, inflatable mat
  
• Sleeping bag liner (J)
  
• Pillow (D)
• Water bottles (J x 1, D x 2)
  
• Cooking gear - beer can stove and case, fuel, lighter, saucepan, cups x 2, forks x 2, knife (D)
  
• Food - instant noodles, porridge, soup, tea bags, soy cream, water purification drops, cordial concentrate (D)
  
• Snacks
  
• Toiletries - toothpaste, toothbrushes, floss, hand sanitiser, shower gel, shampoo, conditioner, micro towel, flannel/facewasher, sunscreen, insect repellent, paw paw ointment, deodorant, toilet paper/tissues, laundry detergent (J)
  
• First aid - plasters/bandaids, bandage, sterile dressings x 2, non-latex gloves, painkillers, decongestant tablets, antiseptic cream, safety pins, needle and thread, key-ring Swiss army knife with scissors, tweezers, etc. (J)
• Phone, phone charger, camera charger (D)
  
• Camera, head torch, journal, pencil and sudoku sheets, printed itinerary and emergency contacts, maps (J)
• Trowel (D)
  
• Hankies
  
• Card holder - rail cards and tickets, debit cards, ID cards
  
• Shoulder bag (J)
  
• Piece of Material (J)
  
• Zip lock bags x 70,838,491 

What didn’t we use? I didn’t wear my beanie and we didn’t use any first aid supplies apart from plasters/bandaids (which is what you want). That’s it. There were a couple of items I could have done without - such as my thermal t-shirt, which I wore a couple of times at the end of the walk simply because it was clean, and my thermal leggings, which would have been good to wear to bed on the coldest night (when I didn’t, typically) but were too warm to wear on other nights (when I did, of course). We used the head torch and knife only once.

What did we appreciate most? The tarp was great. Pitching using walking poles was fine and we were glad we hadn’t relied solely on bivvi bags as we (and our gear) would have got very, very wet on a couple of nights. It was really nice to have a flannel for washing - a very minor luxury that made a big difference to me! The squirty cordial concentrate was a welcome flavour addition to our long days. Although the maps were heavy and bulky, I enjoyed using them and they worked nicely as groundsheets on damp grass. My Piece of Material worked its magic as usual. The Piece of Material is a sarong or small tablecloth sized piece of patterned cotton I found in a charity shop years and years ago. It’s very versatile - I can use it as a towel, scarf, sarong, sheet, curtain, picnic blanket, pillowcase, washing bag or superhero cape - and I’m always glad when I bring it on trips.

What did we miss? We probably would have appreciated an extra pair of socks/undies each, though we did OK with what we had. I would have used insect bite soothing lotion if we'd had it. I got sick of instant noodles as our only hot, savoury meal. I even - and this is unheard of for me - considered buying couscous. We figured out on the way that I preferred noodles for breakfast and porridge for dinner, and since the walk I’ve decided that instant noodles are better if you only use half the flavour sachet.

What did we not take and not miss? Trousers, scarf and gloves (it didn’t get that cold), thermos/flask (we boiled water when we wanted tea), a full first aid kit (we took a sensible amount based on my knowledge and first aid training), my phone (we had Dan’s), reading book (I bought one to read on our semi-rest day), my inflatable pillow (replaced with other bits and pieces that worked well enough), waterproof trousers (it hardly rained on us while we were walking) and another water bottle (we usually walked within a few minutes of flowing water and we had treatment drops to take the stress out of drinking it).

If you like kit lists, here are a few that might tickle your fancy: Emily Chappell’s kit for cycling around the world, an extensive list of things one might take on an Australian bushwalk from Matt Down Under, Anna McNuff’s lightweight gear list for running and adventures, Alastair Humphrey’s hypothetical kit for a mystery adventure anywhere on the planet, Sophie Radcliffe’s top ten outdoors/sports clothing items, ultralight DIY first aid kit on Section Hiker and “15 Veteran Cyclists Share Their Favourite Non-Essential Luxuries On Tour” by Tom Allen. It’s always interesting to see what people take on their adventures and notice what the differences are between countries, seasons and activities. Do you have a kit list? Feel free to link to it in the comments. I’d love to read it (really).

A hasty addition! A couple of people mentioned on Twitter that they'd like to see a map of the route we took. I don't have a GPX file of the exact walk, but here's an overview of our path, with the places we slept (approximately) marked by red dots. The route for the first two and a half days was self-designed, while the remainder of the walk stuck closely (but not exclusively) to the Wye Valley Walk long distance path. 

Congratulations! You made it to the end of the post. As a reward, here’s our short film of the walk. Instead of doing a video diary or filming every pretty view, we decided to take one long, static shot each day to give a snapshot of our time in Wales. I think the end result is enjoyable. It’s slow, but (partly because it’s slow) it’s quite relaxing. What do you think of this kind of film?

You can find my write up of our walk across Wales here: Part 1: The coast and River Rheidol, Part 2: Cambrian Mountains and craggy hills, Part 3: The Wye valley and the border.

Over the last month, our microadventurers have used the “explore a border” theme to get out and see some amazing sights and have some wonderful experiences. This is particularly true for those of us in the UK, where it was summer (or, gloomier people than me might say, where it was meant to be summer).

Dan and I also took up the national borders idea, though our walk across Wales was more about spanning the distance between borders than about crossing them. We started on the beach at Aberystwyth, the border of land and sea, walked up over the Cambrian Mountains, then followed the River Wye to the point where it becomes the border of Wales and England, near Hay-on-Wye. Here's a short film showing some of the trip.

As Gillian discovered, you don't have to travel far afield to enjoy the flora of different countries. A visit to Glasgow Botanic Gardens gave her the chance to venture into the glasshouses, where "geographical borders were blurred, continents bestrode", and where she "explored rainy August borders" outside. If you can't make it to Glasgow yourself, why not enjoy a virtual tour of the Kibble Palace greenhouse online?

One obvious border, especially to those who live on islands, is the sea. While the border between England and France might be an invisible line somewhere out in the Channel, for many people the border zone starts closer to the shore. It is always in flux. On a macro scale, sea levels change, shingle moves, cliffs crumble, the littoral zone alters. Tides move in and out, revealing more land that might be "ours", then taking it back, swelling higher and sinking lower at certain times of the year. And then on a micro level, each wave or ripple claims a strip of sand or handful of pebbles for the sea.

Allysse spent time at this liminal space and created a beautiful, meditative short film titled Moment of Zen. Allysse says, "The end of England, the border between land and sea. It wasn't quite a microadventure as there was no sleeping outside (but in a hotel room instead). I did quite a few walks along the coast, explord the antique shops in the area, ate good food, and generally lazed about on pebbles and sand dunes."

Mags notes in her post that she spent much of the month dealing with various international bureaucracies to obtain visas for international students to come to the UK, and it isn’t possible to talk about border crossing adventures and border exploration without being aware of the ways in which borders are only open in some places, to some people. Our explorers’ abilities to cross or bump up against borders without any negative consequences mark us out as people with particular privileges, who are relatively free to move around these particular borders.

Nikki writes, "Last month in Melbourne, the government announced an initiative called Border Force, an operation that would allow authorised officers to request the visa documents of "any individual we come across".  Any person with a hint of decency could see this initiative would result in harassment of people of colour on the streets of Melbourne and a snap protest was arranged within an hour (mostly via Twitter) - I had the good fortune to be available so went along to show my support. The good news is the protest was a 100% success with first the press announcement being cancelled, and then the entire operation. It was pretty great to feel part of something that made a difference."

The microadventure theme for September is sunset/sunrise (dusk/dawn), partly in honour of the equinox (spring in the southern hemisphere, autumn in the north). Perhaps you’d like to cycle along the coast and watch the sun set over the sea. Maybe you’ll get up early to watch the sunrise from a hill or a tall building, or to make breakfast on a camp stove in the woods. Perhaps you’ve been planning to go for an evening walk to spot bats or other nocturnal creatures. Or maybe you could record the dawn chorus where you live, to share with others around the world. 

Thanks to everyone who took part in the challenge during August. For September, broad interpretations of the theme are welcome - and don't feel you have to stick to the theme if you've got a different adventure planned. Send your images, videos, texts, links or audio my way at the end of the month and I’ll collate another round-up post. Have fun!

We headed down by Twmpath, rejoined the Wye Valley Walk, then crossed the highway and river to Erwood Station. We found our friend from the campsite rubbing Vaseline on his feet in preparation for his long afternoon walk. The line here was closed in the early 1960s - actually preceding the Beeching cuts - and the station was restored in the 1980s, with a craft centre opening on site. It’s now a gallery and cafe housed in the old buildings and some refurbished carriages. There’s a diesel engine on display and a signal box which was apparently rescued from a farm where it was being used as a chook pen. We looked at the art and craft, including some amazing kaleidoscopes, and had lunch outside. Cyclists scooted down the hill in pairs and threes and a DHL van in the carpark sprung into action providing them lunch. We couldn’t work out if it was a sponsored race, or some kind of workplace bonding thing for DHL (they were all middle aged-ish men in DHL branded clothes), or something else entirely.

The afternoon passed in a blur. I remember the route was difficult to follow in places (here overgrown with nettles, there missing a waymarker) and that the path twisted up and down from the riverside, across the flats and up into the lower reaches of the hills. I was happy to be walking, but the past few days were catching up with me: I had a sting on my heel that might herald a blister, a numb patch on my toe from kicking into steep slopes all morning, an ache in my shoulder from carrying the pack and sleeping on the ground. A couple of miles out from Llangurig we checked the map to see the Wye Valley Walk detouring over a steep hill before heading to the village. It was a bit too much, so we took the less scenic, less peaceful, but much flatter route along the side of the main road to the Bluebell Inn, a welcome shower, hot dinner and bed.

Dawn. Below us, the valleys were filled with cloud: golden and orange in the east, cool and silver where the sun had yet to reach. We pulled condensation-soggy sleeping bags out of our bivvies and wrung out our newly dew-wet washing, barely registering annoyance. 

In the afternoon, we scurried up yet another hill into a nature reserve where we enjoyed some trees and a wall and a well. I was finding all these hills a little tiring - and I wasn’t even wearing my pack yet! I had a little lie down on a bench before we eventually found our way out to the National Library of Wales. With Dan being a librarian, this was always on the cards for our trip to Aberystwyth and it didn’t disappoint. The building is reminiscent of the grand public buildings of the 19th century, although it was only begun in 1911. Inside, the feeling of grandeur continues with red carpets and beautiful high ceilings. We saw a number of exhibitions there, including Philip Jones Griffiths: A Welsh Focus on War and Peace. It was great to find the library acting as such a thriving cultural centre. We had a cup of tea in the cafe and failed dismally to use our beginners’ Welsh with the assistant at the library shop. Spoiler alert: this was to set the tone for the whole trip. I don’t think we spoke Welsh with another person even once.

The final mystery tour stop of the day was the Aberystwyth Arts Centre at the university, which we visited for a small photography exhibition To Build a Home - Amanda Jackson’s portraits of the community of Lammas Tir Y Gafel Eco Village in Pembrokeshire. Once there, we found they also had a Robert Mapplethorpe exhibition, so we took a turn around that, too. Phew, that was a lot of photography in one day. On the way back home, we found ourselves in the extremely steep Llanbadarn Cemetery. We escaped from the drizzle inside the church and considered coming back to watch the bell ringing later, but by then we were tucked up in bed.

Dan was feeling tired and achy after the long road slog, so we made the detour down to the dam wall for a rest. We perched up at the foot of a monument (commemorating Owain Glyndŵr’s victory at Hyddgen in 1401) to eat second lunch - sandwich, Snickers and a brew - and spread a few damp things out to dry in the sun.