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"Oooh! Champing!"

15/9/2016

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We went Champing! Uhh, what is Champing? It’s camping . . . in a church! Sounds amazing (apart from the terrible portmanteau) and it is amazing!
Church porch
Your room for the night . . . Church of St Mary the Virgin in Fordwich, Kent.
The deal is, you book a church through this website, much like you might book a B&B. It’s £55 per person per night (discounts for larger groups and repeat bookings, currently free for kids to the end of the season). You have the church all to yourself/yourselves. The fee gets you camp beds, water, tea and coffee making facilities, camp chairs with cushions and blankets, electric candles, lanterns and access to a loo. Oh, and one of the more unique bedrooms you’re likely to experience in an average year.
camp beds and window
A trial bedroom setup in Albury. Too breezy.
bed in church
Cosy between the pews in Fordwich.
We found out about Champing when we were in Suffolk with our friends and we decided to give it a go. It seemed like a fun idea for a night away, a bit more interesting than the usual accommodation fare and a bit more appealing to those who aren’t too keen on braving the elements under a tarp or in a tent.  Most of the Champing churches are in the South East, but they’re starting to spread. The churches are no longer in use for services and such things.
Bed
Snuggling down at Fordwich. We didn't really need all that bedding! (NB: First time reading Swallows and Amazons - I haven't seen the new film, yet.)
Our first Champing adventure was back in June at the Church of St Mary the Virgin in Fordwich, near Canterbury in Kent. Fordwich is a pretty little village (actually Britain’s smallest town) on the River Stour. Our venue still had the feel of an old village church in use, with quite a few displays around the place.
camp chairs around a small table
Chairs, blankets and cushions all set up around a little coffee table in Fordwich. You can see the water filter in the background.
Aside: After our night in Fordwich, I went for a wild swim in the Stour upstream of Canterbury. It was brisk!
Person in river
Sitting on an underwater ledge, waiting to acclimatise to the chilly, fast-flowing river. This was a great treat.
We enjoyed our time in Fordwich, and we decided to try another church. We booked a date in September to visit Old St Peter and St Paul’s Church, which sits on a private estate near Albury in Surrey (that’s the church I’m reviewing below). This building had a different feel - emptier, more spacious, lighter, more regal, more austere.
Dome steepled church in morning sun
Morning at Old St Peter and St Paul's Church in Albury, Surrey.
One of the lovely things about these churches is that they are open to the public until the evening. When we arrived at both churches, we got to talk to other visitors about what we were doing. As you might expect, reponses ranged from envy and excitement to, “Isn’t it a bit . . . creepy?” and, “Rather you than me!” Generally, though, everyone was intrigued with the idea and agreed it was a good way for the Churches Conservation Trust to bring in a bit more money to help preserve these old buildings. “Oooh, Champing!” was usually the last thing we heard as visitors wandered off across the churchyard.
church with chairs
What a gorgeous sight to come 'home' to!
stained glass window
One of the windows in Albury.
I was impressed with both of our Champing churches, though Albury might just be my favourite of the two. The Champing team sent all the info we needed pre-arrival and everything was set up in the church before we got there. All we had to do get out our pillows and sleeping bags, decide where to put the camp beds, unpack our snacks and drinks, switch on the electric candles, then talk and play board games into the night.
two coloured glass windows
The huge window at St Peter and St Paul's was stunning, as was the whole richly decorated South Chapel.
In the morning, you get breakfast, usually at a nearby pub or cafe. We had a bit of a disaster with the first place, which no longer provides the breakfasts at Fordwich (despite confirming beforehand, they had no idea how to cater for three vegetarians and a vegan) but the hotel in Albury was OK (although they only had dairy milk for drinks, alas). All in all, it's a pretty novel experience and comfort levels are somewhere between camping and glamping. I'd recommend it for families and groups of friends who want to try something a bit different.
Manor house in morning sun
The church at Albury was on a private estate. This was our view on the way to the loo. I liked the golden morning sun on the chimneys.
"Oooh! Champing!"

Year of Sleeping Variously: Champing edition

Two camp beds with sleeping gear in a large church
We didn't end up sleeping in this location. But it was the lightest place to get a good photo!
  • Bed (3/5) - They supply camp beds, we added our Thermarests, sleeping bags and pillows. The camp beds are quite comfy, but not so good for snuggling up to another person (there's a gap!).
  • Room (5/5) - OK, so there are no wardrobes, chests of drawers or couches. But It is a pretty special bedroom!
  • View (3/5) - Gorgeous windows (but too high to see out of from inside) and a landscaped estate beyond.
  • Facilities (3/5) - It's a step up from campsite camping, with water, tea and coffee provided. They have "ChampLavs" - dry separating compost loos - but no showers or running water.
  • Location (3/5) - Pretty nice, yeah.
  • People (5/5) - Of course - can't fault the company of good friends!
  • Food (3/5) - We went shopping for supplies at Waitrose, so our snacks were top notch. Cooked breakfast at The Drummond at Albury was average, though I'm sure if you're a meat eater you'll have more variety.
  • Value (3/5) - This is a hard one. I'm averaging this out over the two stays - we got a breakfast refund on the first stay due to the food mix-up and a discount on the second stay because we were return Champers. At full price it's £55 per person per night, and I think four people could get better value for £220 per night.
  • Uniqueness (5/5) - On the other hand, you are unlikely to get a more unique bedroom, no matter how much you fork out!
  • That indefinable something (3/5) - A few bats came out and flitted around during the night, and I love bats! They added some excitement to the peaceful atmosphere. I enjoyed padding across the stone floor in the night to go to the loo, and waking up with the birds calling outside.

Champing verdict: 72%

Previous Year of Sleeping Variously posts: 
tarp on a hill; B&B in a town; tent in a garden; holiday cottage on a farm; tent at a campsite; cabin by a canal; budget hotel.

Have you been Champing? Would you like to try it? If you've got any questions about our experiences, leave me a comment and I'll get back to you.

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11 things I learnt while canoeing the River Wye

26/8/2016

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(Because you all like a listicle, right? . . . right?)

After walking 100km from the English Channel to the Bristol Channel, we went on a three day canoeing and camping trip down the River Wye on the Wales/England border. In some ways, this was an extension of last year’s walk across Wales. We hired a canoe from Wye Valley Canoes and paddled from Glasbury to Hereford, staying overnight at Whitney Bridge and Preston-on-Wye campgrounds. Here's what I learnt.
Canoe, river, walled garden
We pulled over opposite this National Trust property to stretch our legs - and had a chat to some people across the river.

It’s easier than you might expect . . .

We’d never been canoeing before (kayaking, yes - canoeing, no), so we really had no idea how far we’d be able to paddle in a day, or how long people generally think “a day” should be when canoeing. We decided to go for shorter sections, just in case - about 10 miles (16km) each day.

Turns out, canoeing downstream is (or can be) pretty easy and pretty speedy. The river carried us along without much effort on our part and we covered the 10 miles in about 4 hours each day. In fact, the first day went so quickly we hardly bothered with paddling after that. Instead, we left our campsites late, noodled around on beaches for leisurely lunches and cups of tea, and slipped silently past hills, woods, farms and fields. One highlight of many was our view of The Weir Garden - we stopped opposite and had a chat to a few people across the river.
River and canoe, hill in background
I'm pretty sure this was one of our, "Well, we've accidentally beached ourselves, so we might as well hop out for a while," rest stops.

. . . But the wind can be a pain in the proverbial

There’s an exception to the idyll I’ve just described. On the second day a strong headwind came whooshing up the river valley and we had no idea how to deal with it! Any onlookers must have laughed as we turned Old Town (our canoe's name) in a giant circle, got ourselves stuck in the shallows, then headed off in long, meandering zigzags downstream. We turned a corner and got a bit of relief: the high riverbank protected us instead of funnelling the wind straight at us; the wind was coming from a different angle; and the miniature storm had almost blown itself out. We did get caught in a mini-downpour, too, but we dragged the canoe up under a weeping willow tree and waited until it passed over. Silver lining: the wind dried us out in no time.
River from above
"River Wye, Hay-on-Wye" (cc) Ed Webster.

Literal pain in the butt: also a possibility

I was expecting to get sore shoulders, back and/or neck from the repetitive action, but I only had a few twinges and no real stiffness the next day. Keeping our actual paddling to a minimum probably helped! I wasn’t expecting to get a sore bum, but apparently there is such a thing as too much sitting down and looking at beautiful scenery.
Red brick bridge with arches over river
"Bredwardine Bridge over the Wye" (cc) David Merrett.

Shut up, chill out

On our last day, barely a breath of wind disturbed the water ahead of us. We slid over a mirror of trees, dipping our paddles into clouds. A deer bent its head to the river to drink, grazed on some leaves, didn’t notice us until we were close. It watched us for a stretched-out moment, until something in our statue-still shapes gave us away as human then it turned tail and disappeared up the hill. A kingfisher splashed out of the river and sat on a dead branch to eat a tiny minnow. All through our trip, kites and buzzards circled over riverside fields, some resting on nearby trees before flapping low over the river and curving out towards the hills. Every now and then the fish would jump. Mostly we heard them, sometimes saw the splash before the ripples. But if we were lucky we’d see them leap in wriggling silver lines from the water towards the sky before flopping back. In our silence we heard the water lapping against the boat, the bees in the flowers, the creak of branch on branch. I thought I saw an otter once, but it turned out to be a fishing line making strange patterns in the water. (At Monnington Falls, Dan spotted an angler beside a rapid just in time to shout that we were coming through - there was no way we could have stopped at that point - proving that sometimes you need to be quiet, but sometimes you need to speak up!)

We spent hours on flat stretches of river, view restricted to the sky, the banks and a few things tall enough and close enough to be visible over the edges. It’s hard to get lost going downstream, but it’s easy to be unsure where you are, especially if you don’t have much of a map and your phone’s tucked safely away. Added to that feeling of nowhereness, it sometimes seemed like we weren’t moving at all. If we looked at the water straight ahead of the canoe, we might as well have been motionless. The only way to check we were heading anywhere was to look sideways, at the trees and flowers and grass on the bank. I used to look out the car window as a kid and pretend I was in a stationary bubble while the world moved past. It was easy to play that game on the river.

In these elongated minutes, I tried accepting each moment as it arose: boredom, the tug of the current on the boat, the direction of the wind, the little itches and aches in my body, the sound of bees and the smell of Himalayan balsam, the sand martins darting in and out of their small round holes in the river bank, my wet feet, the scent of river mud, the electric shimmer of a kingfisher darting low over the water.
Kingfisher in flight
"Kingfisher Hovering" (cc) Kentish Plumber.

Don’t drink and paddle

There was a group of eight guys who we passed and who passed us at various points. Possibly it was a stag weekend. They certainly weren’t interested in paddling anywhere fast. They certainly were interested in imbibing various substances. Perhaps that’s one reason we found two of their party standing waist-deep in the river in the middle of our second day. Their canoe had capsized and their various belongings were floating off downstream - including a large quantity of beer. They rescued most of the beer (they told us when we crossed paths again), but one of them had a very wet sleeping bag.
Two blue barrels
Watertight barrels, life vests, paddles, canoe and pick-up at the end were all included in the hire cost with Wye Valley Canoes.

Rapids are fun

Who knew? OK, pretty much everyone. But I’m not a thrill-seeker and I was a bit worried before we left. Yeah, I know they’re small (Grade II maximum in the section we paddled) but as I’d never managed to come out of a rapid facing the right way, before . . .

I needn’t have worried. The river was deep enough that we weren’t likely to get stuck, shallow enough that (for the most part) we’d be able to stand up and walk out of danger if we capsized. Once we got the hang of things and stopped worrying, we actively looked forward to the riffle stretches: lining ourselves up for the most likely-looking spot, noticing the current grip us a little tighter and the canoe speed up, then feeling the distinct descent as we crested the first lump of water, enjoying the rocking motion through the wavelets, digging in the oars and maneuvering the canoe into the turn at the other end.

There was only one point, at Monnington Falls, that required any significant steering through the rapids. And it was so fun, I wished we could go back and do it again! Whee!
Small river rapids
"034" - rapids near Glasbury (cc) Ian Haskins.

Just because I can’t do it now doesn’t mean I can’t do it

Followers of our outdoorsy exploits might be surprised to find out that I am not by nature a particularly physically confident person. I’m usually more at ease reading up on a new theory, trying out new musical instrument or even starting a new job than attempting a new physical activity. I feel clumsy, vulnerable, anxious, ashamed - and as a result I am less likely to practice and therefore unlikely to improve. But I’m also quite stubborn. So when I commit to (and pay for) three days of canoeing, I’m not going to bail out early!

It was good to begin something with very little experience, to go out without anyone to guide us or fall back on, to get frustrated at myself (and Dan - sorry, Dan!), but to gradually gain confidence and to noticeably improve over a relatively short period of time. Unsurprisingly, we were a much better canoeing duo when we hopped out opposite Hereford Cathedral than we had been when we set out from Glasbury.
Canoe and river
Some of the riverbanks like this had lots of little holes in them - sand martin nests!

Some people are back-of-the-canoe people

One way to improve is to play to your strengths. In a double canoe there are two quite distinct roles: the person at the front provides most of the paddle power, the person at the back provides most of the steering. My strength is steering - I find the physics of it pretty intuitive and I enjoy paying attention and being in control of our course. Dan brings zen to the situation - he’s OK with letting someone else do the steering (even if it seems like we’re heading towards an obstacle) and with powering on when necessary. You can read our weaknesses into that yourself!

But whichever role we took on, the most important thing was communication. It was something that we got better at as we progressed. It’s surprisingly difficult to give coherent directions whilst also focusing on paddling or steering, looking at the scenery, dodging a flotilla of hissing swans and/or bobbing down riffles. It’s harder to say, “There are rocks ahead,” or “Swap sides now,” or, “Turn right!” or “Let’s have a break,” than it is to say “Go, go, go, nooooo!” or “Do the, the, the thingie! No, the other thing!” or “Aaargh!”.
Bridge, river, cathedral
"Hereford, UK" (cc) Swee Oon.

Even experienced paddlers have bad days

We met a couple who’d done quite a bit of kayaking and canoeing. They were spending a few days out on the Wye in their inflatable kayak and were having quite a good time - until an unfortunate encounter with a low-hanging branch knocked them out, capsizing their boat and sending a pair of brand new, £300 prescription glasses into the depths of the river. Whoops.

Glasses aren’t the only thing paving the river bed around here. The guy who picked us up at the end of the trip was surprised when we said we hadn’t fallen in. He reckons there’s probably a cottage industry in diving for GoPro cameras at the bottom of each rapid. Hearing how many people have lost their cameras in the river made me glad that we’d kept our things ziplocked or drybagged and stored in the barrels - even though this means we don’t have many photos - and none taken while on the water.
Tent in sunny field
Our second campsite, which we had entirely to ourselves. Lovely. The river's behind the pink flowers.

You can take the kitchen sink . . .

We’d just come from a long walk, where we’d kept our gear to the bare minimum. As self-powered travel goes, canoeing could hardly be more different. One person we met likened these big, open canoes to pack horses and said he’d known people to bring their duvets and pillows along.

Although we didn’t bring any luxuries, we did have our Aspect 2.5 tent (which isn’t huge, but weighs almost 3kg), all our sleeping kit, food and cooking gear. This all fit easily into two waterproof barrels - one large, one small. We could have taken more if we’d needed it. Not carrying all that kit on your back makes things a lot easier.
Picnic table with drinks tray
Now this is what I want to see when I crawl out of my tent in the morning: hot drinks ready to go!

. . . But this campsite brings a cooked breakfast to your tent

Yes, really! We spent our first night at Whitney Bridge - a tiny campsite wedged between the road and the river. It’s more a picnic site, really, and I can’t believe that there are more than four patches flat enough to pitch a tent! Anyway, we set up close to the river, with a charming view of the old wooden bridge, which is still a toll bridge and which the campsite proprietors operate. In the evening, we made a fire (they had an enormous supply of firewood) and invited the only other campers, the inflatable kayaking couple, to join us for a chat and a stare into the flames.

In the drizzly morning, we opened the tent to find a tray with a huge flask of hot water, milk, various teas, coffee and hot chocolate all ready to go. In a plastic pocket, an order sheet offered breakfast rolls, omelettes and toast. We ticked the relevant boxes and popped it up to the house - a few minutes later, another tray was ferried over with our breakfast goodies and sauces to boot. If you have never had a hot, freshly cooked breakfast delivered to your tent, I highly recommend you try it. Luxury!

(Our other campsite at Preston-on-Wye was at the opposite end of the spectrum. It was a riverside field with the following facilities: a landing platform, portaloos and a tap with drinking water. It delightful in a totally different way and we had it all to ourselves - except for two curious sheep.)

All in all, this was a fantastic way to spend a few days. I hope to return to the Wye to walk or paddle another section - or to do both, because Symonds Yat is beautiful enough to visit by land and by water! Read more about our previous adventures in Wales here.

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Big plans

12/7/2016

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I love a plan. I love planning. The problem solving, the anticipation, the promise. Starting a project at work? We need a plan. Writing an article? Draw up a plan. Going on holidays? Plan, plan, plan.
It’s something to do with the anticipation, with being able to clarify goals, of thinking about how this thing will fit into and perhaps shape my everyday life. It’s something to do with the research, with discovering possibilities, with imagining potential futures. I like how planning an adventure brings it closer to reality, into the present, how planning out each step of a large project makes it feel less overwhelming and more achievable. I relish those moments when different aspects come together, or when a whole new idea suddenly opens up.

Ben Saunders - Living on Ice from Ben Saunders on Vimeo. (This film is almost entirely an ode to the planning of an adventure.)

Not everyone loves to plan. Sometimes it seems like social media is fixated on the notion that the best adventures are unplanned, spontaneous, unexpected - the kind of adventures that happen when you stop on the way to somewhere else to watch a sunset, when you deviate from your SatNav route, when you miss your train and end up sleeping under the stars, when you allow yourself the luxury of no destination, when you follow your instinct, when you break free. I think it’s true that often the unexpected elements are what make a place or time particularly special.

​I’m not so keen on the inspirational quotes, though - the soundbites that once might have meant something, but now spend all their time plastered across over-exposed, over-filtered photographs of lakes or mountains or dirt roads or railway lines, or those twee pastel photos of young, long-haired, white women wearing oversized woollen jumpers and cradling enamel cups of steaming coffee while gazing into the middle distance. Those inspirational quotes never seem to mention getting lost in thick cloud at the top of a cliff when your GPS battery dies and you haven’t bothered to bring a paper map; or your car breaking down in the outback when you haven’t told anyone where you’re going, there’s no phone signal and you’re running out of water; or zipping open your tent to find a beast going through the food you failed to pack away properly, and wondering in that split second whether this particular creature prefers chocolate bars and peanut butter or human flesh. I rather think the best adventures do not include being dead. 

(Here’s a fun flowchart: Did You Have A Good Adventure? Though I think my idea of "hard" might be quite a lot gentler than other people’s! Also, here's an amusing "lessons learnt" blog post about cycling in a Californian winter.)
Sunset, plane landing, text
What nonsense! How are you going to get on that plane, magic? (As far as I know, the image is connected to this video.)
On the other hand, there is a danger in micromanaging journeys to the point that all the joy is squeezed out. Some things are better left as an approximate sketch or vague outline rather than a detailed diagram. I know I have a tendency towards over-planning myself, though I’m past the stage where my trips have a Contiki-tour-slash-nursing-home style itinerary: 6:47am wake up, 7:05am take photo of sunrise, 7:10am eat breakfast (insert menu here), walk 4.5km, drink 280mL water, dig hole 20cm deep, excrete 129g fecal matter, etc.

I suppose it's about balancing the two extremes: learning to plan with an appropriate degree of rigor for different travels and adventures - and to suit my capabilities. Last summer, I headed out for long daywalks without a map, food, or raincoat (my plans involved checking the forecast and walking in East Sussex, where a pub is never too far away). Likewise, wild camping at least once a month last year made packing for microadventures almost second nature - it felt more like slinging bread and tea in the sack a la John Muir than an exercise in major event coordination. Moving up a notch, planning a five day walk this summer, I’ve mapped out a general route and booked accommodation along the way - soon I’ll have a look at places where we can buy lunch, and I’ll stock up on chocolate bars. And last summer, when we were heading off on our walk across Wales, I spent longer thinking about kit, looking at maps and making sure I knew where we were headed: we’d been stuck up a Welsh hill in less than ideal circumstances before - not something I wanted to repeat.

But then, next year, we’re going on an adventure more stereotypically adventurous than anything I’ve ever done before - more remote, more challenging, more, “I don’t even know if this is possible.” And in response, I am reverting to type: plan, plan, plan!
Notebook, pen and phone
"Plan. Write. Remember." (cc) Jorge Quinteros.

Writing about planning

Let’s back up a bit. First, an admission. While I love planning, I rarely write about my plans before they’re finalised.

Why? Not to put too fine a point on it, I’m afraid.

My big worry is that I’ll look like a fool if the plan doesn’t come to fruition. How will I feel in a few months or a year if I have to come back and admit to the people who read this that we’re not going on that big, remote, challenging adventure at all? I’ll feel like a failure, that’s what.

(A lesser fear - one that’s more likely to happen, but easier to put aside - is that I’ll get a lacklustre response. Nobody will be enthused. Nobody will be encouraging. Nobody will comment. Nobody will give it a star or a thumbs up or a heart or a smiley face. I have to remind myself, that’s OK - I’m doing it for me, not for the lurking internet hordes, and naturally it's going to be more exciting to me than to anyone else. Besides, I've talked about this plan with people outside of the internets and they seem to think it's interesting!)
A couple of weeks ago I was reading the blog of the most enthusiastic ball of energy that is the adventurer Anna McNuff, specifically her post "To scoot or not to scoot, that is the question". ​In it, she talks about her plan to travel the length of South America by giant scooter, about testing out said giant scooters with a friend in the Welsh hills, about having a fantastic time . . . but realising this was not going to be the best mode of transport for a trip that involved going up a lot of hills. Anyway, Anna’s post is great and the video makes me want to go scooting, but she opens with something of a rallying cry - to talk a bit more about the planning of adventures before they begin:
. . . all-too-often we only get to hear about adventure plans when they are unveiled / announced / launched / released, and above all . . . final. The reasons for that are valid - you don’t want to look like a prize banana after all - shooting your mouth off and then not doing what you said you would. But it always seems a shame that the journey to the start line of an adventure should appear so effortless.
So, that got me thinking, and now I'm all psyched up and wanting to talk a bit about this adventure we’re planning for next year . . .

An adventure down the Snowy River

Snowy slops with small river
View of the Snowy River, looking up towards Mt Kosciuszko/Targangal (cc) eyeweed.
The Snowy River is one of Australia’s most iconic rivers - at least, it is within Australia. Mostly, ask an Australian if they’ve heard of the Snowy River and they’ll recite a line or two from Banjo Paterson’s 1895 bush poem "The Man from Snowy River", mention the 1982 film of the same name starring Sigrid Thornton (or the terrible sequel), talk about the Snowy Mountains Scheme or, if they’re environmentally inclined, about the campaign to restore water from said scheme to the river. But from my extremely anecdotal and unscientific research, it doesn’t seem like many people outside Australia have heard of the Snowy River. So, in case you don’t know: the Snowy River rises in southern New South Wales on Mt Kosciuszko/Targangal, Australia’s highest mountain; it then flows in a question-mark-ish line for about 400km south before entering Bass Strait at Marlo in eastern Victoria. In between, it’s dammed three times, trickles through the Monaro High Plains, gushes over rapids and through gorges in remote areas of national park and loops through farmland, past remnant rainforest and coastal lakes. There aren’t many towns on the Snowy: Jindabyne (population <1750) at the main dam, Dalgety (population <100) in the Monaro and then nothing much until Orbost (population <2500) and Marlo (population <400) on the coast.

And next year, we’re going to try and follow the Snowy the whole way from source to sea, walking, paddling, wading, scrambling, swimming . . . however we can.
Walking trail over river
Crossing the Snowy River on the Charlottes Pass to Blue Lake trail (cc) Andrea Schaffer.
I first conjured up the idea of following the Snowy on dreary day in February last year. I was unenthused and uninspired and I needed to feel that an escape was possible. What could be a better escape than an adventure down a river, following the water downstream, sleeping on its sandy beaches, meeting people along the way, boiling river water for tea, swimming every day and finally arriving at the wide open ocean? And why not the Snowy River? I grew up beside the Snowy, but I’ve barely seen any of it. It would be a chance to go on a terrific journey, with lots of walking, scrambling, paddling, maybe some bushbashing - and in the process, I could learn a bit more about the natural environments, human cultures, history and geography of the river.
Large engineering works
The dam at Jindabyne, releasing a little more water back into the Snowy (cc) sydneydawg2006.
So, the idea has been on the cards for a while, quietly bubbling away, with research about the river taking up lots of my spare time. I hinted at our plans in my "Why follow a river?" post back in February. But it wasn’t until last month when our weeks off work were confirmed and our plane tickets booked that the enormity of the whole thing really started to sink in.
Bridge high over river
McKillops Bridge, one of only two bridges across the Snowy in Victoria, and the furthest upstream I've ever been (cc) Colin Adland.
If all goes well we will be in Australia for almost six weeks in 2017 and on the river for about five of those. I have a draft itinerary, although in reality I have no idea how far we’ll be able to travel in a day, because there are no footpaths or tracks along the majority of the river. I’ve done a lot of Google Maps-based exploration. I’ve contacted various government departments and tourist information centres about the legalities of access to the river. I'm looking for more information about whose country we'll be on. I’m talking to expedition companies about boat hire and guided tours for the sections of river that I’ve been told are categorically unwalkable. We might end up paddling more than we expected. Dan and I are looking at our kit and trying to figure out what we need to discard, change, upgrade and acquire to make sure we’re safe (enough), comfortable (enough) and lightweight (enough) to make the journey enjoyable (enough). We're going to the Alpkit warehouse in August to check their gear out in person. We’ve pencilled in several overnight walks from now until then to keep our level of fitness from falling through the floor, but I think it will be a case of the trip being its own training. I’ve got an Australian first aid book to refresh my knowledge of how to bandage snake bites. I'm trying not to freak myself out with the idea of being chased by packs of feral dogs (or indeed domestic dogs). I’ve haunted forum debates about the pros and cons of PLBs and satellite messengers - particularly concerned about coverage in remote areas of Australia. We're trying to save some money. Kate of the Katechen, based in Melbourne, is going to devise some homemade dehydrated vegetarian meals for us (there's no point trying to take food into Australia, it'll probably be confiscated by customs). I’m hoping that a few friends and family who we’ve chatted to about our plans might be able to join us for a day or two here and there or at least help us arrange food drops and clean socks and undies at strategic points. Someone might even be able to give us a lift to beginning of the walk (a 7+ hour drive, minimum) - because actually getting there would be a good start!
River, tall trees, small person
Me, having crossed the Snowy River in a feat of intrepid exploration earlier this year.
There’s so much that’s still up in the air, still so many unknowns. And the nature of such an adventure means that some of it will remain unknowable until we do it, or fail while trying. In the meantime, there’s a lot to organise.

Luckily, I love planning.
River mouth, grey sky
The mouth of the Snowy River at Marlo in East Gippsland.

So, there you have it. The cat's out of the bag, or among the pigeons, or on a hot tin roof. I have a plan, which is now on the internet, so it must be official!

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A post-thunderstorm microadventure

20/6/2016

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The summer solstice was approaching, #30DaysWild was in full swing, the Summer Microadventure Challenge had been issued and the weather forecast was absolutely miserable. It was time to extract our bivi bags from the dark recesses of the cupboard and find a hill to sleep on.
Backlit hills and fields
Good things come to those who persevere!
It had been a while since we last slept wild (on the verandah of a beach box on the winter solstice) and to be honest, I was feeling a bit uninspired. It’s the kind of apathy I get about walking when I haven’t been out for a long hike for a while: it’s not that I don’t want to do it, I just find it hard to muster the motivation to actually start. My mood wasn’t helped by the weather. On the way to work, we drove past the bit of South Downs where we planned to sleep. The hills were engulfed in drizzly clouds. I thought of saturated grass, chalky mud and clammy, insect-infested air and I shuddered.
Cumulus clouds
Ooh, I love a good cumulus cloud!
Low foggy cloud on hills
Low clouds sweeping over the hills gave the landscape a somewhat ghostly atmosphere.
As the work day progressed, though, my anticipation built. I was invigilating exams and there’s nothing like being cooped up in a small room with nothing to do for hours on end to reignite your desire to spend some time outside. The forecast was looking up, too: the rain was due to stop at 11pm, then 9pm, then 6pm. Perhaps we’d be dry after all!
Grey clouds
Now for something completely different: clouds! This time, reflected in a puddle.
Clouds and radio masts on hill
A hint of sun - enough to keep our hopes up.
But in the afternoon, the weather whipped itself into a right state. I left work in the midst of a massive thunderstorm, complete with torrential rain and flashes of lighting. My colleagues wished me well and hoped they’d see me alive on Monday. In the car, Dan and I looked at each other and made the kind of deal that civilised people make. We’d do some last minute shopping for snacks, get ourselves a nice big dinner of pizza and then head up to the hills. We’d take our packs and go for a walk. If we got out to the spot we were hoping to sleep and it was still bucketing down, we’d go home. If not, we’d stick around for the night.
Radio masts with dishes
I know 3G doesn't come from these masts, but I still feel like their presence should mean we have good internet reception on the phone. (It didn't.)
Grassy path
The path over the South Downs. Note the skylark in the foreground!
It was still raining when we finished shopping at 7pm. It was still raining when we finished our pizza at 8pm. It was still raining, just, when we drove into the car park. But as we wandered along the hilltops, the weather cleared. A few chinks appeared in the grey, revealing blue sky above. In the west, crepuscular rays pierced through the clouds, panning across distant ridges and valleys.
Sunset clouds and scenery
The first hint of what was to come - and we thought this was pretty speccy.
Clouds and crepuscular rays
By now, you might have gathered that I like clouds. Quite a lot.
We took our time along the path, detouring through raindrop-jewelled grass to recce potential campsites. What combination of view were we after? Sheep, cows, crops, sea, downs, levels, harbour, river valley, town, sunset, sunrise? There were plenty of options, but we struck most of them off our list when closer investigation revealed copious thistle cover. Ouch.
Thistle in the grass
Thistle do nicely . . . or not. Unfortunately, not all thistles are this easily spotted!
wet grass
Raindrops gleaming in the sunset, like fiery little jewels in the grass.
The shifting clouds, delicate mists and evening light created gorgeous, ephemeral scenes. I could barely tear my eyes from the unfolding drama on the hills across the way. Every time I looked around, the landscape seemed to surpass itself in beauty.
Sunset
The line of clouds on the last ridge burnt a fierce gold in the sunset.
Hills, levels, mist, sunset
(Imagine me gesticulating wordlessly, or saying, "Wow!" over and over.)
Finally, as we reached our destination, the sun broke through, setting fire to the mist, flooding the downs and valleys with gold. I decided then and there that even if I had a terrible night, even if I was cold, damp and cramped by the end of it, the microadventure would have been worth it, just for this view. It had definitely rekindled my taste for wild camping.
Sunset hills of gold
#NoFilter
Hills flooded with yellow sunset mist
Still #NoFilter. Seriously, look at this! Do you see the windmill?
Eventually, as it always does at this latitude, the sun sank below the horizon. We retraced our steps a short way and plonked our things down beside the path. A couple of blokes in camo gear trooped past and we exchanged some effusive words about the evening (“Good night for it” / “It turned out pretty nice after all”), then we started to set up. There was only one problem: it had been so long since I’d used the tarp that I’d forgotten all my knots. Luckily, Dan was on hand with the sensible suggestion that I refer to the intertubes. I stomped off with the phone to find a spot with 3G and a little while later returned victorious with a fresh understanding of the tautline hitch. In just a few minutes more, we were brushing our teeth and snuggling down into our bags.
Sunset and coastal town
Looking the other direction, out to sea.
Sunset sky and silhouetted grass
A wild-camper's-eye-view. Good night.
It was a surprisingly comfortable site. We’d put the picnic rug down to keep the worst of the wet at bay, and the long grass provided quite a nice mattress. My annoying pillow that always deflates deflated, so I used a stuff-bag full of clothes for my pillow instead. (I’d ordered a new pillow online, but we hadn’t been able to pick it up during the week.) Below us, the town lights twinkled and the highway hummed. Above us, a few late night flights headed out from Gatwick and over the Channel. I fell asleep. At one point I woke up thinking someone was shining a light onto the tarp, but it was just the nearly-full moon, sailing clear of the clouds. A clean breeze rippled through the long grass. In the distance I heard a cow calling her calf.
Tarp beside the path
Look! There's our tarp, right next to the path.
Pot of porridge
Uninspiring porridge to finish off the adventure. At least it was hot!
The next thing I knew, it was light, and the air was full of skylark song. There must be hundreds of skylarks up on the South Downs at the moment - or half a dozen very noisy ones that follow us every time we go for a walk. I tried to go back to sleep (it was just after 4 o’clock), but the birds and other aspects of nature were calling. We packed, then Dan wandered off to look at the view. He reported that the tarp was very well camouflaged in the grass. A couple of keen mountain bikers sped past just after 5am, grinning hello. Soon we were walking back to the carpark, where we cooked breakfast under the watchful eyes of rooks and jackdaws.
(Later that morning, Dan collected my new Exped Air Pillow XL from the post office. I tried it out on the living room floor and declared it to be good. I’ll test it properly next weekend in an unusual venue . . . stay tuned!)

Year of Sleeping Variously: Tarp on a hill edition

Tarp with sleeping gear under it
  • Bed (3/5) - Surprisingly comfortable and surprisingly dry, all things considered. At least one point needs to be docked for my annoying pillow.
  • Room (3/5) - Our lightweight tarp pitched using hiking poles. I'm always surprised by how much floor space we get, even if headroom is a bit minimal.
  • View (5/5) - The sunset was so beautiful, I think it's in the top 10 views of my life so far!
  • Facilities (1/5) - There was a small tree? And back at the carpark there was a bench (no table).
  • Location (5/5) - Perfect spot, and handily between work and home, so we can easily stop off again on a Friday night . . .
  • People (4/5) - Docking one mark here for my own grumpiness when I couldn't remember the knots to pitch the tarp!
  • Food (1/5) - The choc-chip biscuits from Waitrose were pretty tasty, but the tea and porridge were not very inspiring.
  • Value (5/5) - Free! And good! Well done, South Downs, would stay again.
  • Uniqueness (5/5) - Wild camping is pretty much the only way you can enjoy this view overnight, so yeah, it's unique.
  • That indefinable something (5/5) - The sunset has to count for at least two or three points, and then there was the skylark song, the clean smell of grass all around, the moonlight . . .

​Tarp on a hill verdict: 74% (but a really, really excellent 74%!)

If you’re interested to see what others have been getting up to outdoors this month, check out the #30DaysWild and #MicroadventureChallenge tags on social media.

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Australia (Part 1: Country)

17/4/2016

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We went to Australia! It was a wonderful, if too-short, visit. We caught up with family and friends, relaxed in the country (first week) and ate our way through the city (second week). This post focuses on the first part, travelling out to East Gippsland, spending time in the bush, swimming in the river and going to the beach. It's in four sections: (1) photos; (2) a reflective piece; (3) more photos; and (4) Year of Sleeping Variously: tent in the garden edition. I took a ridiculous number of pictures, so this is just a small selection. I hope you enjoy them and they give you a taste of our visit. I didn't feel like writing a diary-style blog about our trip, but I hope you enjoy the words, too.

East Gipplsand is the traditional country of the Gunaikurnai nation. More specifically, the area around Orbost and the Snowy River is the traditional country of the Krowathunkooloong people. If you live in or visit the area, you might like to explore the Bataluk Cultural Trail and visit the keeping place in Bairnsdale.

1.

Paddocks and distant hills
Scarred tree
Trees, fire and tents in back yard
Small timber shed, field and large trees
Top: View over the plains west of Bairnsdale. We took a few minutes out of our drive to detour down a wide gravel road off the highway, hop out of the car and admire the landscape. I've never explored this area, but this view made me want to go back and do so.

Middle left: "The Canoe Tree" at Howitt Park, Bairnsdale. Aboriginal people removed a 4m long section of bark to make a canoe, creating this scar.

Middle right: We stayed at my aunt and uncle's place on the Mornington Peninsula, meeting up with lots of folk from my dad's large family for my cousin's baby's naming day. This is my aunt and uncle's backyard, with my cousin's tent in the background.

Bottom: The old shearing and milking shed on the river flats at the bottom of my parents' place. There used to be more fences here, when they had sheep to shear, cows to milk and a vegetable patch to protect. There was no electricity - Dad did the milking and shearing the old fashioned way, by hand.
Rainforest creek bed
Currawong, black bird with yellow eye
Two long bridges over flat grassland
Small jelly fungus
Top: Temperate rainforest. We went for a scramble along the creek bed that runs through my parents' place, down to the river. Closer to the river, deer (non-native animals) are making a bit of a mess of the valley.

Middle left: A pied currawong. Currawongs are handsome birds with large beaks and fierce, curious, bright yellow eyes. The name is onomatopoeic, it sounds a bit like their usual warbling call (they can also imitate some other birds).

Middle right: View across the Orbost river flats with the Princes Highway on the right and the old wooden railway bridge on the left. We visited a fantastic exhibition in Orbost, all about the history of the railway (the last trains came to Orbost in the late 1980s) and we signed a petition to have this bridge looked after. The line from Orbost to Bairnsdale is now a rail trail, which (obviously) does not use the dangerous bridges.

​Bottom: A tiny white jelly fungus spotted in the rainforest. There are thought to be over 250,000 species of fungi in Australia, though only 13,000 of them have been recorded. 

2.

Driving through Melbourne and out to the Mornington Peninsula, I notice - for the first time in my life, really - the diversity of eucalypt trees. The freeway is lined with the short, scrubby kinds, multiple limbs springing up from the base, Mallee-style - trees that curl and wave and seem truly alien to eyes accustomed to oak, birch, spruce, hazel. I suddenly develop some sympathy for John Glover: I can understand, now, how he and others might have grappled with the unfamiliar proportions and anatomy of Australian trees, unintentionally emphasising the weird, writhing otherness of eucalypts in their paintings.

Down on the peninsula and through South Gippsland, I crane my neck to look up the elegant, smooth-skinned trunks of spotted gums, their pale, almost pastel pink skin covered in large splotches of smooth grey or creamy bark. Driving through the La Trobe Valley and into the plains around Sale and Bairnsdale, the dominant colours change to burnt orange and brown. We find river gums here, the broad, solid trunks covered in bark at the base, but sloughing it off in great, hanging ribbons at the top, where smooth boughs emerge a rich, tannin-y cream. The wavy Mallee branches have disappeared. After Lakes Entrance we pass through forests of stringybark, stringybark and stringybark, grey and rough coated, straight and slender, here blackened by the bushfires of a few years ago, with young, leafy branches springing from the burnt trunks.

At Orbost, we leave the highway to head out over the river flats, where blue-grey stands of coastal grey box dot the paddocks. Up the Snowy River, the rocky hills are striped with stringybark and ironbark while the lush valleys host tall mountain grey gums. On the way back to Melbourne a week later, we pass through the Dandenongs and acres of towering mountain ash, Eucalyptus regnans, one of the tallest trees in the world.

There are dozens of other species, too - eucalypts, acacias, banksias, others. The whole time, I ask my sister, the horticulturalist and gardener, “What’s that tree? What’s that tree?” She gives answers that satisfy me, but she also reminds me that there are hundreds of eucalypt species in Australia and only a specialist could keep up with my demands. When we reach my parents’ place, I ask them the same question, hoping that almost four decades in the area will have given them time to identify the local trees. They pull a few useful books off their crowded shelves - Forest Trees of Australia (1979 edition), Native Trees and Shrubs of South Eastern Australia (1984 edition) - editions new enough to have some full colour photos, though most are still black and white. I wonder what’s changed in the world of tree classification since their publication. I start Googling tree names, but Wikipedia has scant knowledge on some species and I’m not sure it’s any more accurate or up-to-date.

This sparse information makes me wonder if there's a big difference between my two countries. In the UK (at least, where I live), people go on bluebell walks and badger spotting evenings, they discuss what happened on Springwatch (or Autumnwatch, or Winterwatch), go on foraging and wild food cookery courses, happily spend an hour and a half watching a film about a year in the life of an oak tree, take part in outdoors campaigns (like #30DaysWild), get involved in citizen science (like the Big Garden Birdwatch) and read enough books about outdoorsy, naturey things that bookshops often have a “nature writing” section. There is a whole, loosely defined genre of media dedicated to nature. If I want to find out what bird I’ve just seen in the UK, there’s a pretty good chance the RSPB will have it on their online bird identifier. For butterflies there’s a Butterfly Conservation charity, for bats there's the Bat Conservation Trust, for bumblebees there's the Bumblebee Conservation Trust. There are countless pocket guides and wallcharts of wildflowers, birds, trees, insects, fungi and forage-able food. 

Compared to that, mainstream Australian culture seems to lack curiosity: there's very little desire to explore or connect with everyday nature. (This week, it feels like the petition to save a Lemon-scented gum on Flemington Road in Melbourne has not taken off as quickly as it would have done in the UK.) I wonder what that’s about. Is it fear? Do people worry about being called greenies? (Remember those car stickers, "Fertilise the bush, doze in a greenie" and "The only true wilderness is between a greenie's ears"? Remember how some shops in Orbost refused to serve anyone who looked like they were on the way to or from protest camps to save old growth forests?) Or is it anxiety about the bush itself, a relic of the colonists’ adversarial relationship with Australian landscapes, flora and fauna (lost in the hills, bitten by a snake, starving to death)? Is it a deeper cultural uneasiness, an unsteady repercussion of the new settlers' campaign to wipe out any intimate, long-term, traditional knowledge of Australian ecosystems along with the Aboriginal people who carried that knowledge? Is it simply that we’re taught that Australia is so big and there is so much bushland, so much desert, so much coast that we take it for granted? Are we just blasé?

Perhaps in the UK we can - and must - focus so intently because there is so little to focus on. Messing around on the Woodland Trust’s website a few days after returning to England, I read that there are two species of oak native to the UK, three species of native conifer and several species of native willow (which can hybridise, making identification tricky). The list of UK native trees, including photos, fits on a webpage that I can scroll through in a few seconds. I flick back through my photos from Australia, looking at all the trees I couldn’t identify there. Sure, most of them are eucalypts or acacias, but with several hundred species of the former and almost a thousand of the latter, the task of identifying them seems impossible. After looking at those tree books at my parents’ house I know even less about Australian flora than I did before.

Still, a eucalypt is a eucalypt is a Eucalyptus (or a Corymbia, or an Angophora, or...). The leaves always give off that shock-sharp scent when you crush them between your fingers or add one to a billy of tea. On our first full day at my parents’ place, the summer fire restrictions end. Dad and my sister light a big bonfire, hosing down the nearby tree trunks to keep it under control, raking dry branches into the flames. Up at the house, Mum starts to boil the kettle for tea, but I suggest we take a billy down to the fire instead. We dig around in the cupboards for a suitably billy-ish vessel, spoon tea leaves into a jar, grab some milk and some cups and head out for an afternoon adventure. The billy takes time to heat up, wedged among the coals, collecting a bit of ash and developing a fine, smoky flavour. The tea leaves go in when the water starts bubbling and, without being polite enough to check with the others, I throw a gum leaf in as well. The thing about billy tea is it has to be a bit dirty, a bit over-brewed, a bit tanniny, or it’s just not right. This tea? Is amazing.

We sit around on old planks and stumps of wood, staring at the fire as it dies down, chatting about this and that. I show Dad how to make a drink can stove, probably the first time I’ve ever been able to teach him anything remotely Boy Scout-ish. My sister disappears up to the house with Mum and they return carrying foil-wrapped potatoes, a pot full of rode kool (red cabbage, a nod to our Dutch heritage) and - best of all - piles of buttered bread, slices of cheese, tins of baked beans and a jaffle iron. The potatoes go in the ashes to cook slowly, the rode kool nestles at the edge of the fire. The five of us construct jaffles and jam the iron under the red hot coals, leaving it in a bit longer, and a bit longer still, to get that extra crunch on the bread. I bite into mine when I know full well it will be too hot, burning my fingers and tongue with impatience. After stuffing ourselves with food, we make another billy of tea, this time with Earl Grey teabags and two box leaves, which is perhaps not the best combination. By the time we finish our cups, it’s dark. We head home, full, tired, happy and infused with the smell of eucalyptus smoke. As Dad winds the hose back up to the garage, the rain begins.

Rain on a tin roof is one of my favourite sounds. It’s soothing, childhood-familiar, and sends me to sleep straight away. I dodged jet lag on this trip, but if I hadn’t, the rain that evening still would have worked its white-noise magic. Once or twice during the night I grappled feebly against drowsiness, wanting to record the sound as insurance against future insomnia - but I sank back to sleep before I could get an arm out from under the covers. The night wrapped around me, blanketed me in aural memory, transported me to every other time I’d slept under that roof, under that rain.

It's hard to write about the trip as a holiday. So many of the places we visited were already worn into my senses. I know that one morning, I stood outside in the soft early light, listening to bird calls echo through the trees. I know I heard magpies, currawongs, whip birds or lyrebirds imitating whipbirds, then, later, kookaburras, wattlebirds, cockies. I know it wasn't a huge hubbub; "They're not as noisy when it's cloudy," said Mum. I know my sister stood beside me at the fence near our old cubby house and watched the sky turn from orange to a pale, in-between beige on the way to daylight. I know this. Yet when I try to find something more specific about that morning, I can only recall a blended memory of all the mornings I've spent on that hillside, listening to those birds waking up, watching that dawn creep up the eastern sky.

I go swimming twice in the Snowy River at the bottom of the hill. The last time I swam here must have been in the late 1990s, before I moved to Melbourne. Back then, willows lined the bank and a steep, muddy step launched me into river slime and weeds. I had to wade a few metres through sluggish water before I hit clean sand. Those willows were cut down a decade ago as part of the Snowy River regeneration plan. For years afterwards the banks were a mess of devastation. Although I appreciated the theory behind the replanting programme, I grieved the trees that I’d played on from childhood and I resented the scrappy little shrubs that had been planted to replace them. Even five years ago, just before I left for the UK, the river banks looked strange and half-naked.

But now the ti-trees have grown, the acacias have shot up beside the creek and a few eucalyptus saplings have taken root, inviting me to imagine a future in which tall, graceful gums line the river once again. This all passes through my head as I strip down to my undies and pick my way down to the water’s edge. It's no longer a mudslide, but a well-grassed descent. The biggest change is in the river itself. There is barely any slime or mud, and no choking weeds: just clean, coarse river sand, fast-flowing water and a tribe of skaters skimming close to the bank. I wade across to a sandbank midstream, leaning against the current and sloshing up and down the ridges and valleys that have formed beneath the water. It’s chilly, but not too cold. There are several places where the loose-packed sand gives out under my feet and I sink a few inches, but the river never gets as deep as my waist.

On the opposite side, fresh deer tracks lead down to the water and back up into the bush; a single imprint of webbed bird feet is stamped in the sand; some large hoofed animal has walked around here, too, although the tracks are old and indistinct. I add my own footprints in a swerving, curving line back to the river. My legs are well accustomed to the temperature now, but when I try to duck dive under the water, I’m overpowered by a strong preservation instinct and find myself unable to move. I need to acclimatise a little more, so I splash my arms and shoulders with water, then my face and hair and lastly - most shudderingly - my neck and back. The coldness of my damp singlet in the light breeze is worse than being underwater, so I take a deep breath and fall face first into the river. Ahh! I leap straight back up, wave to Dan on the bank, then crouch down, letting the water rise up to my waist, chest, armpits and over my shoulders. The river flows around me, shallow but strong. I float on my back and let the current drift me along, turning me so my feet point upstream. I wonder how long it would take to float to the sea.

It’s time to go. Wading back to the bank, where Dan waits with a towel, I stop to watch the sand on the river bed. Flecks of mica, fool's gold, flash in the light, tumbling down the underwater dunes, swirling around the deeper pools, constantly moving. The river is always in flux, always remaking itself.

3.

Sunrise behind trees
Looking out from inside the culvert
Cups of billy tea - and billy
View across river with tiny person on other side
Top: Dawn, looking east from the garden down the paddock and over the trees to the lightening sky.

Middle left: Under the bridge. When I was a kid, our drive crossed two bridges on its way to our house. The bridges were wood, planks of timber laid across two huge tree trunks. They rumbled and juddered under the car as you drove across, they were very slippery after rain and the gaps between the planks made walking a bit hazardous, too. They were picturesque, but slightly terrifying (especially the longer, higher one, which we imaginatively called "The Big Bridge"). Eventually, my parents had the bridges replaced with these culverts. They are big enough to walk through, as we did on our adventure down the creek to the river.

Middle right: Billy tea, brewed and stewed, stirred with a stick, flavoured with a gum leaf.

Bottom: I set off to explore the mysterious Other Side Of The River (for about two minutes). Although I lived here for the first eighteen years of my life, I don't remember ever bothering to swim or wade all the way over the Snowy - only ever to the sandbank in the middle. UK summers have hardened me up enough that an overcast autumn day in East Gippsland is plenty warm enough for a swim! The next day I even convinced Mum to come along with me.
Female fairy wren
Mangy wombat butt
Two black swans on water
River mouth and sea
Top: A superb fairy wren. Yes, that really is their name, though we tend to call them little blue wrens. This is a female, with a cute bandit mask around her eyes. Mature males have bright blue and black heads and blue tails. They are jittery little things, flitting restlessly through the garden in search of food, bouncing comically across the grass. As I always do with cute small birds, I stuck my finger out and demanded they come and sit on it. As always, they didn't.

Middle left: We saw many of the wild animals I'm used to finding around my parents' house - a lyrebird, wallabies, and this wombat. Unfortunately, the little beastie has mange - a horrible condition.

Middle right: Swans on the Yeerung River, near Cape Conran. I have missed seeing black swans, with their ruffled wings, hidden patches of white feathers and bright red bills. They have quite a nice call, too. Also at the Yeerung, a sea eagle flew low overhead. That was very special.

Bottom: The Yeerung spends a lot of time cut off from the ocean by the sand. This means the sun has time to heat the water up, making it a lovely place to swim. When we visited, a shallow strip was open between the river and the sea. You can see where the tanniny, iron-rich water of the Yeerung meets the clear, blue-green water of Bass Strait. This is also a popular place for kayaking - we arrived just as a group was departing to paddle back up to the put-in place.

Year of Sleeping Variously: tent in the garden edition

Dan, my sister and I had planned to camp at McKillop's Bridge, but we were sick of travelling and couldn't be bothered driving three hours up the river to get there. "Let's go to Wood Point instead," we decided, "since it's only half an hour away." But Mum thought there might be a bunch of Other People camping there already for the school holidays and we didn't really want to deal with Other People. So how about we pitch our tents down on the river flats? Yes! Great plan! But then we ended up staying at the beach much longer than expected and by the time we got home it was getting dark. So we settled for the excellent microadventure mainstay of camping in the back yard.
Tent in a garden
  • Bed (3/5) - An extra blanket under our Thermarests made it a bit more comfortable than usual, I suppose. The sleeping bags I haven't used since I left home were quite toasty.
  • Room (2/5) - Not bad for a cheap tent from Kmart (courtesy of my sister), but it lacked pockets and a vent or window.
  • View (4/5) - Beautiful garden, bush in the background, stars in the sky, sunrise in the morning . . .
  • Facilities (4/5) - I'd give full marks, but the internet connection is dire out there!
  • Location (4/5) - Both the middle of the nowhere and right next to a well-appointed house for all our needs.
  • People (5/5) - Could I really give my family any other score? ;)
  • Food (4/5) - Food. So much food, including lots of veggies from my parents' garden. The cups of tea brought out to us at 7am were warming and delicious.
  • Value (5/5) - It was free. We didn't even buy the tent! (On the other hand, if you count the plane tickets to Australia, it was the most expensive campsite I've ever visited.)
  • Uniqueness (4/5) - I suppose it's still "just" a tent in a garden . . .
  • That indefinable something (4/5) - The stars on a clear night are absolutely stunning. The mysterious sounds of the bush made us all feel very adventurous. My sister being in the next door tent was fun. The huntsman spider on the outside of our tent when we headed to bed was a nice touch.

Garden camping verdict: 78%

Previously: budget hotel edition, canalside cabin edition.
Yellow breasted robin
Bonus yellow breasted robin for making it to the end of this post!

Thanks to Lis, Jerra, Esther, Caroline, Barry, Esther, Gabe, Martin, Brian, Bridget, Andy, Angeline, Richard, Ruth, John and Chris for your hospitality during the first week of our visit - for company, meals, treats, beds and many cups of tea.

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Why follow a river?

15/2/2016

4 Comments

 
During these short, dark, drizzly winter days, I’ve spent a lot of time curled up in front of the fire dreaming and reading about adventures. I’ve become slightly obsessed with riparian adventures - travels down, up, on, beside and in rivers. We’ve got a couple of potential river walks in mind for 2016 and (hopefully) a really big, exciting one in 2017 . . . stay tuned! In the meantime, here are nine things I like about river journeys. (Supported by evidence in the form of books, mostly. But also some TV.)
River meandering through red outback
Murchison River Gorge (cc) Sean Comiskey

1. It's relatively easy

Find a river. Follow it. What could be more simple? Olivia Laing’s To the River: A Journey Beneath the Surface is a gentle exploration of the River Ouse in East Sussex, a walk taken one hot summer week. It’s a musing on the meaning of rivers as well as a bit of a history of this area and those who have lived in and loved it, with a particular focus on Virginia Woolf (who lived in the area and drowned in the Ouse). Laing stops along the way to lie in fields of long grass and take dips in the cool water. The UK’s rights of way network means she can follow footpaths for most of the route, including the Ouse Valley Way, a signposted long-distance walk. It’s more a rambling holiday than an exciting adventure. It sounds delightful.
Aerial type shot of hills and winding river leading to sea
Looking across the South Downs and along the River Ouse towards Newhaven (cc) Paul

2. It's difficult

Find a river. Try to follow it through ravines, jungles, deserts, cities, war zones . . . it's not always a walk in the park. Levison Wood walked the length of the Nile (well, most of it) a few years ago. Wood’s 6,850km (4,250mi) trek took him from Rwanda to Egypt via Tanzania, Uganda, South Sudan and the Republic of Sudan. The documentary series shows danger on all sides: from humans, wild animals and from the environment itself. He’s robbed on the road, encounters hippos and crocodiles and narrowly avoids being caught in the gunfire of civil unrest. The fighting means he has to abandon part of the walk. In all this high drama, the mundanity of the scene in which Matthew Power, one of Wood’s travelling companions, dies of hyperthermia (heatstroke) is quite shocking. But Wood experiences some incredible sights, stays with hospitable people and visits some fantastically interesting places. Watching his dash into the sea at the end almost makes me want to do it myself. Almost.
Landscape: foreground with river and greenery, background of huge sand dunes
River Nile, Egypt (cc) Michael Gwyther-Jones

3. You can mess about in boats

Are your river fantasies are more Wind in the Willows than Wild West? I like the idea of recreating Three Men in a Boat (as Griff Rhys Jones, Dara O’Briain and Rory McGrath did for TV a few years ago) or hopping aboard a narrowboat and exploring the UK’s waterways, following in the wake of L.T.C. Rolt, who helped revive interest in Britain’s canals in the mid 20th Century. There’s also a huge river network in Europe. Who's to say that taking a steamer up the River Yenisei to spend a miserable season in the Arctic coldness of Dudinka - like Colin Thubron does in In Siberia - can’t be a kind of depressing adventure, too? If your ideal journey involves a bit more physical work yourself, take inspiration from the women who attempted to kayak the Amur River from Mongolia, through Russia to the Pacific Ocean, try paddle-boarding the Thames like Mel and Michelle,  kayaking the Murray like Rod Wellington or packrafting down the River Spey like Alastair Humphreys and Andy Ward.
Two kayakers paddle down minor rapids on a clear river between trees
North Umpqua Wild and Scenic River (cc) Bob Wick

4. Discover ancient history

Rivers have been used as trade and transport routes for millennia. In Meander: East to West along a Turkish River, Jeremy Seal travels 500km on foot and in his fold-away canoe. He travels through fields and along highways, he finds traces of cultures, wars and mass migrations winding back thousands of years. At one point, Seal reads the history of a mound of earth and sees “the early people who had settled by the tributary banks 6,000 years ago, the Arzawans and the Hittites, the Phyrgians, the Persians and the Greeks, the Romans and the Byzantines, the Mongols and the Tartars, the Ottomans, their dead sheikh entombed where the past broke surface, and, finally, an agricultural consultant . . . pondering Anatolia’s present troubles.” Later, he moors up beside an island, tying his canoe to the remains of a fluted column rising from the water and is accosted by goats as he eats his lunch among the ruins.
Remains of white fluted columns and a background of jumbled ruins and water
The ruins of Miletus, once a port on the River Meander (cc) Joseph Kranak

5. It's a window onto changing ecologies

Travelling along a river, either upstream or downstream, is a bit like playing detective. Each new day sheds light on the day before: why the salt is creeping upstream, why the fish are abundant (or not) this year, why farmers have stumbled on hard (or easy) times, or why local attempts to clean up the river are facing an uphill battle. Following a river can give you an insight into the into the environmental effects of climate change, intensive (mis)use of water, damming, waste disposal and agriculture. In the four part series The Mekong River with Sue Perkins (and this will come as no surprise to you clever readers) Sue Perkins travels up the Mekong River. The series touches on the history, cultures and environmental impact of river users in Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Laos, Burma, China and Tibet. Near the end, it’s a shock to be confronted with the construction of the enormous Xayaburi hydroelectric dam, which will block the flow of the river.
Backlit boat on river framed by mountains and clouds
Sunset on the Mekong, Laos (cc) Mario Micklisch

6. It only takes a day

You don't need to save up, quit your job and get on an international flight. Find a short river somewhere near your house and block out a day in your diary to explore. Last year, we spent a day walking and driving the length of the River Cuckmere in East Sussex - starting at the sea and ending at the source (or one of them). On the way we visited chalk carvings, churches and a reservoir and learnt more about the history of the area. The biggest surprise was the source itself: a bright orange, iron-rich spring bubbling out of the ground. There are many of these shorter rivers in the UK (Roger Deakin dabbles in a few over the course of his brilliant book Waterlog: A Swimmer’s Journey Through Britain - recommended reading).
Panorama in saturated colours of a green valley with river leading to a beach
Cuckmere Haven, East Sussex (cc) Alex Donohue

7. You can cross countries . . . and continents

Africa has the Nile, the Congo and the Niger; South America has the Amazon and the Paraná; Asia has the Mekong. But you have to travel a significant way down the list of the world's longest rivers before getting to one that flows through continental Europe: the Danube. In December 1933, Patrick Leigh Fermor set off to walk across Europe to Istanbul. His journey is documented in three books, published in 1977 (A Time of Gifts), 1986 (Between the Woods and the Water) and - unfinished, posthumously - 2013 (The Broken Road). In December 2012, Nick Hunt set off with apparently very little preparation beyond reading Fermor's first two books and setting up a Couchsurfing account to retrace Fermor's steps and find out what had changed in the intervening eighty years. Hunt's book Walking the Woods and the Water, published in 2012, is an account of that journey, often along the Rhine and the Danube, through Holland, Germany, Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey. It’s not only an interesting account of a very long walk, but a great little introduction to contemporary European politics and cultures.
Night: lit bridge and palace reflected in river
Chain Bridge over the Danube, Budapest (cc) Flavio Spugna

8. You don't have to leave your armchair

There are loads of amazing books, articles, blogs, videos and websites dedicated to river journeys. And there’s Google Maps. Put it in satellite view, tilt it if you want, and take your own trip in a far-flung corner of the globe. I have a bit of an addiction to following Russian rivers - the Lena is one of my favourites and the Ob and its siblings also tickle my fancy - though I’m also partial to desert rivers (or riverbeds) like the capillaries of the Diamantina in Australia and the blue braided threads of rivers like the Rakaia in New Zealand’s South Island that run in almost straight lines from the mountains to the sea. Yeah, I can spend hours on Google Maps. I mean, if rivers aren’t enough for you, you can also check out the moon? Or Mars?
Aerial shot of wide river bed with ribbons of pale blue river
Rakaia River, New Zealand (cc) Geoff Leeming

9. There's no beginning or end

Trace a river back to its tributaries; follow one tributary up a valley to a tarn; climb beside a tiny waterfall to to the top of the mountain, to the edge of the catchment, to the watershed; listen to the squelching of mud and moss underfoot; turn your face to the cool drizzle and the clouds. Who is to say where the river really starts? Then follow it downstream, to the fingers of a delta or a long lagoon, a wide-mouthed estuary; to the point where it stops tasting of snow or starts tasting of salt; to the last town, or the last jetty, or the first breaker. Wherever you decide to start or stop walking, paddling, driving or cycling, I think river journeys are sure to live on in your memory for a long time.
Mist over still water
River Tay, Kingoodie (cc) Matthew Jackson

What are your favourite river journey memories? Which river would you most like to explore - in your local area or further afield? Do you have your eyes and heart set on a particular river this year?

4 Comments

Do the December microadventure round-up do-si-do

9/1/2016

2 Comments

 
The earth has tilted and the evenings are slowly getting lighter (or darker), the (Gregorian) calendar has turned and it’s onto another year. December was the last month for our themed microadventures. The challenge was “revisit”: time to revisit places and themes and reflect on the past year.
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"A pair of mute swans swimming in the first blush of dawn on the river . . . and a bright 2016 begins." (Gillian)

Allysse: on a bicycle through Kent

Allysse did not let any wintry weather deter her from her final month of microadventure. She writes:

On the second week-end of the December, I hopped on my bike and headed for Kent. I spent three days cycle touring on small lanes between orchards, mansions, fields, and finally the seaside. 

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Throughout those days and nights I ended up revisiting several themes from previous months but the one that kept coming back was darkness.

The days are short in December, ending around 4pm and I found myself with plenty of time after dark.
The first evening I explored the Pinetum at Bedgebury, walking among the pine trees with my head torch as sole guide. ​The second night I found myself in Whitstable, the lights of the city behind me and the darkness of the sea in front of me. I took a walk on the pebbles, listening to the distant waves and trying not to fall over in the vegetation.

Jonathan and Dan: fiiive oo-oold theeemes

We bandied the idea around of revisiting every theme from the year, but illness scuppered our plans. The themes we did revisit were:
  1. Sunset/sunrise (dusk/dawn). As the days got shorter, our morning commute began in pitch black. But by the time we reached the feet of the South Downs, the sun was rising. If it wasn’t too cloudy we got beautiful skies. We also caught a few spectacular sunsets on the way home.
  2. Explore a waterway. We went to Norfolk for a week over the holidays, and enjoyed a few lovely walks. On one of them, we followed the River Hun from near its source at Old Hunstanton, east along the coast to the mouth near Thornham.
  3. Weather the weather. While Norfolk wasn’t hit by flooding like in the north of the UK, we did experience some wild winds. We were almost blown off our feet as we walked along the River Hun, and also when we walked up to the old lighthouse at the top of Hunstanton Cliffs.
  4. Wildlife spotting. I was excited to see a large, brushy-tailed fox trot across the road in front of our car on the way to work one morning. We spotted lots of kestrels hovering by roadsides and a few buzzards over the woods. Then in Norfolk, we saw skeins of geese across the sky, wading birds in the mudflats and on the beach and a hare galloping across a bare field. Dan also spotted a mistle thrush with a striking speckled chest.
  5. Explore the darkness. For our final wild camping microadventure, (almost) on the winter solstice, we slept on a beach - an echo of our first microadventure back in December 2014. This time, we hunkered down on the verandah of a beach box (or beach hut) to try and escape from the worst of the wind. It was a mostly clear night and the moon was super bright, reminding me of our October microadventure.

Mags: returning to the important places

Mags revisited a few different themes from her year of microadventure, writing it up on her blog. Here's one:

At the beginning of December I revisited a place of historic interest in the form of a trip to Patan Durbar Square. On this occasion I was revisiting the square 8 months after many parts of it were damaged by the devastating April earthquake. Even some of the temple structures that survived can be seen to be supported by wooden struts.

Danni: meteor spotting + bike ride = Meteoride

Danni’s adventure was a 325km bike ride (revisiting a favourite activity?) to try to spot meteors (explore the darkness?). Here’s an excerpt from her blog post about the ride (go and read it all):

Day 4 was the hardest day of riding. Around 80km, hot, mostly into the wind with about 30km of gravel. I was also starting to get tired and it became obvious it was important to pace myself. 30km into the ride you climb Victoria Point, which is the tail of the Grampian ranges, it’s a great place to stop for a cup of tea. About another 20km gets you to Mirranatwa.

Mirranatwa is really just a church and tennis courts. It had been hot and we were exhausted. We ate lunch on the back patio of the church and refilled our water from their tanks (which was so deliciously cold). Had a little bit of a sleep before the push into the national park.
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The road through the national park was gravel and at times highly corrugated. At other times quite slushy and resulted in a couple of epic power sliders. We stopped at the Murra Murra reservoir with ideas of a swim, but it was more or less a dried up marsh. We kept going to Paddy’s Castle.

Clare: the thing is now, I'm hungry for more

I enjoyed reading Clare’s reflections on the year. Here are her ‘best bits’:
  • My children have explored places which I’m sure have made others question my parenting credentials.
  • I’ve discovered incredible, secret places that have taken my breath away. I’ll share the secret with you here. Don’t tell everyone though…
  • I’ve scaled heights, whilst simultaneously taming Lions.
  • I’ve even ventured underground through a teeny tiny little hole in the earth. It was terrifyingly amazing!
  • Oh and let’s not forget, I went well and truly out of my comfort zone (and nearly froze to death in the process.) for a wild camp. Is it strange that I’m considering booking it again?
  • In short I’ve been spoiled with amazing experiences. The thing is now, I’m hungry for more!

Gillian: a new dawn, a new day, a new year

Gillian took the opportunity to watch the sun rise on the new year (I think that just about counts as a December microadventure)! You can find her photo of mute swans at dawn at the top of this post.

I'm not one for staying up for the bells at midnight; I prefer to watch the dawn and greet the first rays of the New Year's sun. It's lovely to see the transition from night to day.

​I walked down to the shore of the River Clyde in the dark. There was a sharp frost scrunching underfoot and a halo around the moon. As night gave way to twilight a robin began its trilling song, preempting the dawn. A pair of mute swans swimming in the first blush of dawn on the river . . . and a bright 2016 begins.

Thank you

It’s been quite a year! Thank you so much to everyone who came on the microadventure adventure in 2015. I think this is everyone, but if I've left you off just let me know!
  • Abigail
  • Allysse
  • Cal
  • Clare (and family)
  • Dan
  • Danni
  • Emily
  • George
  • Gillian
  • Jane (and Mimo)
  • Kieran
  • Mags
  • Nikki
  • Rhiarti
  • Stephanie

​I hope you all have exciting plans for 2016. I look forward to reading your posts, seeing your photos, watching your videos and envying your adventures!
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Allysse rides into the night.
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Bright lights in the distance on Allysse's adventure.
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"The days are short in December, ending around 4pm." (Allysse)
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One of the less-windy days in Norfolk. (Dan and Jonathan)
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We didn't sleep on these verandahs - but close by! (Photo by Gerry Balding)
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Mags revisits Patan Durbur Square
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"Sunset just outside the city of my birth, Newcastle Upon Tyne." (Mags)
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Mt Eccles campsite on the metoride. (Photo by Geoffmo)
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Mirranatwa. (Photo by Geoffmo)
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Danni in action! (Photo by Hamilton)
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"I’ve discovered . . . places that have taken my breath away." (Clare)
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Orion hunts as the year turns. (Gillian)
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A halo around the moon on new year's morning. (Gillian)
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"A robin began its trilling song, preempting the dawn." (Gillian)
​Dan and I are being a little less ambitious with our aims this year (no more microadventure every week)! We’re planning to get away for a weekend once a month, and to spend it in different accommodation each time. That could definitely include bivvying on a hillside or camping in the woods, but it will also include such adventures as staying at the Premier Inn in Chichester. I am, in partial jest, calling it our Year of Sleeping Variously. Stay tuned!

Should you wish to revisit any of the themes from this year, here they are:
  • ​​Spend time on top of a hill
  • Wildlife spotting
  • Explore a waterway
  • Matters relating to railways
  • Lunchtime microadventure
  • Places of historic interest
  • Time with trees
  • Explore a border
  • Sunset/sunrise (dusk/dawn)
  • Explore the darkness
  • Weather the weather
  • Revisit

2 Comments

52 Microadventures

31/12/2015

6 Comments

 
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This time last year, I set myself the challenge of having an adventure every week in 2015. Most of them would be very small adventures. Mini adventures. Microadventures.
Inspired by Alastair Humphreys, I wanted to do things I hadn't done before, have fun, explore and enjoy wherever I happened to be. These adventures couldn’t be expensive, because I wasn’t making much money. They also had to be doable wherever I ended up living, because back in January 2015 I was still waiting for my hard-fought-for visa to stay in the UK, uncertain I’d be in the same country at the end of the month, let alone the end of the year. I wanted to discover things close to home, wherever that was.

The year began with a list of challenges and fun things to try (some too expensive or time-consuming . . . at least for now!) and I continued to add to the list until at last count I'd collected over 120 ideas. I'll have to keep going if I want to try them all! 

Here is a selection (in no particular order) of 52 things I did this year, usually accompanied by my lovely partner, who was very kind to indulge me in my plots and schemes! If you'd like to add them to your own list of microadventure challenges, feel free. Perhaps you could also go on . . .

A microadventure every week for a year!

  1. Walk all the way across a country
  2. Sleep among bluebells
  3. Make hedgerow jam
  4. Watch a meteor shower
  5. Visit a hill fort
  6. Go barefoot
  7. Travel without a map
  8. Organise a big, open-invitation picnic
  9. Go for a walk by the light of the moon
  10. Attend a festival or other interesting event
  11. Walk along the beach from one town to another
  12. Go swimming in a river
  13. Walk to work
  14. Explore a border
  15. Take part in bonfire night celebrations
  16. Be a tourist in a(nother) city
  17. Camp in your living room
  18. Perform at an open mic night
  19. Visit a place of historic interest
  20. Climb a tree
  21. Enjoy an old fashioned day at the seaside
  22. Forage for a new (to you) wild food
  23. Sleep in a cemetery
  24. Camp at a proper campsite
  25. Do 30 Days Wild
  26. Walk along a canal
  27. Cook a new recipe with a new (to you) food
  28. Make an ephemeral piece of art
  29. Follow a Roman road
  30. Go moth trapping
  31. Volunteer
  32. Hire a (tandem) bike and go cycling
  33. Make a DIY camp stove from a drinks can
  34. Sleep in a wood
  35. Sleep on a hill
  36. Go cherry picking
  37. Explore a river from sea to source (or vice versa)
  38. Take a day trip to another country
  39. Do the Big Pathwatch
  40. Spend the night in a folly or ruin
  41. Walk to the coast
  42. Close eyes, point to map, go
  43. Take a friend on their first microadventure
  44. Follow a disused railway line
  45. Watch the sun rise
  46. Watch the sun set
  47. Take afternoon tea under a tarp in the rain
  48. Go wildlife spotting
  49. Holiday on a boat
  50. Do a lunchtime microadventure
  51. Swim in the sea
  52. Sleep on a mountain

This was a very enjoyable challenge! If you’re inspired, perhaps you could do the same thing in 2016. I’d love to read about your adventures - please do leave a link in the comments.

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6 Comments

Do the October microadventure round-up lambada

8/11/2015

5 Comments

 
In a dark, dark wood, there was a dark, dark house . . . Or was it a dark, dark cave? Or a dark, dark path? Here’s what people got up to for October’s “explore the darkness” microadventure theme.

Allysse

Allysse went in search of darkness in London:

Standing below the bridge, I could see the same emptiness as before filling the space under the trees. I smiled. For a while now, night-time had come to feel safe and almost alluring but it didn’t use to be this way. As a child, I could barely go to the end of my street for fear a wolf would attack me. This was ridiculous and I knew it, but I couldn’t help being overwhelmed with dread. I would often try to fight this feeling, forcing my legs to slow down and not break into a run, but I would inevitably lose. For almost a year, I have been wild camping every month and have come to know the world after sunset. There is nothing to fear from it, not in Britain anyway. I took a step forward and advanced towards the trees. Colours faded almost instantly into shades of grey, their nuances deepening as my eyes adjusted to the low light.

Read more about her adventure on Beste Glatisant.

Clare and family

Clare (Muddy Mum) went on a geocaching adventure:

The instructions on the bucket inform us that we must attach the rope to the hook in the rock. Then follow it until it runs out! Oh my! It’s now or never, so in we go [...] Once all inside we take a moment to adjust to the darkness. It’s surprisingly spacious. We begin to follow the rope. However we make it no further than 50m before we realise the previous users hadn’t returned the rope quite right. We have one almighty tangle of rope on our hands.

Let’s get this into context. We are deep under the hillside. In pitch black darkness, my hands shredded from my elegant glide down the hillside and I’m untangling 150m of soaking wet, mud covered rope. Marvellous!

Read more about their adventure on Mud and Nettles.

Jonathan and Dan

We went out for dinner - really out:

It was strange to walk in a familiar place at night. Time felt stretchy. The last leaves of autumn hung stark and silhouetted in the white moonlight. We peered down a few of the unofficial, narrow trails that slip off the wide main track and wind deeper into the woods, but we didn’t follow them - the moonshadows made our familiar path strange enough already [...] At a handy bench, we set up our stove and cooked our tea. It was fun to sit quietly with the faint blue glow of gas and the sizzle of mushrooms to keep us company. Although our scrambled egg and mushroom rolls weren’t the most gourmet of meals, we both agreed they tasted better out here than they would have tasted at home.

Read about our microadventure on (you guessed it) In Which I.

Gillian

Gillian sought out shooting stars:

​I went out over a few nights to try and spot the Orionid meteor shower. The peak was on 22nd October and they should have been visible for several days before and after, but the weather wasn't with me this year. I sat out in the garden in my camp chair, flask of coffee in hand, gazing upward at a blanket of cloud. Owls hooted, gull spectres circled and as I wished for a small window of blackness to clear and reveal the fiery trail of a shooting star ==---☆  But the rain set in. So, I planned to make a little Vine video using black card with pin picks to allow light from my computer screen to shine through. I drew it out in my notebook and everything, but I haven't had time to make it . . . Afraid, much like the Orionid themselves, it's a no-show!

Mags

Nyctophilia (n) An attraction to darkness or night; finding relaxation or comfort in the darkness:

Autumn has arrived. Trees that only a few weeks ago were leafy and resplendent now stand naked and bare. That joyful indulgence of kicking my way way through the leafy carpet of crunchy golden leaves. At times I find myself spellbound by the rich reds and autumnal hues that surround me.

Read more on With Each New Day.

Other adventures

Dan and I went for a two day walk from Bishop's Stortford to Great Chesterford, crossing the Hertfordshire/Essex border. The autumn colours were beautiful, with clusters of red rowan berries and so many leaves. Is it just me, or are the colours brighter than last year? We walked along a straight Roman road for a few miles, a bridleway lined with sycamore or perhaps field maple trees. It was a tunnel of yellow and orange - a welcome stretch of brightness in the dull, drizzly day. We slept under our tarp in the pouring rain in a little wood, where we heard an array of interesting nighttime noises: hooting owls, honking geese, snuffling mammals and a variety of weird barks and cries that we decided to attribute to foxes.
Full moon in night sky
The beautiful full moon in October - photo taken from my front door.
Person descending into a cave
Mr Muddy takes the plunge on a geocaching adventure. (Photo by Clare.)
Small stalactites and other cave formations
Inside the cave. (Photo by Clare.)
Silhouette tree and moonlight
The moon behind the trees in the dark, dark wood.
Notebook with drawings
Gillian's plans for an alternative light show. (Photo by Gillian.)
Silhouette of building
An early morning at Battle Abbey. (Photo by Mags.)
Red berries
Clusters of autumn fruit near Bishop's Stortford.
Yellow and orange leaves, long straight track
Gorgeous colours on a Roman road in Essex.

November microadventure theme: weather the weather

Your November microadventure challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to weather the weather whatever the weather (whether you like it or not).
I know there have been some exciting storms in Australia and rain almost washed out the Lewes bonfire night in the UK this week. Some parts of the southern hemisphere are getting hot, while some parts of the northern hemisphere are getting rather chilly.

​Whatever the weather, you can go microadventuring. In fact, why not make the weather a feature? Splash in puddles, go somewhere high to see the clear horizon, make a sundial, get lost in the mist, dance in the rain, cycle in a headwind, try a seasonal sport, navigate by the sun, crunch frosty grass underfoot, climb a tree in the wind. (But stay safe!) Perhaps you could extend the weather theme to seasonal interest or climate change more generally: document wildflowers or the effects of drought, visit a U-shaped glacial valley, explore an area regenerating after a bushfire, find out where the sea levels will rise to by the end of the century and walk along the projected shore line.

I look forward to hearing about your cloudy, hot, windy, foggy, dry, freezing, wet and/or snowy adventures!
Clouds
"Storm clouds" by Justin van Dyke (Creative Commons)
Empty lake, dead trees
"93% empty" by Alan Lam (Creative Commons)

If you did explore the darkness in October and I’ve missed it out, please let me know - I'd love to add your links and/or photos to the post. My excuse for my less than stellar chasing up and collating effort this month is that I have started a new job . . . and all I want to do when I get home in the evenings is sleep!

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Microadventure: Explore the darkness

27/10/2015

8 Comments

 
Full moon
I took this photo the night after our microadventure, but I liked it too much to leave out!
I think my favourite element of microadventures is that they encourage us to take an ordinary activity and do it somewhere (or some way) else - sleep in a bivvi in the woods instead of a bed, jump in a stream instead of having a shower, walk through fields to work instead of catching the bus. To meet Allysse’s October challenge (explore the darkness), we decided to go for a night walk, then cook our dinner in the woods
The clocks went back on Sunday. After a pastel pretty sunset, it was dark by 5:30pm. We chopped up some mushrooms and spring onions, sprinkled a few spices on them and packed them up in a plastic container. They went in the bag along with a couple of rolls and some eggs, a thermos of tea, two cupcakes and a tiny jam jar full of whisky. We took the camp stove and a frying pan, torch and camera and set off to our local woods.

In the west, the sky was still tinged green. The moon was almost full, floating behind the treetops. The night was clear, though the sky was tiger-striped with high, translucent ice clouds. Soon, the first stars winked open above us.

It was strange to walk in a familiar place at night. Time felt stretchy. The last leaves of autumn hung stark and silhouetted in the white moonlight. We peered down a few of the unofficial, narrow trails that slip off the wide main track and wind deeper into the woods, but we didn’t follow them - the moonshadows made our familiar path strange enough already.

We came to a clearing and saw a faint, faintly rainbowed, moon dog in the sky to the right of the moon itself. A few minutes later, I turned to look behind and found a bright satellite tracking up through the space between the trees on either side of the path.

At a handy bench, we set up our stove and cooked our tea. It was fun to sit quietly with the faint blue glow of gas and the sizzle of mushrooms to keep us company. Although our scrambled egg and mushroom rolls weren’t the most gourmet of meals, we both agreed they tasted better out here than they would have tasted at home. We followed the rolls with cupcakes and tea - and finished off with a few sips of whisky.

Three stars hung like Christmas decorations in a shallow triangle over the tops of three trees. Over the course of our dinner, they moved out of alignment, slipping down to the right. Two faint satellites crossed overhead in parallel. Aeroplanes passed - some low enough to see the glow outlining the fuselage, some so high that their winking lights were small as stars. The night sky is busy with happenings. It’s easy to forget if you don’t go out and stargaze, or if you live somewhere with a lot of light pollution.

The moon seemed very bright as we packed up and walked back, and we joked that this was hardly “exploring the darkness”. But when I tried to take a photo of our shadows, stretched out on the path ahead, the camera didn’t capture a thing. The night had become darker; our eyes had adjusted.

You've still got a few days to join in with our October microadventure theme. If you've already explored the darkness, tweet me a link/photo/few sentences and I'll add your adventure to the monthly round-up.
Sunset sky
Pink clouds at sunset. We have a nice view from our window!
Silhouetted tree and moon
Bright moon, silhouetted tree.
Mushrooms in frying pan
Cooking (store bought) mushrooms in the woods.
Bright moon
Another moon+tree shot.
Hand holding roll
Egg, mushroom and spring onion roll. Tastier than it looks!

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Do the September microadventure round-up shuffle

4/10/2015

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Cloudy sunset over water
Sunset dragon streaking across the sky. Photo by Gillian.
​Did you see the lunar eclipse last weekend? We were pretty tired but we set our alarm for 3am and went out to have a look. Very cool! The sky was clear, so we could see the Milky Way from our back yard. But that’s not really a sunset/sunrise (or dusk/dawn) adventure . . . so let’s see what everyone got up to for the September theme.

Allysse on the Thames

“When next I raised my eyes, the sun was disappearing behind the trees. Its flames were so bright I couldn’t stand to watch them for longer than a second, my vision turning into a white field. But it was difficult not too look. The orange glow was so compelling, its warmth drawing me in like a moth. I forced myself not to gaze directly at it, focusing my attention to the horizon behind the trees and the clouds above. Shades of orange and yellow had invaded the world. Everything was soft and mellow.”

Read Allysse’s full sunset microadventure post - and please watch her lovely video.

Gillian on Orkney

Gillian writes, “I visited Orkney for the first time this September. Sky filled with birds: flocks, clouds, skeins, murmurations: a chorus of calls on the wind. Fields populated with ancient mounds and circles of stones. Wonderfully welcoming and friendly people. My memory and my camera are filled with sunsets and standing stones!"

"Sunset over the Stones of Stenness on the evening of my 50th birthday: the perfect present. This may be the most ancient standing stone circle in the UK."

Dan and Jonathan in a cemetery

“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?”

Read about our cemetery sleep out and listen to the dawn chorus.

Clare with the bats

"Microadventure challenge success!" writes Clare. She and her family snuck their microadventure in right on the line, going bat detecting on the last night of September. She adds, "I love the shot but the reality of it was up to my knees in nettles & horse manure. Oh how we suffer for our art!"

Read more about Clare's adventures on her blog.

Rhiarti on a plane

“At 40 years old, I’m almost embarrassed to admit I’ve never flown anywhere alone before,” writes Rhiarti. “Whatever comes next, it’ll be faced with the added confidence you gain in tackling a daunting task alone.”

Read Rhiarti’s full post and find another photo here.

Mags in Istanbul

"The microadventure for September was set! Capture or experience a sunrise and/or a sunset. There are moments when I am a morning person but more often than not I find myself sparing a few moments to take in the sunsets at the end of the day. I am going to let the pictures do the talking for this task. Enjoy!" 

I've only included one of Mags' photos here, so click through to her post to see some more fantastic images.

Danni on a bike (well, train)

Danni went cycle touring in Victoria, Australia, with her friend Lian. "The tour is given in the book as 3 days: Ballarat to Clunes, Clunes to Daylesford and Daylesford to Ballarat. We wanted to be back in Melbourne for Saturday so we (stupidly) decided to do it in 2, one day of 80km and one of 50km." She caught the sunset on the train journey home.

Read more about their adventure on Danni's blog.

Dan going to work

Bonus entry from Dan. "The autumnal solstice has passed, and we are a month away from the clocks going back. The start of my commute coincides with sunrise. This is the view I get as I leave home in the morning and walk to the car."

Here's Dan's library blog.

October microadventure theme: explore the darkness

Thank you to Allysse, who chose the challenge for October: explore the darkness. It could be taking a walk at night, exploring a cave or tunnel, observing the night time wildlife, spending a night under the stars, trying to go all evening without a light source, attending a night time event, or even building a blanket fort.

​It might be a bit hard to photograph this one, so why not take the chance to try a new way of documenting your adventures? Record night time sounds, do a painting, write a poem, draw a map of your walk or ride (no need to be geographically accurate!), create your own constellation diagrams . . . You're a creative bunch, so I'm sure you'll think of something!
Turkish buildings and yellow sky
Istanbul, Turkey. Photo by Mags.
Pink dawn
Misty pastel dawn, East Sussex, UK. Photo by me.
Sunset and standing stones
Sunset over the Stones of Stenness, Orkney. Photo by Gillian.
Sunset and dead tree
Sunset, East Anglia, UK. Photo by Claire.
The Darkness (band)
The Darkness. Image taken entirely without permission from this site. Sorry.
Sunrise from train
Sunset from the train, Victoria, Australia. Photo by Danni.
Sunrise over land and water
The sunrise over Loch of Stenness, Orkney. Photo by Gillian.
Sunrise on street
Morning on the way to work, East Sussex, UK. Photo by Dan.
View from plane
Above the world. Photo by Rhiarti.

Thanks to everyone who rose to the challenge in September (and/or August, July, June, May, April, March, February, January). I look forward to hearing about people's October adventures. If you write a blog post, please link it in the comments here or tweet it to me so I can add it to the next round-up. But remember, you don't have to do a full write up! You could just tweet or email me a couple of pics and/or a few sentences. Enjoy the darkness . . . 

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Sleep in a cemetery

30/9/2015

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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.
Morning sky
Misty morning, pastel skies.
​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.
Morning star
Can you see the morning star?
Picture
Clouds like brushstrokes.
Clouds
Pink and purple clouds.
​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.

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Walk across Wales (kit list, map and video)

16/9/2015

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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.
Backpacks leaning on a stone marker
Packs and poles.
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.
Person in hilly landscape
"First we go down there. Then we go all the way up there." At times like this, lightweight makes sense!

Walk across Wales kit list

  • 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 
Tarp next to a hill
Home away from home, weighing in at 450g (plus cords, pegs and poles). Not bad.

Thoughts on our gear

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).
Inside a tarp/tent
A glimpse inside our tarp. Note the hiking boots in a plastic bag (smelly!), the Piece of Material acting as a pillow case and the map being used as a groundsheet.

All kit, all list

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).

Route map

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. 
Map
Aberystwyth to Hay-on-Wye. Considering how close we were to main roads, it was (mostly) a very quiet walk.

And finally, a video

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?

Walk Across Wales from In Which I on Vimeo.


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.

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Do the August microadventure round-up cha-cha

13/9/2015

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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).

National borders

Many people’s first response to the theme was to think of borders between countries.

Abigail and Kieran managed to time their trip to Edinburgh to fit in perfectly with the August challenge. It was surely nothing to do with the dates of the Edinburgh Fringe. Surely.

Kieran says, "Crossing the border into Scotland by train is now a more mental than physical event. No announcements, no passport checks; just get off at the other end and go on your way. This quiet transition still feels like a holiday, though. The ocean's always bluer on the other side!"

Abigail writes, "Visiting Scotland, we didn’t so much explore the border as explore across the border, in the beautiful, craggy, bustling city of Edinburgh. We caught the last few days of the Fringe, ate and drank artisan Scottish chocolate, and rummaged around reputable and dusty Edinburgh bookshops.

"But climbing up to the top of Arthur’s Seat (the main peak in Holyrood Park, at the centre of Edinburgh) we could see, in miniaturised and panoramic splendour, the buildings and hills about 800 feet below; where we couldn’t help but be reminded of borders. We picked out (or did our best to guess) the border between the district of Leith - where we were staying - and the city. We saw the crest of Edinburgh Castle amid the rambling streets, shops and peaks of houses; its history embroiled in the struggle between bordering nations. And we saw the vast lustre of the Firth of Forth, where the border of the land begins to melt into the sea.

"On our train home, we passed a sign to the north of York - Edinburgh 200 miles. It seemed surreal that we could be so far away, so soon."
Sea
Blue, Scottish sea, photo from Kieran.
Portrait and view
Kieran examines the horizon for borders, photo from Abby.
Person jumping
Q: If Abigail can fly, why take the train? #jumpstagram photo from Kieran.
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.

Walk Across Wales from In Which I on Vimeo.

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?
Flowers
Skipping from continent to continent in the greenhouse, photo from Gillian.
Flowers
Soaked sundial, pretty poppy, bees and jingle bell berries, photo from Gillian.

Natural borders

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."

Moment of zen from Allysse Riordan on Vimeo.


County borders

Clare went on a county border crossing extravaganza on one of her very long training walks along the Stour Valley Path, from Cambridgeshire to Suffolk to Essex.  "We cross the border to Essex," Clare writes. "Essex! It takes ages to drive to Essex and I’ve just Bloody well walked here! Incredible! My mind well and truly blown. Go me!"

Dan and I also explored some borders closer to home. We went swimming in the River Rother where it marks the border between East Sussex and Kent, and went for a long evening walk along the Sussex Border Path between Hawkhurst and Flimwell. It’s interesting to think about times and places in which features like rivers and ridges and woods have acted as easy to read (and easy to enforce) borders for a non-map-using population.
Welcome to Essex
Welcome to Essex, photo from Clare.
Footpath sign
Sussex Border Path waymarking.

Border interpretation

Our monthly themes are always open to interpretation and Mags went all out with this one, including county border crossing, a cute dog and a visit to Pevensey Castle. "The original structure was a Roman Saxon shore fort built around 290AD," Mags says. "Once the Romans had left it was reoccupied by the Normans in 1066. It was abandoned again at the end of the 16th century until the ruin was acquired by the state in 1925."
Pevensey Castle
Inside Pevensey Castle, photo from Mags.

Border policing

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."
Protest
Protest on the steps of Flinders Street Station, photo from Nikki.
Stop racism now sign
One of the signs at the Border Force protest, photo from Nikki.

September microadventure theme: sunset/sunrise

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. 
Sunset through winter trees
Sunset in East Sussex, from our Cuckoo Trail microadventure.

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!

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Walk across Wales (Part 3: The Wye valley and the border)

11/9/2015

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Walk Across Wales: Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3
The final section of our walk across Wales took us from a riverside field near Builth Wells to the border of England at Hay-on-Wye. This post features rain. (It had to happen, we were in Wales after all!)

Day 6: A field by the river to Builth Wells (6km)

Reflected morning clouds
Pink clouds at sunrise, reflected in the River Wye.
By now, our rhythms were attuning to those of the world around us: we went to sleep at twilight, woke with the dawn, ate lunch when the sun was high and warm. I’d started to perfect my routines for setting up and striking camp, I knew where to find things in my pack and I was beginning to understand that no matter how many times I sniffed my socks and shoes they would always make me gag. Bleugh! We ate porridge for one meal (often dinner) and noodles for another (often breakfast), snacked on chocolate and usually had a sandwich for lunch. We’d drink tea once a day (or more if we found a kettle en route), cordial from one bottle and water the rest of the time. There was something liberating about having to make so few choices - only how many squirts of cordial concentrate to add to the bottle, or whether to re-tie my bootlace, or how to set up the tarp, or what flavour of noodles to cook.
Person and bags and tarp
Just about ready to strike camp, Dan packs the last bits and pieces away.
I woke up just after 5am. The dim light brightened into a pink morning and I spent a captivating ten minutes watching bats flit by, some only inches from my head. We’d set an alarm in order to decamp before any earlybird joggers or dog walkers made their way along the path. Nobody came, of course. We sat on a bench by the Wye, soaking up the sunrise and cooking breakfast. It was noodles.
Trees reflected in river
The view at breakfast. We saw a few fish jumping in the still water - or at least heard the splashes and saw the ripples!
The other reason we’d set an alarm was to try and beat the weather to Builth Wells. There wasn’t any rain in sight as we set off through quiet fields and still, leafy woods. The swans from the day before swam past, paddling back upstream. An hour later, the sky began to cloud over, but the drizzle held off as we made our way past anglers’ lodges and fishing spots, rapids and deep pools. In fact, it wasn’t until we reached the Afon Irfon on the outskirts of Builth Wells that we felt the first smattering of rain peck at our arms.
Bridge
Reflections under the rail bridge near Builth Wells.
River
We didn't know what these planks were for. Fishing, maybe?
As we entered town, along an avenue beside the river, the clouds burst. By the time we’d found the high street, it was bucketing down. We ducked into Boots to get a few supplies, then spied a likely looking cafe, where we ordered morning tea and sheltered from the rain.
Teacup and teapot
Ahhh! A very welcome pot of tea at The Cwtch. We spent most of the day in here.
Some time later, thinking we should try to see something of Builth Wells, we made a quick dash to the castle (a scraggy lump of grass with a few wet sheep on it), the arts centre and cinema (not open until later) and the library (closed on Wednesdays). Pressed up against a doorway in a vain attempt to keep dry, we had a brilliant idea: buy a book from the charity shop and go back to The Cwtch for lunch. And that is the story of how we ended up spending four hours sitting in an extremely welcoming and hospitable tea room, eating, drinking, reading, charging our phone and tweeting. It was a complete change from our usual routine - a holiday from our holiday.
Mural on a wall
This mural in Builth Wells tells the story of the final days of Llywelyn ap Gruffydd, the last native Prince of Wales.
A mid-afternoon pause in the rain. We took our leave of the cafe and scampered off to the campsite, on a farm at the edge of town. Our pitch overlooked the river, with just a fence and a footpath in between. Knowing more rain was forecast and wanting a bit of privacy, we experimented with tarp configurations. I’m sure someone has a name for the pitch we invented/discovered. It worked so well for us that we used it again the following night. (NB: we didn’t have a groundsheet, but we found that a plastic coated OS map makes a decent alternative!)
Tarp
In case anyone's interested, there's a single walking pole at the front entrance and the back quarter of the tarp is folded under for weather protection.
I nipped out for a shower, then curled up in bed. And that was it. I concentrated on finishing Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods (one of those books that’s always for sale in a charity shop), because I sure wasn’t going to lug it around in my backpack. I couldn’t be bothered cooking, so we crunched on instant noodles from the packet and listened to the rain pattering all around us. It was a delightful rest day.

Day 7: Builth Wells to Trericket Mill (18km)

Surprise! Another long distance walker had arrived at the campsite sometime after us and was getting ready to leave as we headed out. Perhaps I was a bit overenthusiastic in my greeting, but I was quite excited to speak to to another hiker. He was aiming to stop at Erwood for lunch, as were we, although he’d decided to take the valley road rather than following the Wye Valley Walk up into the hills, because he wanted to conserve energy for his long afternoon walk into Brecon.
Scenery
A view of the valley, before we got high enough to walk in the clouds.
I saw the sense in his plan as I toiled up a rough, rain-slick path, watching Dan draw ahead of me. We’d already climbed one hill out of Builth Wells, lost all our height dropping down the other side, then immediately come face to face with a slope that was five times the size. Why did the route do this? Wasn’t it meant to be a river walk? The Wye Valley Walk? I was feeling miserable. What if it was all like this and I hated these last two days of walking and it rained the whole time and it was awful? But also, why did it have to end? I didn’t want to stop walking and go back to normal life. And why was I suddenly walking so slowly? How come Dan was able to power uphill like that? Why didn’t he wait for me? Had I broken my rhythm with a single rest day? And what was the point of climbing this stupid track anyway - we knew the tops of the hills were blanketed in clouds, so it’s not like we even had any views to look forward to.
Green grassy path
The path finally reaches a less-steep bit.
What I really wanted to do was stomp my foot and yell, “It’s not fair! I don’t wanna!” Realising that made me laugh - just a little bit. I called out to Dan. We had a rest and a chat, which I remember as me asking him nicely not to speed ahead because it made me feel like the kid always coming last in PE, but which might have come out as somewhat less articulate whingeing. At any rate, I cheered up and we finally reached the point at which the path stopped climbing and kept a fairly steady height tracing contour lines around the hills.
Sheep and cloudy view
We had lots of sheepy company up on the hill. I wonder if sheep enjoy the view, too?
We wandered in and out of the clouds, noticing the very different world this weather created: misty views of valleys that wavered and disappeared, only to reappear from a minutely different angle a few steps later. During the morning, the cloud rose higher and a few shafts of sunlight broke through, illuminating patches of pasture, clusters of farm buildings and stands of trees down below. This is a scene I associate very strongly with Wales - the header of my blog is a photo taken from the slopes of Pen y Fan in the Brecon Beacons.
Picture
Sparked by Bill Bryson’s book, we fell into a lively discussion about long distance walks around the world, the people who write about them and the people who read those books. It’s interesting to see how authors make sense of new scenery and evoke it for their audience - by comparing it to another country, or by describing the geology or flora, or by giving a personal account of how their bodies engage with it. We were so deep in conversation that we didn’t realise we’d missed our turnoff until it was a kilometre behind us.
Landscape
Clouds almost obscuring the tops of Hay Bluff and Lord Hereford's Knob.
Checking the map, we were pretty sure where we were. A postal van in the distance confirmed the existence of . . . yes, it must be that road, and if we keep to the track along here we’ll come to this road and we can follow it all the way into Erwood. It’s nice to be right when it comes to navigation, so we were pleased when our strategy worked exactly as we’d planned. The sky cleared, giving us views over the beautiful rolling countryside to blue hills hidden by clouds in the distance. “It’s starting to look more like the bits of Wales we know,” I said. And we soon realised that’s because it was the Wales we knew: those hills were the Black Mountains, which we’ve visited many times.
Sign: Twmpath
I love finding signs like this, more beautiful and decorative than they have any need to be.
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.
Station sign and milk churns
The old station sign at Erwood. Made for Instagram.
From Erwood, our route took a quiet road through a nature reserve, following the line of the old railway. The Wye Valley Walk used to leave the road for a while to run beside the Wye, but for some reason that permissive path has been closed, so we didn’t see much of the river until we crossed it at Llanstephan Bridge. This is an early 20th century suspension bridge, which looks like a sturdy cycle bridge but which can take a car - though it’s not wide enough for a car and a walker to pass each other.
River
The River Wye viewed from Llanstephan Bridge near Trericket Mill.
Having made good time, we arrived early at Trericket Mill. We set up our tarp in the pretty little orchard, made use of the warm shower and sat under the grass-roofed shelter as the rain began. In addition to camping and a bunkhouse, Trericket Mill is a vegetarian B&B that does dinners for guests. We put on our cleanest clothes and headed over for a scrumptious meal. We could barely finish, because we were so used to eating single packets of instant noodles!
Apple
A fairytale red apple at Trericket Mill.
Wasps eating an apple
I wasn't the only one tempted by the apples!
By this stage in our walk, people were usually impressed by how far we’d come. They were also impressed at our apparent hardiness, and slightly concerned about us sleeping out in the pouring rain. One couple we met at Trericket Mill came to stay with us in Battle just last week. “I felt rather guilty, thinking of you out there in the rain while we had a warm, cosy bed inside,” said one of them. But they needn’t have worried: we were dry and surprisingly warm and cosy ourselves under our trusty tarp. Our journal says we “didn’t wash away, not even a little bit.”
Trees and benches
The campsite at Trericket Mill only has a handful of pitches. Can you spot our tarp?

Day 8: Trericket Mill to Hay-on-Wye (19km)

We woke up, stretched out, watched raindrops race down the outside of the tarp, got dressed, packed up our sleeping gear, I sniffed my shoes (bleugh!), we took the tarp down (hanking the cord, cleaning the pegs, shaking rain off) . . . But we had a change to our routine that morning - we hung the tarp up undercover to drip dry while we dashed across the mill stream and into the main building for a cooked breakfast. Yum!
Autumnal stream
The stream beside the mill. Apparently people have seen otters here. Not us, unfortunately.
It was nice to chat to the other guests again and we ended up making a late, leisurely start at around 10am. We hoisted our packs, which seemed so much lighter now, and set off along the river. There hadn’t been many crops upstream, but many of the fields along the river flats on this last day were corn, wheat, broad beans or potatoes.
Dan beside a wheat crop
Many of the riverside fields were given over to crops instead of stock.
The weather flirted with the idea of rain, so we sheltered under trees or walked in the lee of hedges for a while. Naturally, once we’d decided the rain was heavy enough to stop and put our coats on, the sky cleared. The signs of autumn we’d first noticed near Rhayader were starting to multiply, but unfortunately the blackberries were still sour. Likewise, when we found a pear tree beside a ruin and a walnut tree by the path, the fruit of both were immature.
Person ankle deep in water
Our last opportunity for a midday paddle. Dan even took his shoes and socks off. I'd converted him!
At Glasbury, I paddled in the chilly river and we shared a Snickers on the stony beach, watching a group of kayakers warm up and set off. Early last summer, we’d done the same thing, kayaking downstream from here to Hay-on-Wye. This was familiar territory.
Person on steps of church
Time for lunch.
Church and green
Looking back to Llowes from the hill path.
Whereas the day before I’d longed for a flat path beside the river, I was now pleased to follow the footpath into the wooded hillsides above the valley. I felt nostalgic for the mountains and craggy hills we’d climbed when the Wye was a stream just a few paces across. We reflected on our walk as we pushed up an overgrown path and back down towards the small village of Llowes. What would we do differently next time? (Dan: Bring an extra pair of socks!) Had we noticed any physical changes in ourselves? (Jonathan: Calves of steel!) What were our favourite parts of the walk? (Too many to name!) At the church, we admired St Maelog’s Cross and sat on the steps to eat our last odds and ends  for lunch.
Fields and hills
The beautiful Wye Valley, with the Black Mountains in the background.
The Wye Valley Walk splits at Llowes, and we chose the hilly option. We were rewarded with gorgeous vistas over the valley - Hay Bluff and Lord Hereford’s Knob covered in cloud, rain screening the Beacons, sunlight turning the river into a silver ribbon twisting through the quilted landscape. I think this is one of the most beautiful places in the world. We noticed canoeists on the Wye and tractors at work in the fields - and we held on to the view for as long as we could, until we finally descended to the river for the final stretch.
Hills
Looking towards the Gospel Pass between Hay Bluff (to the left) and Lord Hereford's Knob (to the right).
There’s a picturesque bend in the River Wye just before Hay, where a red brick house on the outer bank looks over a band of small rapids to a wide beach. We stopped to watch some canoeists shoot the rapids. Or rather, to watch one pair shoot the rapids and the other pair get stuck. These unfortunates attracted an audience of very British gawkers (i.e. lots of people on the beach who made themselves busy pretending not to look) as they rocked and pushed and eventually managed to float off downstream.
River, house, trees
A picturesque bend in the River Wye.
Dulas Brook flows between grey houses on the outskirts of Hay-on-Wye. One side of the stream is Wales, the other England. People nipping to the big supermarket to grab something for dinner are crossing into another country. Dulas Brook joins the River Wye a few hundred metres north of the bridge into town, at which point the river becomes the national border. A ten minute detour along Offa’s Dyke Path took us to a tiny, willow-lined beach on the Wye, where we took our shoes and socks off and wet our feet. From the sea at Aberystwyth to the river at Hay, we’d walked from border to border, all the way across Wales.
River
We've walked across a country!
River
A watery border, far from the beach at Aberystwyth.
The end of a long walk can often be anticlimactic, because your achievement means more to you than to anyone else. But our lovely Airbnb host was almost as excited us about our walk. She wanted to know how far we’d travelled each day, what gear we’d taken and where we’d camped. She also had a drink with us to celebrate making it across the country. I think she might be planning a similar journey herself - good luck, Joanne!
River
Saying goodbye to the River Wye from the bridge into Hay. How it's changed from those first trickles in the Cambrian Mountains!
(Side note: If you think you’d like to use Airbnb, please sign up using this link. You’ll get a discount on your first booking and we will get credit, too.)

After

We’d come by bus from Hay-on-Wye to Hereford, winding through hedge-lined lanes, over streams, past churches and farms. It would have felt like a slow journey a week and a half ago, but now things flashed by so quickly I barely had time to register their existence - glimpses and half-formed perceptions, then they were gone. It was a relief to return to walking pace and wander around the cool, lofty space of Hereford Cathedral.
Statue
Forever looking out from the walls of Hereford Cathedral.
We stood in front of the Hereford Mappa Mundi, a 13th century interpretation of the physical and spiritual world. There’s a story about this Mappa Mundi, which I’d recently read in On the Map, by Simon Garfield. When the map came to public attention in the late 1980s (the cathedral was going to sell it), nobody was really sure where it had been produced. Some early testing of the ink showed that Hereford was written on the vellum at a later date than the rest of the map. Perhaps, researchers thought, it had been made elsewhere and Hereford had been added when it came to the cathedral.
Colourful windows
Wonderfully intricate stained glass windows.
But there is another theory. As the map hung on the wall of the cathedral, thousands of people saw it and did what everyone does when they see a map: find where they are and point to it. Years and years of fingertips brushing the map wore the ink away, until somebody had to re-draw Hereford. There’s supporting evidence for this theory in the Mappa Mundi exhibition. A touchable replica, translated to English, stands against a wall. If you look for Hereford, you will find that thousands of fingertips have started to wear the word away. “This is our place in the world,” the worn patch proclaims. In a pleasing paradox, the more it disappears, the more it seems to say, “Here we are.”
Mappa mundi translation
"Here we are." How many people have pointed to this spot?

And that's what it's like to walk all the way across a (small) country. I hope you enjoyed hearing bout it! A couple of people have mentioned they'd like to see a kit list, so I'll post that along with our short video of the walk soon.

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