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.

"Oooh! Champing!"

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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!”.

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.

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.

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.)

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.

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.)

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!

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:

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 . . .

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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. 

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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