#snowdonia national park

I once heard that to enjoy the wild, sometimes you must succumb to boredom, and it’s kind of true. In a contemporary society, so full of distractions replacing actions, boredom can seem like a radical thing.⁣⁣⁠

5 minutes spare? Check your phone. Waiting for the bus? Check your phone. Having a lie in? Can’t sleep? Bored? Check your phone.⁣⁣⁠⠀

Never for one moment in this technologically enhanced culture do we need to suffer boredom when there’s a million things to do at the flick of a screen, yet these things serve no purpose other than to pass time. They have no meaning, they create no lasting memories, challenge or stimulate us. Often we don’t notice the voices in our phone screens, billions of them chiming in at once, how loud they call until we shut them off.⁣⁣⁠⠀

Silence.⁣⁣⁠⠀

⁣⁣⁠⠀

Our nights camping in the valleys of North Wales were a deliberate motion to disconnect ourselves for a few days; without even a lick of signal we were forced to make our own fun.⁣⁣⁠⠀

⁣⁣⁠⠀

Camping in the wilds of Snowdonia with nothing but a tent and a car to hold our supplies forced us to live deliberately, in a way that not even our van enables us to. For the bare minimum of comfort there’s the arduous process of setting up a tent, inflating a mattress, collecting firewood, coaxing a fire into life and preparing a meal on its white hot coals. By the time all this is done, and we’ve spent the best part of an afternoon seeking out a camp spot, there’s little else we want to do than fall into bed beneath the stars and soak in the absolute silence around us.⁣⁣⁠

Without the temptations of TV, or the endless scroll of social media at our fingertips our thoughts can breathe, and by physically distancing ourselves from our problems for a while we can gain a deeper perspective. The picturesque valleys of North Wales, crowded with flocks of sheep and little else, offered us the one thing we’ve been lacking these past months: solitude.⁣⁠

Sometimes we just need to disconnect for a while; distance ourselves from the humdrum of life and regain clarity.⁣⁣⁠⠀

A few weeks ago I surprised Ben with a trip to Snowdonia for his birthday. Although we’ve driven extensively across Europe in our van, we’ve never taken the time to explore much on our home island, and Snowdonia was a place we’d always wanted to see.⁣⁣⁠⠀

A six hour drive used to seem like a long way to us, but now as the miles are racking up under our belts the world is starting to seem smaller, and Wales suddenly didn’t seem that far away.⁣⁣⁠⠀

This time however we opted to ditch the van, and take our five day stint away back to basics. We loaded up the car with sleeping bags, tent, walking boots, axe, coal, a tarpaulin- not that at this point we knew just how much we’d need one.⁣⁣⁠⠀

We hit the road and immediately our shoulders felt lighter as the burden of routine was lifted. ⁣⁣⁠⠀

⁣⁣⁠

When we were still in uni, I used to drive us all over Cornwall in my little, clapped-out old Polo. We’d set up camp on the cliffs, on the sands of an empty beach, or camp in the car if somebody forgot to pack the tent poles. We’d stay up til sunrise talking around the fire, in awe of the crashing waves below and the distant lights of ships on the horizon hovering above coastal fog.⁣⁣⁠ After a couple hours sleep at most we’d pack up our wind-flattened tent as walkers passed by and laughed, and drag ourselves into the nearest public toilets for a wash.⁣⁣⁠⠀

It’s these kind of memories- haphazard, spontaneous and wonderfully simplistic that we look back on fondly, and it’s these days that inspired us to undertake an equally haphazard trip to Wales with nothing but ourselves, an old, crumpled road atlas and a car full of camping gear. We left in search of peace, in search of isolation and beautiful corners of this island, and boy did we find them.⁣⁣⁠⠀

Story continues on Sunday!⁠⠀

⁠⠀