#wild camp
Really wild camping. Bostagh Beach, Scotland
Brewing up Turkish coffee in the Welsh mountains on a stormy day- the perfect antidote to a sleepless night.
Perhaps we should’ve expected the inevitably wet British weather on our camping trip to Snowdonia, but not knowing what to expect was all part of the fun. We’d spent a rather long time trying to find a suitable camp spot that day, eventually settling in a small, untouched patch of pine forest that had not yet been logged unlike its surroundings.
We busied ourselves pitching the tent, lighting a fire and preparing some dinner, and it was only once we had just finished setting up camp that the heavens opened. As our campsite quickly flooded with rain and the fire crackled and hissed, struggling to stay alight, Ben and I frantically began lashing a tarp to the surrounding trees, cutting pieces of cord with an old hunting knife and tying them to whatever branches we could find as rain streamed down our faces and up my sleeves.
You’d think this would’ve been the last straw at the end of a challenging day, but somehow as we sat eating fajitas in the car by the light of the fire that glowed beneath our newly constructed shelter, we caught eachother’s eyes and couldn’t stop giggling. Sure we were wet and cold, our tent was damp and our socks were soaked, but we were having fun nonetheless. We were out here alone, not another human in sight, just battling with the elements and keeping each other company.
The fondest memories we make aren’t always of the best times, and even the best-laid plans often go awry, but we embrace every moment of freedom we can find. Where adventure waits, there lies challenge, and we are prepared to follow.
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Another day of life in the wild.⠀
One of our last few days in Bosnia, spent amongst snow and pine, sprucing up before our big journey home-bound. We’d be returning worn out and penniless, with a broken van and a clutch of precious new memories, yet we did not regret a single moment of the last six months.
It’s a taboo subject to talk about money, but we left for this trip with just a few grand between us. For six months of living and travelling over 15,000 miles- that’s not a lot.
And so to anyone who says that we are privileged: you’re wrong. Our lifestyle is not a privilege, it is the product of hard work, ruthless saving and months of rigorous planning. All in the name of following our dreams, all in hope that someday we might be able to make the money to sustain doing what we love. All for that little taste of freedom.
And it was worth every freezing night, every stale loaf of bread, every skipped meal, every dinner scraped together out of leftovers, every push to get to the next fuel station and every questionable road. We have not lived well but boy have we lived.
We’ve driven spectacular roads, spent evenings in the company of welcoming locals, sampled cuisines and cultures from all walks of life, been to unbelievably remote locations and captured it all through the glass of a lens.
See we’re not just doing this for a jolly, to escape the 9-5; we’re doing this because we have a passion and the tenacity to chase our dreams. We sacrificed comfort and security for the promise of something so much bigger.⠀
You don’t have to be rich to travel; we’re proof of that. All you need is a dream, and the desire to chase that dream.⠀
Alone in the wild.⠀
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We can never truly be alone, no matter how remote we go in our van. Because if we can drive it, someone else can too.⠀
But still we like to find these hidden crevices, areas of land with no purpose and no reason to visit them. We like to tuck ourselves so far out of the way we might not see another person for days, for reasons we can’t explain.⠀
It’s difficult to put into words, my desire to meet people and hear their stories in every corner of the world we go, and the yearning to conceal ourselves away like some childish game of hide and seek, except no one’s going to come looking.⠀
I can’t explain it, but I find solace in knowing I’m not the only one.⠀
In a particular chapter of a very well-known book Jon Krakauer finds himself climbing to the top of an Alaskan mountain so remote it hasn’t seen a visitor in years, risking his life in the snow, all in the name of solitude. The lengths he would go to to escape humankind, and the loneliness that struck him once he was back amongst them- that story sticks in my mind, always.⠀
Some may find unabounded silence and space unnerving, the knowledge that if something goes wrong you’re stuck out here. But we relish in it, the what if’s outweighed by the bliss of isolation. The possibility that maybe, just maybe, not one person has ever camped in this spot before and we might be the first.⠀
The solitude quells our minds as much as it unnerves them, but still the excitement of adventure keeps us pushing onwards into evermore distant corners of the earth.⠀
P.S. Can anyone name the book?
