Summer in the city

Oh London, you really are the loveliest city when the sun is shining. This year I finally understood why Londoners endure so many months of the cold and the wet and the grey. For the few times it is sunny the whole atmosphere changes. Every day is Pimm's day, you go picnic on the Heath with chilled wine and meze, you go to music concerts in abandoned chapels, you laze about in one of the many public parks, you wander along the Camden locks, you giggle at how quickly Londoners are willing to take off their clothes when the sun is shining, you pop into a pub with Wimbledon on and coo at cute overheated bulldogs instead of watching the match, you visit some the many hidden gardens dotted around the city, you spot a pelican or two (whaaa?) at Buckingham Palace, and if you are bored with all that you pop onto a train and go to a beach instead. You get free bikram yoga on the central line, you go on walking tours the City of London organises every year over summer, you see protesters and policemen hugging during the annual Gay Pride parade, you find art beneath your feet, and a bench to sit on and soak up the sunshine. Thank you Summer for popping by, it's been swell. Same time next year then? xx

Cloud Cuckoo Land Festival 2013

My first foray into British festivals. And of course it rained. And I believed the weather forecasts that said 'sunny all week'. So wearing the same singular jersey for 4 days and slip slide navigation though mud without wellies was challenging, but be that as it may Cloud Cuckoo Land brought a collection of people together that resonated close to my own heart. Environmental activists, yurt makers, artists, singing faeries, smiling bubble makers, fracking opposers, shining faces, permaculture experts, recyclers, wild-haired children doing what they should be doing- playing outdoors, capitalist protesters and hoola hoopers. There were interesting talks about food waste (all food for staff was provided by the People's Kitchen who use diverted food from landfill - all delicious, all vegetarian), off the grid living (all the talks were powered by bicycle peddling), laughter and conventional yoga, rum imported on a sailboat (the greenest way to ship goods), eager participants making jewelry out of trash and being accosted by the glitter pixies. I volunteered with Upcycling, a non-profit that helps segregate all the rubbish accumulated during the festival. It was at times disheartening seeing what people throw away, and how carelessly they do it. Must be a first world thing. Came across men's ties still in their packaging, full sets of edible eggs in their cartons, tents, cans of unopened alcohol, clothes, cosmetics, fruit, shoes, toys, inflatable pool rings to name a few. So so much waste, most of it unsorted, and nowhere to put it but in the ground. Be that as it may, the spirit of this festival was worth the teeth chattering at night, and the mud-stained sneakers in the morning. Who needs mainstream festivals anyway?

A little bit of peace and quiet

London can be busy a busy place needless to say, so earlier in the year (April in fact! That's how behind I am on posting), I decided to go to Gloucester. The cathedral there is again another wonder, cathedrals never cease to impress me. This one in particular is where the first two Harry Potter movies were filmed (Wheee! Inner dork alert), the stained glass window there was at a stage the largest in Europe (its size makes up an entire tennis court) and apparently shows one of the earliest recordings of golf being played.

From there I had the lucky chance to go on a 10-day silent vipassana meditation retreat, learning the ancient technique of meditation taught in India more than 2500 years ago as a "universal remedy for universal ills". Wandering the grounds in silence, noticing the spring flowers change and grow every morning in the woodlands on the retreat grounds did more than a sermon could have done methinks.

When the course was over and everyone dispersed back to reality, I held back to walk in the Hereford countryside. I stumbled upon a peculiar car graveyard that had succumbed to nature. Armed tanks, vintage trucks and cars no longer of use had been discarded in this strange section close to the retreat. It gave me satisfaction to see how they had surrendered to nature, becoming more beautiful in their acceptance of their fate. And with that acceptance of letting things be, I returned back to London with a little bit of Goenka's and nature's teachings.

10 000 views

Holy hell. I just noticed that my blog has had 10 000 views. Like woah. Thank you to all of you who check in once in a while (even if half of these hits are from my mum checking up on me) to see what I have been upto and where I have wandered to. This blog started over 2 years ago with an inkling, an itch, a dissatisfaction of where my predictable life was going. To travel is to live, and each step brings a new direction, a new perspective, a new humility at how much there is still left to learn, see and do.

As Jack Kerouac put it,“our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life”. Thank you for walking it with me.

And the rivers run through it

My oh my, how time does fly. Some many places have been seen and so little time to share them. A while back I was able to visit Scotland for a wee while, overlapping with a long overdue reunion with friends that I met while walking the Camino de Santiago a few years back. A weekend wash-out in true Scottish style, we attempted to climb Glencoe but the winds were too fierce up at the top, so we ended up doing a shorter walk through woodlands and inbetween soft winding rivers. A fellow mountaineer pointed out dwarf trees that grow in patchy mosaics in high altitudes. These mini birches find it hard to grow against the wind and cold of these bleak windswept mountains, and I found the idea of stunted trees in such a wet climate somewhat fascinating.

I was lucky enough to spot Loch Ness, stare at snow-spattered mountain tops and moss over every surface. Old abandoned castles draped in ivy, and quiet plains with not a soul walking on them. I came across a soft-spoken man, with even softer-spoken eyes who told me about the living architecture he had just built out of willow. It turns out he was a MacDougall son, whose estate I was wandering on. He was worried the willow would rot from all the rain they had been given, and can be found just behind Dunollie Castle, on land his family clan has owned for over a thousand years. It overlooks Oban, a sleepy seaside town, where days were quiet and nights even quieter. A brisk walk west of the town, you can catch a ferry across to Kerrera, an island also owned by the Macdougalls, and walk to see Gylen castle. Stop off at Kerrera Tea Garden just by the castle for some soup to warm up if you ever walk there, you will most likely need to dry off at some point. 

You walk alone, past grazing pastures and wonder what residents do on such a lonely island. It was lambing season, and all you could see were little white shadows following their mothers. A women who offered me a lift said that they were coming up to 9 months and would be taken from their mothers soon. I was relieved I would not be around to hear their mothers wail for them to come back to them. In Scotland's harsh yet beautiful vistas lay its sadness. Such a beautiful landscape changed irrevocably to feed man's hunger, coming across no native wildlife, only animals to eat.

Living in East London

A favourite East London pastime of mine is cycling along the canals in the area. It's a great way to avoid traffic and to spot some birdlife along the way. On a saturday morning, you start off by the Olympic Park in Stratford and follow the canals past local breweries, imposing gas work structures, cosy barges selling cups of tea and books, smiling poochers, pass the daffodils in Victoria Park, and then get to Broadway market just in time for some Vietnamese coffee and a pastry for breakfast. There you will find purple carrots, a french girl with an accordion singing for her supper, and something so symptomatic of East London. Streetart. Oh so much of it. On a sunday, you get yourself to Columbia Flower market close to Shoreditch and find nothing prettier in the whole city. An entire road closed off and filled with flowers for sale. If you get there just before 2pm, you can even haggle for them at a next-to-nothing price. Shoreditch itself is just eye-achingly crammed with streetart. Some famous artists, and some lesser known ones. You pass the infamous beigel shop that is ALWAYS busy, see sneakers in the sky, pass tattoo parlours and vintage clothing shops, and leave thinking about just how many lovely, gritty, messy and creative things there are to see in this part of the city.

Forest Farm Peace Garden

Coming from a country with wide open spaces and fresh air, a need arises from time to time to seek out places where you can breath a little. It's a luxury to have a garden in London, and in my search to reconnect with the soil, I came across a community garden called the Forest Farm Peace Garden in Hainault. I wanted to get my fingers dirty again, plant, weed, learn about plant species and how to forage. I've discovered how to make charcoal sticks, how to drum (at the World Music Day event held today in fact), I've tasted soup made from stinging nettles, a weed delicious and high in minerals. I've seen a cob oven been built from scratch from natural materials, found out that you can eat rhubarb stems but not the leaves, but they can be used as a fertilizer tea. I've discovered that you can stick a willow branch into the ground and it will grow, and you can make seed pots out of newspaper. Every week, on wednesdays and fridays, is a chance to feel like you are in the countryside and away from the city. A chance to unravel, have a chat with like-minded folk, grow food from seed, get away from the laptop, and breath some fresh air again.