INTO THE WILD

Recently I turned 25. I'd set aside 3 days around my birthday, to do something, go somewhere, meet anyone. I didn't know what I was going to do, but I knew I had 3 days. The time came, the forecast was bright, and none of my friends were available at such short notice. So I dusted off my touring bike and hopped on the 5.10am train from London Euston to the coastal town of Whitehaven, which straddles the land between the Lake District and the Irish Sea.

When considering my motivations behind taking those 3 days to conquer the coast to coast, I suppose it ticks a few boxes; getting out of the big smoke, going on a bike ride, but most importantly and most difficult to define - it was satisfying a hunger for adventure, the wild outdoors, the exploration of a place that I've never seen before. I wanted to see lakes and hills and people with unusual profiles and accents, turn corners not knowing the landscape, animal or vehicle that lay beyond. That's what I found, within a pebble's throw of the bullet-shaped Virgin train, which turned into a rickety coastal carriage leaning worryingly close toward the water, which turned to me dipping my back wheel in the Irish Sea, soon peddling without a map (but with a packed lunch) towards the grassy peaks and rocky shores of the Lakes.

Last Summer when living in Brighton I tried to make it to Penzance by bicycle (I made it to Dartmoor and decided I'd had enough), and I've cycled hundreds of miles in England, Wales, France and even Cuba. Each time the process becomes more streamlined. My kit evolves, now never missing essentials such as a portable stove, emergency bin-bag, emergency hat (interestingly, a beret), and inner tubes - despite a concerning incompetence in changing tyres. Fortunately I've not yet had the bad luck of encountering a puncture - an inevitable probability that I tried very hard not to think about whilst cycling through the Northumberland moors.

What good have these trips done me? Aside from the obvious benefits of health and happiness in the outdoors, they've taught me many things about myself and other people. Resilience, resourcefulness, patience, how-to-make-friends-in-a-pub-car-park's-questionable-“campsite”, how that even if things get really bad, and I mean, sitting on the hard shoulder of the A35, exhausted and woefully stuck betwixt junctions, in the rain, 10 miles from the nearest train station kind-of-bad, I will survive, and get out of the hole I've rather unhelpfully dug and pushed myself into, and hopefully next time I'm cycling from Bournemouth to Bridport, I won't take the motorway but instead take a map.

The people I've met in hostels and roadside cafes have offered me generous insights into the unpredictability and kindness of strangers, whose faces and names I can't remember, but whose offer to do my washing up because my legs were so sore, I'll never forget. The unique and exquisite jams and honeys that you can only buy from little pensioners on the side of the road, the home-grown plums you can buy for 5p from a delighted 7 year-old boy, the honesty-box eggs, the ice-creams, all gratefully inhaled in order to fuel the 13% incline that follows the next bend in the road. And I'm not a sporto. These majestic hills aren't graced with the sprightly dash to the top that I rather naïvely imagine whilst sat bleary-eyed on that rickety coastline train. Realistically, an energetic sprint to the top of any incline is an unlikely scenario when carrying side panniers filled with tent pegs and berets. Those nasties have taught me a thing or two, I'm now proficient at reciting the alphabet backwards - but above all, I've learned that it's not shameful to stop and walk every now and again.

My experiences in the wild have fed into my attitude to some significant moments with work and friendships. Once you've prepared the essentials, you just have to turn up and bring positivity to the equation, the rest is often blissfully beyond your control.