Day Nine- Langley Mill to Nottingham

I awoke on the water with the sun peeking through the curtains and it filled me with excitement for the day ahead. My mind quickly turned to the thought of food and I wondered where was Phil Coggins? I shuffled along in my sleeping bag to the ‘dining room’ of the boat. I donned my Back to the Future T-Shirt and eagerly awaited the arrival of THE DELOREANS. I spotted Phil across the KFC Carpark and it was lovely to see him, he had a great big smile on his face and two brimming bags of food. We shovelled down some pastries and slurped our coffees before something wonderful happened.

Before reading the rest open this link in a new tab: Play

I never thought i’d see three Deloreans lined up, doors open in the car park of KFC in Langley Mill. We did some comedy back to the future poses with the Deloreans and put our backpacks into the bonnets. My Dad had come to see us off so took some pics on his snazzy camera. It was an incredible feeling being a passenger in a Delorean, hearing stories of its journey and clocking people’s reactions to not one, but three Deloreans on the A610 to Nottingham. I encouraged Richard to drive to 88 miles per hour to see if we could go Back to the Future but he said no because we didn’t have the flux capacitor and we’d be breaking the speed limit. We drove up in style to Lakeside Arts to show off our dream mobiles. I was buzzing with electricity from the clocktower, I mean from the journey. A dream come true.

Kristy, Ria and Hannah

Distance travelled: 10 miles

Day Ten – Nottingham to York

Kristy’s Perspective

I don’t think I can describe the feeling of flying in a way that will do it justice..

I was nervous. I was having to put my trust in someone. I was having to put my trust in a vehicle with an engine and a propeller right behind my head, and that made me feel a little uneasy. I kept my feelings hidden to the best of my ability;  I didn’t want my pilot, Richard, to know that I was nervous. In a sense I handed him my life for 20 minutes. It was his responsibility to fly us between Caunton and Netherthorpe and to get us back down to earth safely.

As soon as we took off my fears disappeared. Every negative feeling was replaced with awe and astonishment. The world’s a beautiful place. You can really appreciate the beauty that surrounds you when you have a bit of distance from it. Sitting in the back of the microlight gives you the perfect opportunity to take in the wonder of the place we call home. Most people don’t get the chance to distance themselves from the land they call home whilst still being a part of  it. Most people when they soar into the sky  are sat in a metal tube watching the progress of the journey on the little map on the screen in front of them.

Today I left the land in which I normally reside and had the privilege of seeing it from a height of 1300ft. It was enough distance and enough height to feel close to it and far away at the same time, and being able to appreciate the vastness of the place we call home.

We are so small in the grand scheme of things, insignificant some may say.. but every person has the power to make change. We’re changing the course of things all the time. By little movements, little steps, we can make a big difference to somebody’s life. Richard changed the way I look at the world. I wonder if he realises how much I appreciate this.

The beauty of the world can be seen in the 3 shadows I saw whilst looking down. Shadows moving side by side. Close enough to be together

yet far enough a part to be individuals.

What do you see when you look down? The path beneath? Rubbish? Chewing gum that’s being trodden into the earth? A discarded penny? Stories? The world? I spent 20 minutes of today looking at the world with distance and new eyes. Not the eyes I use every day, but with eyes that can take in the colour, the light and the shadows of what’s all around  and wanting to be looked at.

 

I sat looking out of the window of the National Express coach from Sheffield to York. The sun was shining, the colours were vivid and I can’t help but look up. Watching the birds soar, seeing shapes in the clouds, being amazed at how yellow the fields were, and I realised that no one else will see what I see. Even Ria who is sat next to me will see something different, but that’s what’s beautiful about world and about life. I’m so thankful for my eyes, for being able to see the little details that make the world such an interesting place.

Ria’s Perspective

We arrived in Caunton at 09:30, Kristy’s Mum, Dad and dog Molly picked us up in their campervan and took us to the airfield.

I was extremely excited when I saw the flying machine. I  had absolutely no idea what a microlight looked like nor had I thought very much about the science of flight. I saw the wings stretching out of the hanger. I find the science of the whole affair mind boggling, being able to take off and fly through the air in such a small vessel.

My  pilot was Ian Bracegirdle, he explained that you have to take into account wind speed when flying, today was just right to go soaring through the clouds, he showed me the route on the air field map. I put on my flying suit, ear guards, mic, and gloves and sat in the back of the microlight, it was a really small and strange looking machine.

Kristy took off first, then Hannah, next it was our turn, I had to be careful not to scream or make noises which were really high pitched as Ian and I were connected with ear pieces and mics. Ian got us to the start of the runway and drove down picking up speed, and off we went climbing through the skies, in no time at all we were 1500ft above the earth. I was watching the earth get smaller, the patchwork fields and tiny houses became less real the higher we flew.

The world looks different from the air, it somehow seems less important, its more important to look ahead, to see the clouds, look at where you are going.

Ian said ‘Can you see the others?’

I looked around, I looked to the left, no one. I looked to the right, just blue sky and cloud. I looked below, I could see a bird but no Hannah or Kristy, I couldn’t see them anywhere. There were so many dimensions to check. Being above the earth gives you a new perspective, a space to think about things differently. It’s a space for day dreaming.

I watched a farmer ploughing his field and observed how neatly the soil was settled, it looked like velvet, when you stroke it in different directions and the shade changes.

I spotted the other two and thought how funny the machines looked, a triangle with wings transporting Kristy through the skies. It felt totally surreal waving Kristy across the skies.

I wanted to fly for hours, it seemed like we were in Netherthorpe airspace in no time at all, Ian brought us back down to earth smoothly. I’ve really appreciated having the opportunity to try this mode of transport and to be able to see the beauty of earth from above. I’d liked to try flying one myself, to be able to go wherever I want through the clouds and to have complete freedom and control.

Distance Travelled: 87 Miles

Day Eight- Birmingham to Langley Mill

Waking up in Hopwood at an old friends felt good. I always think being with friends is like being at home. The kind of friends you don’t have to act with or force conversation even though you haven’t seen them since the last ‘occasion’. I found a kind of home here. This was John and Anna’s new home in fact and they were settling in and finding their way. Being in someone else’s home is odd, I opened every cupboard before I found the cereal. Looking for a home is a bit like that, opening every cupboard until you find the one you need. Shutting some abruptly and letting other slide slowly to a close.

We made sure the door was locked and went to our favourite place for beginning encounters, the side of the road with our usual cardboard plea. We were picked up by a couple, the lady was blind and her husband was her carer. They went completely out of their way to take us but this was usual for them. He would drive her round all over. They especially loved Cornwall and the seaside and we imagined the smells and sounds of the sea.

We waited at the train station a little grumpy and sceptical as to whether our next lift was going to show up. People coming and going, changing trains, crunch of crisps, shoop of door opening, scream of train arriving, squeal of shoe. Suddenly our ride arrived.

Travelling through Birmingham city centre inside a limo looking out into the streets was surreal. People were spotting the limo then quickly looking away as if it was forbidden fruit or they were trying to avoid being impressed by something so hedonistic. We had coke (a cola) from champagne glasses and wondered what kind of people we might be in another life sitting inside the sparkling shimmering interior. We were jolted back into reality, dropped off in the busy Birmingham city centre where we rode the lift in Waterstones several times and wondered if this counted as a form of transport. It was a great lift, the kind that actually goes fast and makes your stomach jump like a  pirate ship at a fun fair. Kicks for free.

We left Birmingham on the train, met a lady transporting a giant cupcake and headed for home but not the end of the road. Langley Mill Canal boat provided our bed for the night, friends, pizzas, wine and a water on the sea before we would continue our journey in the morning.

Hannah

Distance travelled: 61.3 miles

Day Seven- Gloucester to Birmingham

I awoke feeling really alive and ready for the challenge of the day. We stayed the night in a B&B in Gloucester and didn’t have a plan in place for the onward journey. I was first down for breakfast and I started chatting to a man called David. I told him about our project and asked him if he had a tractor. “A tractor?” he enquired with a smile, “yes as a matter of fact i’ve got 26, in fact I’ve got a pink tractor do your job lovely”.  And it was on. We gobbled down our bacon and eggs, grabbed our kit and set off in David’s Land Cruiser accompanied by his best friend Zack. We arrived at his land and boarded said tractor, we travelled along the road about 8 miles to Ross on Wye. Here we waved David goodbye and made a sign saying Hereford.

Before long Simon came along in a Vauxhall Astra-eco and took us into the city. Simon very casually told us about his diving experiences and how he had been in a cage next to a great white shark that luckily wasn’t very hungry. We understood why Simon had picked us up, he was a fellow adventurer.

From Hereford we travelled to an odd part of the A49 thanks to Steve and his soon to be classic peugeot 205. We stood on the wrong road in the rain with cars zooming past for a little while.

Eventually we found a different road made a new makeshift sign out of cardboard and eye pencil and were rescued by James in a Peugeot 307 SW. James was out walking his dog, well trying to walk his dog. He took us to Tenbury Wells petrol station where we refuelled with hot chocolate. We then shivered back out onto the pavement with our eye pencil make shift sign. We were not standing in the cold for long before Toby picked us up. Toby drove yet another Peugeot, a 206 new model. Peugeot drivers seem to have a kind streak.

We’ve had a wet day of chance encounters and coincidences. I’m really enjoying the randomness and ad hoc nature of this journey and I am excited to see what delights await us tomorrow in the city of Birmingham.

Ria

Distance travelled: 55 miles

Day Six – Newport to Gloucester

We started today with a big breakfast and a game of Jumbling Tower with our friends from Tin Shed Theatre. They headed off to a rehearsal and we ordered more tea. We put our heads together to form a plan. A girl who worked in the cafe told us that she had a recumbent bike and that if we were still around at 3pm she could bring it in for us. It was tempting. It’s on the list. But we needed to get out of Newport. Quickly.

Hannah phoned Go Ape and asked if we could go and play in the trees in the Forest of Dean and they said yes! We set off in the direction of the station with the intention of getting a train to Lydney but we’d missed it by 3 minutes. We walked into the ‘Information Station’ next door to get some information, but they didn’t have any.. We headed in the direction of Chepstow Road to get a lift to Lydney so we could try and find a way of getting from there to Go Ape. We were walking over a bridge when a lady came up behind us and asked us where we were going. We were a little taken aback by this as it’s usually us approaching people. Her name was Caroline and she informed us that Newport didn’t get many travellers at this time of year (we weren’t surprised). She was very kind and gave us a lift to an island where we could hitch hike from. She also told us that we have a ‘very attractive energy’ about us which we struggled to believe as the tiredness from the previous day lingered, but we appreciated it all the same.

Before we arrived at Go Ape we had lifts from two other people who were incredibly kind: Howard and Jane. Howard was a brilliant character and a lot of fun. He informed us that we were riding in a Ford Focus Ferrari and Hannah and I believed him..  He can speak a few languages and has done a lot of travelling. Howard dropped us off and Jane picked us up. Jane had a smaller car, it looked like there wasn’t a lot of room for us and all our stuff. It wasn’t until we got closer that we spotted a car seat in the back. She was a new mum and her 6 month old daughter was travelling with her. She said that she’d never picked anyone up before and she didn’t know why she’d stopped. We were really glad that she did! She was lovely and dropped us off right outside Go Ape.

We swung through the trees and Hannah and I enjoyed doing something that Ria hadn’t done before. (It doesn’t happen very often!) I love Go Ape. Feeling a part of nature. Hearing the birds sing and the people on the nearby lake laugh filled me with warmth. You get such an adrenaline rush when you’re sliding down the zip wire high up amongst the trees with the wind in your face. I felt at home there.

After we finished the course we continued to be cheeky and asked the lovely Go Ape staff, Nick and Niaomi, if we could have a go in the wheelbarrows we’d eyed up earlier. They thought we were nuts but said yes anyway. Hannah went with Naiomi and I went with Ria. Ria asked if we were going to race and Naomi said no. She lied, but Ria managed to catch up even though it was clear the race had finished. I had little control over the situation as I was in the wheelbarrow.

Naomi and Nick continued with their kindness by giving us a lift to Blackney where Janet and John picked us up and gave us a lift to Gloucester. They picked us up because they didn’t want us to be on the side of the road. Well, actually, they didn’t want Hannah and Ria to be on the side of the road; I was in the shop trying to buy stamps. They didn’t know about me and when I appeared they said they didn’t know if they had room for three. Luckily they did.  They told us how they’d recently walked 20 miles down the road we were driving down. They were preparing for Janet and her daughter’s Moonwalk in London on the 12th May. The’ll be walking 26 miles at night in her bra to raise money for Cancer Research. They also hadn’t picked anyone up before.

They dropped us off outside a pub, so of course we went in. We set up camp on the sofa, enjoyed the free muffin that came with our tea and got a little upset when my computer blue-screened. I tried the usual ways of getting something to work; I turned it off and on, I took out the battery, I charged it.. but nothing. I hope I’ve not lost everything on it. It’s my travel laptop. The laptop I bought when Ollie and I were travelling in late 2010. It shouldn’t have died already! I don’t like the unpredictability of computers. One minute they can be working fine and the next minute they are dead. Memories and documents lost forever.

Ria managed to talk a man who owns a B&B a couple of doors away down to £50 for a room for the three of us. It should have been £80.. well done, Ria!

It was so nice to have our own space. Hannah was excited about being able to watch the Apprentice.  I was excited about being able to make tea.

I left Hannah and Ria watching TV and went in search of chocolate to eat with the tea I wanted to make and in front of the TV Hannah wanted to watch. I didn’t want to get lost on my own in a  so I turned right and just carried on walking. I thought if I walked in one direction then I would eventually find a shop that was still open at 9pm. I did but it did feel like I’d walked across the whole city. It was quiet, it was dark and the doors of the bank kept opening on their own.. I hurried back to the room and closed the door.

Day Five- Bristol to Newport

We had decided to stay in a hostel in the hope that we’d meet some interesting people, collect some unusual stories but instead we were met with a host of people glued to their laptop screens, communicating only through a series of grunts and nods. It seemed this should have been a place full of excitement for travelling and adventures but instead everyone was using technology to try to connect them to home instead of immersing themselves in being away. Then is occurred to me that perhaps they weren’t here for adventures or soaking up the soul of Bristol but perhaps they were here because they had to be.

We found out that 50 beds in the hostel were taken up by people actually living there. We met Orest from Poland who was desperately seeking work in Bristol and hadn’t managed to find any. We also met Smark (Ria has misheard his name when he introduced himself ‘it’s mark’). He lived for travelling and would work all the hours he could for a period of time before going off to search the world again. My immediate judgement was that he must be a bachelor but in fact he was married and his wife lived in Australia. I’d always thought that marriage would mean together, physically as well as mentally, sharing a home, living together. But here was a relationship that obviously worked, despite physical distance.

We finally set out from the hostel to explore Bristol, Ria focussing on the story underfoot, Kristy looking for the story in peoples eyes and me, like a wide eyed child looking into the sky. Bristol was covered in weather vanes and long lines of chimneys like a huge chess game on the roof. We meandered down the Bristol Estuary on the Bristol Ferry imagining living in one of the brightly coloured houses on the hill.

We had a fantastic afternoon in the sun with a wonderful couple, Misty and Drew who let us ride their beautiful tandem bicycle.  They were such a fun, lively couple and I could imagine them chatting away riding around Bristol on Bramble. Here was a couple who liked to be as close as possible, even sharing a bike.

Bristol was quite a significant place for Ria, she had left home for the first time to come to Bristol. Despite not feeling quite at home in the youth hostel we felt very happy here as though we fitted. But it was time to leave so we said goodbye to Bristol and headed towards the bright lights of Newport.

Distance travelled: 31 miles

Day Four- Ashburton to Bristol

“Creativity means constantly breaking habit. Habitual ways of working become a trap” (Heard on radio 4 the morning of 30th April)

We’d made a temporary home with Sara and her daughters and she measured our heights on the wall where she had recorded her children’s and their friends growth. I was the same height as Kitty, Kristy was the same height as Crystal and Ria was the same height as Jordan, who is 13. As well as meeting new people we are constantly saying goodbye to people we’ve met. A long stream of goodbyes. We said goodbye to Sara in style, bouncing down a slip road on space hoppers.

We stood at the edge of the A38 praying for a lift to Taunton or Exeter, we had made a sign to that effect. We were picked up by Charlotte a young taxi driver who said she was rescuing us from any evil people picking us up. “You lot are lunatics”.

We were dropped off in Exeter and happened across a bike hanging on the wall with a sign saying Bike Shed Theatre, we had to explore. We met David who allowed us a sneaky look inside the theatre even though they weren’t open. The space was atmospheric and it felt like we were underground with its exposed brick walls. Hopefully we’ll be back one day.

We felt a little bit stuck in Exeter so we thought we would shoot out on the train. We thought wrong. With all the rain there was terrible flooding on the train track. While we were stuck we saw trees up to their middles in water and the train tracks seemed to have dissolved into a stream. There was even a farm that looked as if a child had taken their lego farm set in the bath. After a hour or so the train moved with trepidation slowly down the track. A cheer went up. We were on our way again.

Arriving into Taunton we were greeted by the smiling face of my Uncle Steven. He ferried us to Weston-Super-Mare or Weston-Super-Mud or Weston-Super-Nightmare. The sun came out and we ate fish and chips on the beach and chose our ideal home in Weston. Feeling a sense of urgency to get keep moving we began walking in the general direction of Bristol.

Thanks to the directions given to us by a suave, smartly presented, shirt-unbuttoned, half Romanian, half Turkish,  chap named Cornelius, we were on our way. Thanks Cornelius, you’re an angel. Picked up not long after by Gavin, a psychedelic gardener who took us on a impromptu tour of Bristol’s graffiti. We made it to Bristol.

Miles travelled: 92.8

Hannah