this is the first trip i took my new freewrite traveler on and these are some curated journal entries from it.
07.22.26 – WEDNESDAY – BRISTOL
we’re in cameron’s house now, about to go to bed. ally and i are sharing a room, our beds touching side by side. we had dinner at a really cute hand-pulled noodle place. called ahead and got there basically when they were closing, but they didn’t seem at all annoyed to serve us. they were warm and accommodating, inviting us in with genuine smiles.
a couple got up to leave and as they were paying their bill, i heard them tell the waitress that they used to live in bristol and always make a point of returning to eat here whenever they’re back. it’s nice to catch these random snippets of kindness – people saying things for no other reason than to be nice.
07.23.26 – THURSDAY – 9:23AM – TIVERTON
we woke up early this morning and cameron made some coffee in his french press for us to have before we started the drive. i really do love calm, quiet mornings – time to rest in stillness, mentally prepare for the day ahead over bits of casually cheerful chatter.
i’m looking forward to the whole trip, to the sense of reverential calm, worshipful quiet – time in nature, in creation, pondering the depth and breadth of God’s love and power. i’m hoping for a kind of transformation, a reorientation, a spark of some new conviction that i can carry with me back to london, to the rest of my life. and maybe these are high and lofty hopes, but nobody’s done anything that truly matters without first having an impossible dream.
and now “what’s up?” by 4 non blondes has come on the car stereo and cameron’s singing along in his screeching, what he calls his ‘acdc voice’ while flora films and laughs along. cam says it should be his karaoke song and we both agree.
4:30PM – LEE ABBEY
we’re at the tea cottage at lee abbey on one more pit stop before we head out on the first true leg of our pilgrimage – a short-ish (6-7 mile) walk to the inn we’re going to stay at tonight.
lee abbey itself is beautiful. from the main building, you can see rolling fields, cliff faces hanging over the sea. flowers bloom all over the property, apparently all tended to by one dedicated, incredibly knowledgeable woman.
we had some tea and muffins with members of the community here, during their break time that they call “elevensies”. got to talk to a few of them and get a sense of how they felt about living in community. they talked it up, describing how wonderful and formative it is. ally and the rest of them say they can see me living here for a year. so can i.
later, we visited the library and other sites, and i thought about how nice it would be to wake up to these beautiful views, read at a window looking out onto the cliffs and the sea. the serenity of it all. truly quiet rhythms. and the whole day a practice of learning how to be with others, how to love. how beautiful.
now we are sitting at a small stony beach – ally and flora have just taken a dip, did a bit of a wild swim. we haven’t done much walking before stopping for lunch here, but it’s been such a lovely start to everything.
3:13PM – MARTINHOE
we’ve been walking for the last hour or so and now we’re in martinhoe church. ally read a plaque detailing its illustrious history. this church is so old. we marveled at the fact that this town is now just a hamlet when it was once a bustling center of life.
cameron found a plaque on one wall commemorating the men and women of the parish who served in world war ii, and sadly a lot of men listed were brothers, sharing the same family name. imagine, a whole generation of men wiped out by senseless violence, the misguided pursuits of men.
he’s just finished doing a reading from the “pilgrim places, holy lives” booklet and there’s a deep sense of reverence and connection. it’s nice that these churches can act as spaces of rest and refuge on our journey, spaces of encounter and presence.
we sit here, in the quiet, and i get a little bit of what i came here for.
we sat for a while, in the silence, and i pondered the transformative power of God’s boundless love. how, if we were to really live in the reality of it, everything could change. if we could harness the truth of ourselves as conduits of God’s love, our very beings mountaintop encounters where people could experience God’s love, how might that change how we exist in the world – how we relate to each other, the stories we tell ourselves, how we live our lives? perhaps life itself could simply be a practice of love. what else could possibly matter more?
8:46PM – HEDDON VALLEY – HUNTER’S INN
we’ve finished the first true leg of our pilgrimage and now we’re relaxing in the guest lounge of the hunter’s inn in the heddon valley. we’ve eaten dinner and it was an experience.
three of us had meat pies and it took forever to order and for our food to arrive because all of the servers and runners were incredibly green young men.
cameron’s just read some evening prayers and it ends the day on another meditative, contemplative and reverential note. i’m glad to be doing this with these people – friends who take the faith and spiritual side of this seriously.
we’re here, in a beautiful inn, surrounded by the beauty of God’s creation, and it’s wonderful. this was a beautiful day, and i will sleep peacefully tonight. i will will the flat white i just drank to have minimal effect and not get in the way of deep slumber. and in the morning, we go again.
07.24.26 – FRIDAY – TRENTISHOE
we had breakfast at hunter’s inn – i had poached haddock with poached eggs, which was an odd but traditional choice – apparently very english.
after, we started the big walk, leg 2 of our journey. this included a very big hill – hopefully the biggest hill we’ll encounter on this walk. apparently a short cut so we could visit st. peter’s church, trentishoe.
we opened the big door and it creaked open to reveal a bit of a cave – dark and musty and overrun with bats. one flew across the space and we looked up and found so many of them sleeping in the eaves and rafters. cute little things, with all their droppings on the floor.
we couldn’t sit in the pews because of the filth, but after exploring a bit, reading about the church, we stopped to sit down and rest in a shady spot of the graveyard right outside. i’m looking at the three of them sitting or lying on their backpacks, talking about politics and faith – “mobilizing the christian network to be part of the anti-fascist state” – and a bit beyond them, i can see a collapsed bench against a large, wise-looking tree.
it’s peaceful here, the countryside is beautiful.
4:00PM – COMBE MARTIN
we’ve completed the most difficult and treacherous part of today’s big walk and now we’re resting and eating lunch at a beach in combe martin. not as nice as lee abbey’s magical beach, but still nice.
we conquered a really big what i’d call a mountain pass called “the great hangman”, saw some incredible veiws, and then visited a church called st. peter ad vuncula run by cam’s friend sophie, who is a new curate there.
she showed us around, and told us about her story. she finished residential training and requested a rural parish to serve in, which isn’t very typical at all. she has a lot of vision, hoping to harness the potential of the church in her parish to really make a difference in the lives of those who need it most, and it was exciting to hear about – made me think about how we need to be intentional and active to not miss opportunities.
later, she led a moment of daily prayer, which was very beautiful. she opened up the lady chapel for us and it was calm, still and quiet.
and now we’re at the beach, resting in the shade. cameron’s been very impressed with how effective our lidl haul from yesterday has been. we’ve been able to milk it for a second lunch of hummus, cheese and mackerel sandwiches for all of us, as well as snacks and fruit. honestly, we’re all full and it feels like a well-balanced diet – enough to sustain us for the next leg of the walk.
07.25.26 – SATURDAY – 8:40AM – ILFRACOMBE
the trip is done for me and now i’m on the bus to barnstaple, where i’ll take a train to exeter and from there head to london.
finished the last leg of the big walk yesterday – it was mostly easy going, more casual and calmly paced, tunnels of green that reminded me of parkland walk in london, paths through campsites that were ripe for anthropological study – all sorts of people, mish-mashed in an unusual and fascinating combination. none of the massive highs of the first leg of the walk – no truly stunning views – but also no massive lows – as in, all of the hills were very manageable.
coming into ilfracombe, we headed to our lodgings for the night – had trouble finding it for a bit and weathered, rough-looking locals kept trying to help us. the kind of easy, open kindness one finds in the countryside.
eventually we found our lodgings, settled in and showered before quickly heading back out to get some dinner. we tried to go to a cozy italian place called giovanni & luca (how can you get more italian than that?!) – walked in and it was bustling, older patrons gathered in 2s and 4s over softly lit tables, enjoying themselves, a picture that reminded me of my time in florence with bram – but they were all booked up for the night.
we ended up at a wetherspoons and i ordered a chicken pomodoro. they were all excited to get some drinks, and it made me think of that book i read, “the naked mind”, that said that we condition ourselves to get giddy at even the mention of alcohol, at the idea of relaxation and release that it will bring, and how this feeds into minor alcohol dependency.
i went in at one point to get a refillable mug of coffee and the inside was much busier than the outside. i thought it was a bit of a shame that we weren’t inside. it would’ve been better for all sorts of attention, flowing in and out – better for soaking it in, but also for people watching. i always love wandering around these small towns, where people aren’t used to seeing people like me. i imagine myself to be more beautiful, an elusive little nymph that the locals covet and admire. the reality is likely much more mundane than that, but isn’t it more fun to tell yourself an embellished story?
at our table, the conversation turned to fatherhood – what kind of fathers we want to be, didn’t want to be, what we loved about our own fathers, what we wished was different.
fathers who love us but can only express that through acts of service, no words, physical affection or signs of tenderness unless we initiate, and even then. fathers who are open and patient and kind, and do not pressure us with the hard shape of an identity they’ve chosen for us. fathers who sacrifice everything but remain a mystery, their own story and agency lying hidden behind an only occasionally porous wall. fathers who are quick to anger, who don’t know how to properly regulate their emotions and so turn on their children at the slights of others.
as adults, we can pick these things apart, turn an analytical lens on them to guess at how they’ve shaped us, try to understand what we carry, what we leave behind. but as children, we are simply at the mercy of these forces, and it’s amazing to even start to understand the legacy our fathers leave in our bones, in the ways we experience and exist in the world.
after we were finished eating, everyone started getting very sleepy, so even though we had high ambitions to maybe go out that night, we decided to wrap things up and head home.
9:30AM – BARNSTAPLE
it’s about an hour later and i’m at barnstaple train station waiting for my train, which is in about an hour. i’ve ordered a flat white and an almond croissant, heated up, and i’ve sat down at a table in the station cafe, kind of hidden and tucked away from the people in the main space.
i’m trying to think about what i’ve gotten from this trip, what i can take away and bring home with me to london. all of the rest stops were welcome and moving. stopping at the old churches, thinking about the historically vibrant communities they used to serve. i’d imagine the pews full of people living simpler, perhaps more joyful lives. we bloat our days with so many unnecessary things; there is a joy to stripping it back to basics, and it’s a shame that these ways of life continue to vanish. things have in many ways gotten better, but in many other ways they’ve gotten worse.
but i loved the quiet and stillness of those moments. sitting in the cool space of a very old church, letting myself imagine days gone by, the generations of people who filled the space before me, a sense of God’s presence there with us, lingering in the stale but sacred air.
whenever i stepped into one of those old churches, it was like i was stepping into a slice of history, taking part in something bigger than myself, something that would outlast me. it was expansive and allowed me to let go of myself a little bit, remember that there are forces and realities beyond my limited experience of the present moment. i became a single thread in the broader tapestry of humanity, of all the lives and stories that came before me, that are to come – the endless, ever-shifting sea of voices.
12:20PM – TRAIN TO LONDON
i’m reading katabasis by r.f. kuang and there’s a passage from the book that resonates with me:
They struck a deep nostalgia in her just the same, the nostalgia you got just looking inside brightly lit windows along the street at night; peeking into lives you might just have had. Someone else’s comfort. A warm couch, an old movie humming along on the television. And then your wife or mother or friend joining you from the kitchen, steaming mugs of hot toddies in both hands.
this sense of other worlds only feet away from you. other realities unfolding constantly, other truths revealing themselves in the night. i understand sonder to be the acute awareness that other people have histories and lives as infinitely complex as your own, and suddenly the earth is small but explosive, the universe always expanding with not only matter, but also inner worlds. the immaterial becoming just as substantial as solid, liquid and gas.
2:01PM – ON THE TRAIN
i’ve just woken up from a bit of a nap and i think i’m going to stay awake for the last little leg of this journey. i filled in the last couple of entries of my five year journal and it made me realize that we actually did walk so far over the last couple of days. i think i walked more yesterday than ever before, on any other day in my entire life. by the end of the day, my step count was 36,004, which is about quadruple my average daily step count.
i remember turning back on various points of the walk to see vast distances stretched before us, hills and valleys, peaks and dips – all of the terrain we’d covered – and being completely shocked. you can actually cover more ground than you think in a few hours. now i will look at distances in a different way. hopefully walking in a city with limited baggage will now feel like nothing.
i’m proud of myself, actually, for coming along and doing it. for doing the big walk with my friends. now it’s something else i’ve put under my belt, an experience to tuck away into the folds of my life to look back on, to share. i’ve been to the heddon valley, stayed at hunter’s inn where we waited so long for dinner served by handsome but terribly inefficient young men. i’ve conquered the great hangman, where ally stood on top of a pile of inexplicable rocks and we marvelled at the incredible 360 view all around us and flora said that actually, she wasn’t very impressed. and i’ve stayed in ilfracombe, in a little hidden, tucked-away lodging where we slept to the sound of older men blaring on in a live rock cover band and woke up to the sounds of sea birds and a gentle breeze. i’ve done all these things, and i marvel at it.
