Solo camping near Hay-on-Wye

Day One

(1)

The Arrival

The tent stakes bite into the soft earth beside the Wye, and I realise how long it's been since I've heard this particular silence, the kind that comes when you strip away everything except what fits in a rucksack. No folding camper. No elaborate camp kitchen. Just me, a two-man tent, and the bare necessities whispering their own kind of abundance.

This was meant to be a shared adventure. Dave should be here, helping me puzzle over guy ropes and debating whether we packed too much cheese and not enough whisky. But life sometimes has its own plans, and he had to bow out to take care of family matters.

So what was to be a couple of lads drinking whisky and philosophising around a campfire became one of solitude.

And perhaps that's exactly what was meant to unfold.

(2)

The Teaching of Solo Canvas

There's something different about camping alone, something that strips you down to the essentials you'd forgotten you possessed. Without another voice to fill the space, you begin to hear what the river has to say. Without shared tasks, you move to the rhythm your body actually wants to keep.

I find myself slowing into the kind of presence that only comes when there's nowhere else to be and no one else's needs to anticipate. My tent becomes not just a shelter but a meditation hall. The camp stove becomes an altar of simple sufficiency.

Back-to-basics camping, I called it. But maybe it's a forward to something else entirely. Maybe it's about remembering what we truly need versus what we believe we need, as well as distinguishing between what nourishes us and what merely fills our time.

(3)

Tomorrow's Pilgrimage

Hay-on-Wye awaits with its labyrinth of second-hand bookshops, each one a cathedral of other people's released treasures. I'll wander those narrow aisles tomorrow, hunting not just for books but for the kind of serendipitous discovery that only happens when you're moving slowly enough to notice what's noticing you.

There's something perfect about book hunting after a night spent beside flowing water. Both activities require the same quality of patient attention, the same trust that what you need will reveal itself when the time is right.

But tonight, it's just the Wye and me, learning the ancient art of being exactly where we are.

(4)

The Deeper Current

Chillaxing, I call it, but there's nothing lazy about this kind of rest. It's the sacred non-doing that our souls crave but our culture rarely permits. Reading by tent light. Documenting the texture of solitude. Listening to the river's old wisdom about persistence and flow.

Sometimes life reorganises itself around absence—Dave's necessary absence becomes my unexpected gift of aloneness. Sometimes what feels like loss becomes an invitation to discover what we can only find when we're not looking over our shoulder for company.

The Wye keeps flowing, indifferent to human plans and grateful for human presence in equal measure. Tonight, that feels like the most important lesson of all.

Day Two

(5)

The River's Confession

Dawn never came, not in the way I expected anyway. The sky remains a grey canvas, clouds thick as monastery walls, keeping the sun's emergence a secret between heaven and earth. But the river doesn't need a dramatic sunrise to sing its morning prayers. The Wye flows with the same ancient rhythm, indifferent to weather, carrying its lullaby through the mist.

I sit on the bank in this cathedral of sound, listening to the water over stone, bird calls weaving through the liquid bass note that never stops. This is the soundtrack to existence here, and something in my chest loosens, like a fist finally opening after holding tight for too long.

Poetry stirs in my bones.

The deep kind of poetry. The poetry that recognises that life itself is writing something through me. Something I've been too busy wearing other people's uniforms to notice.

When my journey into adulthood began, I was a poet wanting to be a soldier. So I chose the soldier's path, walked among warriors, learned their language and their rhythms. But underneath the uniform, I was always a crocodile trying to wear alligator skin—close enough to pass, but never quite fitting.

My colonel saw it: "You're so laid back you're almost going in reverse. But when you decide to be present, you fill the room."

Always that tension. The poetic sensibility was trying to bloom while I kept covering it with corporate soil. Soldier, financial consultant, manufacturing engineer, corporate trainer, each role a new attempt to bury what kept sprouting.

But roots are persistent things. Trees know how to push through concrete.

(6)

The Nameless Monk

T.S. Eliot whispers across the water: We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.

Am I returning to the beginning?

I see myself as a monk with no name, a pilgrim who has forgotten what he's searching for. Like Bono sang: I have climbed the highest mountains / I have run through the fields / only to be with you...but I still haven't found what I'm looking for. The search has become so long, so meandering, that the original quest has dissolved into the very act of searching itself.

But perhaps that's exactly the point. Perhaps the monk doesn't need a name because names are just another uniform, another skin to wear that isn't quite right.

(7)

The Barefoot Philosopher Emerges

the river teaches and the monk remembers...

Sitting here by the Wye, listening to the water teach me patience, I feel the strongest urging my poetic nature has made in years. It wants to manifest. It wants to be free. And I finally understand what it wants and why. We all have to be who we came here to be.

The barefoot philosopher emerges, not as an academic philosopher writing dense treatises and stuffy arguments, but as someone who follows the ancient Greek tradition of philosophy as lived practice—wisdom discovered through poetry, truth revealed in simple images, and meaning found in the kind of ordinary moments that crack open into something larger.

Like the Chinese sages who captured entire philosophies in single images: bamboo bending in wind, water finding its way around stone, the moon reflected in still water.

The barefoot philosopher walks beside rivers and finds the universe in the sound of current over pebble. Writes field notes that are really love letters to the mystery of being here, of being human, of finally taking off all the uniforms and walking barefoot into whatever wants to emerge.

The Wye keeps flowing, carrying away every version of myself I thought I needed to be.

What remains is simpler, truer, and more willing to let poetry speak through ordinary moments beside extraordinary water.

(8)

Walking with Wordsworth

I set off toward Hay-on-Wye on a circular route that promises to bring me back to myself by evening, but first, I embark on a pilgrimage through fields that remember other pilgrims.

I walk not alone, but in company
with the wind, with the wildflower,
with the soul of a poet who once
sang the sacred in the ordinary.

I invoke Wordsworth deliberately, calling his spirit to walk beside me like an old friend who knows these paths better than maps ever could. Let my footsteps echo his hymn that Nature is not a backdrop but being itself, not scenery but scripture written in hedgerow and cloud.

(9)

The Field of Dancing Grass

No golden daffodils await in this particular field—but something better. Tall grass rises like a congregation that knew I was coming, swaying and cheering my procession toward the town of books. The wind lifts their green arms in blessing, and suddenly Wordsworth's poem blooms unbidden:

I wandered lonely as a cloud that floats on high o'er vales and hills...

But here, what dances is not daffodils but this wild grass, ten thousand blades swaying in the breeze, and I remember why I love his original version better—"dancing daffodils" instead of the later "golden daffodils." Movement means more than colour. A thing alive doesn't stand still for symbolism.

It sways.

I wandered in rhythm,
through a field with no golden daffodils,
only tall, untamed grass swaying like a crowd
that knew I was coming.

The hills ahead hold books waiting to be discovered, stories seeking new readers, and wisdom pressed between pages like flowers. But this field? This field holds the hymn that makes all reading possible—the recognition that words are just dried music, poetry the attempt to capture what the grass already knows about dancing with invisible wind.

I walk as lonely as a cloud. Wordsworth walks with me, not his statue or syllabus, but the part of him that still lives in every blade of grass, every moment when an ordinary landscape suddenly reveals itself as holy ground.

The barefoot philosopher finds his rhythm in the sway of growing things, learns that pilgrimage is not about reaching destinations but about letting the journey turn you inside out until you find, beneath hedgerow and cloud, a self you had forgotten to name.

(10)

The Oracle Outside the Café

Hay-on-Wye receives me like an old story. Streets curve with the logic of centuries, bookshops lean into each other like old friends sharing secrets, and somewhere between the cobblestones and café windows, I find myself caught in that familiar threshold moment—half-in, half-out of decision.

A sweet old woman, warm-eyed and weather-worn, emerges from the café I've been studying like a text I can't quite translate.

"You look lost," she says, not unkindly.

The words hang in the air between us. Do I look lost? Or do I look like someone finally learning how to wander with purpose? The distinction feels important, though I can't say why.

I explain my dilemma—coffee versus motion, the eternal pilgrim's choice between stopping and continuing.

"You can't go wrong," she smiles, and I want to fold those words into my pocket like a note from the gods. Simple advice. Timeless, really. The kind of wisdom that only comes from living long enough to know that most of our anxious deliberations dissolve into the same gentle outcome.

Then she leans closer, conspirator-like: "Have you seen the big clock and the granary yet?"

I haven't.

She lights up with the particular joy of locals who get to share their treasures with wandering strangers. "Oh, you must. It's just up the way..." And with slow, practiced movements, she traces my next steps in the air like a cartographer of magic, her hands drawing invisible maps that somehow make perfect sense.

I thank her, but she's already vanishing down the lane like a living footnote in my day's unfolding poem, leaving me with directions to wonders I didn't know I was looking for.

This is how guidance comes to the barefoot philosopher—not through grand revelations but through ordinary angels who appear outside cafés, offering wisdom as simple as "you can't go wrong" and as specific as "turn left at the clock tower."

Sometimes the best navigation comes from those who've learned to move through the world with the unhurried certainty that all paths lead somewhere worth being.

Day Three

(11)

The River's Farewell

Morning coffee by the Wye, breaking camp

Sleep came easier with a double mattress inside the tent—though not without its quirks. The car-camping design betrays itself with that annoying seam down the middle, creating a valley where two worlds meet but don't quite touch. Still, I wake more rested, more grateful for this experiment in simplicity.

I watched Doctor Strange before bed, which may explain the surreal nature of the dream that followed. I found myself at a work event, seated beside a vegan who had been served nothing but carrots and potatoes. I remember standing up for her—insisting the kitchen do better. That detail sticks with me.
It wasn’t my fight, but I made it mine.

Funny how the dreamworld reveals our deeper alignments. Maybe it wasn’t about food at all. Maybe it was about defending dignity—even in strange lands.

The head cold lingered. Coughs kept me surfacing through sleep like a swimmer gasping in fog. But it’s on the way out. The body always knows how to heal, given patience and presence.

The rhythm of tent camping has been good to me. There’s something about paring things back—the absence of electricity, the way the river becomes your radio, and a cup of coffee takes on the gravity of ritual.

Even in this two-man tent, the gear accumulates. It reminds me: simplicity isn’t about having nothing; it’s about carrying only what matters.

(12)

Community of Temporary Neighbors

This riverside camp reveals its own small society, mostly tents with scattered camper vans, no electric hookups, no caravans, just the basics of sleeping under the stars. Port-a-potties serve as humble temples; converted horse trailers house showers that feel luxurious after river-water washing.

I met Marta and her friend, veterans of this riverside Eden. Polish by birth, British by time, they spoke of this campsite like a beloved relative. Another man, solo in his van with a loyal dog. Kayakers gliding like whispers across the surface. Everyone here seems to know something unspoken.

The river serves many kinds of pilgrims. Each stranger becomes a temporary neighbour in this village that assembles and dissolves with the rhythm of weekends.

(13)

The Harvest of Pages

Hay-on-Wye delivered its promised treasures, not through heavy browsing but through the kind of serendipitous discovery that happens when you move slowly enough for books to choose you. Two poetry collections found their way into my pack: voices from China and Georgia, foreign tongues translated into familiar English, expanding my vocabulary of wonder.

Their stories and poems whisper across cultures, proving that contemplation speaks every language and that the search for meaning transcends borders drawn on maps. I will bring these new voices back to the river, blending them with the echoes of Wordsworth and the timeless commentary of the Wye.

(14)

The Clearing and the Calling

Now morning coffee steams beside flowing water one last time, and the ritual of breaking camp begins.

The tent will collapse back into manageable squares, the mattress will deflate to travel size, and the riverside village will reorganise itself around my absence. But something remains expanded, something that doesn't pack away so neatly.

Three days beside the Wye have reminded the nameless monk of his name, helped the poet in disguise step out of borrowed uniforms, and taught the barefoot philosopher that wisdom doesn't require elaborate infrastructure, just willingness to sit still long enough for rivers to share what they know about persistence, about flow, and about finding your way around obstacles rather than through them.

The Wye keeps flowing, carrying away everything that was temporary while blessing what remains.

Baby Rosie waits in Ludlow, and the road calls with its own kind of current.

But first, this final sip of riverside coffee, this last listen to rapids teaching patience to stones.

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Clay
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