You can have an adventure without leaving your country. You can explore, meet interesting people, get lost and see where you live through the eyes of a tourist experiencing for the first time. The trick is to do something radically different from what you do day-to-day in your “normal life”.

In July 2014 I was itching for a trip, but for various reasons going abroad wasn’t practical. So I hiked the entire South Downs Way instead. My wife can’t understand why walking over 120 miles in seven days appeals to me. Well, I have several reasons.

The slower you travel, the more you think about what you see. It’s a bit metaphysical, but you wind up traveling inside your head. You can’t avoid introspection if you’re walking 12 hours a day by yourself. To help you think, you have three things to look at: the ground, the clouds, and farm animals.

1) Below the horizon: the ground
The South Downs Way runs through 100 miles mostly of chalk grasslands, farms and hills. So it’s repetitive. But you quickly learn to appreciate little details that diversify your view:

2: Above the horizon: clouds
Almost any photo can be improved with clouds. Clouds make everything look dramatic. Not only do they keep the harsh sunlight off your subject, they cast shadows, break up the monochrome sky, and refract and reflect light.

Examples:

3: In between: farm animals
If you walk this trail alone (and in my opinion, you should), even cattle start appearing dramatic:

Eventually, sheep and cows start talking to you. It usually happens after walking twenty miles on four hours of sleep.

It’s not all great fun for animals though. You’ll pass right through a pig farm outside of Steyning, East Sussex. Pigs get a bad deal and live in forced labour camp conditions.

You start going a bit strange and thinking about how there can’t be beauty without pain, and all of that stuff.

The trifecta

My best photos on this trip resulted from combining clouds and animals with a sharply contrasting foreground. This is epic stuff, and it almost always happens when a storm approaches:

There you have it. Travel slowly, study closely, observe simplicity and find beauty. You know you’re doing it right when strange but wonderful things happen.

It happened to me on the last night of this trip in Alfriston, East Sussex. I was walking back to the hostel after dinner and literally was pulled into an art gallery exhibition before a heavy storm hit. I wound up photographing it for the artists, and got some free food out of the deal. It’s moments like those you find along your journey that you didn’t know you were searching for.

And riding these moments to conclusion sets you up for catching photos like these:

So what are you waiting for? Get walking!

Bonus:
Play around with this interactive map to follow my journey and see more photos where they were taken:

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