I left the festival I'd been looking forward to all summer early as the ever-expanding to-do list in my mind whirled round and round, drowning out even the pounding techno at Free Rotation festival, Hay-on-Wye, where my brother Sam was playing; making me tired, distracted and detached - grumpy too.
Hopefully my severely delayed but beautiful bike will arrive tomorrow, and my lovely bike-enthusiast friends (if I've got any left after the way I've been behaving) will be able to help me assemble it so the whole journey starts to feel more real- not that it ever leaves my mind for more than half a tic. If I'm lucky I may even be able to try it out before setting off!
For those of you who don't know, I am cycling to Boom festival, on the shore of Idanha-a Nova lake near Castelo Branco, in Portugal, next week.
The plan has been developed, destroyed and reconstructed entirely differently- the most thorough of these processes was the deconstruction but even that has not taken so much as the enthusing aspect! Maybe that's all I need...
I'm leaving for Bristol on Thursday, to do some work setting up for the Invisible Circus show, The Swing Thing. (www.invisiblecircus.co.uk) Then on Wednesday morning, I catch a train to Portsmouth and a ferry to Santander, where my journey really begins.
The real preparation was not even started until one week ago, when I saw my friend Caitlin at her beautiful exhibition in the Tabernacle in Machynlleth (www.toomuchneverenough.co.uk, www.momawales.org.uk), and she gently informed me of the dramatic decline of half of the adventure's participants.
When I started volunteering at the Centre for Alternative Technology (CAT)'s Information Centre 5 months ago, Caitlin was working in the same office as me, answering the phone to people keen on tapping CAT's extensive knowledge and experience in the world of green technologies, carbon reduction and low-impact living (www.cat.org.uk/information). We tried hard to concentrate on our work but found ourselves diverging into the realms of subjects the two of us found we shared massive interest and enthusiasm in, bouncing ideas off each other and rattling away about the minutiae of our environmental concerns, cultural and social dreams, glittery enthusiasm, nutritional passion, and festivals! So it wasn't long before we discovered we both had plans to go to Boom this year, and we both agreed that the carbon footprint of all the party people getting to this beauteous occasion is probably its sole let-down. So the obvious answer, to us at least, was to cycle there. Why of course! We can take tu-tus, and body paint, and glitter, and sleep in the hedges and do yoga in the morning and dawdle through picturesque and sleepy villages and wild and vibrant towns on our way...
Our plan didn't form much further than that, apart from me borrowing my dad's bike, which has already carried my uncle Greg to Spain, and trying to get used to the idea of using it! Until, that is, Caitlin told me she may not be able to come any more. My initial reaction to this development was blinding shock and some gnarly terror somewhere at the bottom of my belly, covered up with a thick but probably transparent- like the walls of the shark tank at the aquarium- layer of "Of course that's fine!"
But it turned out to be exactly the kick up the arse I needed (am I allowed to say arse on here? Who's going to read this, anyway- I don't have any 'followers' yet, so I'm basically just talking to myself really, aren't I?) As soon as I'd had a good potter around the exhibition, I nipped over to my local bike shop the Holey Trail and got myself a basic tool kit, some advice, some of those tight and padded shorts (goodness! what a combo...) and told them never to let me come back and get a regret-fuelled refund. My incentive being, if I spent loads of money on stuff I'd never use unless I went on the trip, then I'd have to go, wouldn't I?!
When I got home I booked my ferry ticket, train ticket to the ferry, and chased up the bike I'd been eyeing up on ebay. All kinds of drama with the bike that you really don't need to hear about, but hopefully it'll be here tomorrow so fingers crossed all will be well!
My fixed-grin-desperate enthusiasm only waned when I arrived at mums house and broke the news to her of my now solo trip, and was told bluntly "If you told your councillor you were planning on doing this, she'd tell you not to go!"
So my vague suspicion that I've gone completely mad has been confirmed, but I think that's just the first stage of the process and it wouldn't be possible to make this kind of trip with too much sanity on my back the whole time (it's heavy stuff, you know) so as I've said already- it's going to be FINE!!
What follows are my truncated diary entries since that day.
Enjoy, and if you feel inspired by my trip, please donate money to my favourite charity of the moment, the Bees for Development Trust - http://beesfordevelopment.org/support_us/donation - and forgive me for not getting organised to get some sort of sponsorship thing going, things have been a little too manic, as you've heard.
Bees for Development Trust is an international charity working to promote sustainable beekeeping in developing countries, to support livelihoods and to conserve biodiversity.
We love bees, bees make honey and they're furry and they pollinate our food and flowers x x x
