WALKING WALES WITH MY WEIRD-LOOKING DOG

As some of you may know, on the 1st May 2023, I plan on setting off on a two-month walk around Wales. I will be doing this with two of my favourite people – Inés González Miguéns and Trianna Carroll – along with a goat called Cragen, our very small and unreliable travel mascot. Together, we form the most unlikely of expedition teams.

Chris Bonington:

 

“Sounds a fantastic wonderful project and I am very happy to put out my support. The very best of good fortune and have a wonderful time.”

Starting from the 1st May, we will trek over mountains, clamber through caves, and wild swim in freezing waters, staying in any accommodation we can find. We plan on covering an average of 90 miles a week, resting at lighthouses, underground bunkers, caving huts, monk-run communes (yes they have them in Wales!), pig barns, gypsy caravans, stranger’s houses, and good ol’ fashioned cabins in the woods. We will record our journey across Wales with the production of a documentary – with Inés as our camera woman with chronic back pain (inconvenient when you hold a camera for 5+ hours a day), Trianna being our travel-sick crew member, and myself being the host. Along with Cragen, of course.

We have already planned the first three months of the journey, and let me tell you, I absolutely did not think that there would be this much work involved. When Levison Wood went on his expedition to walk the Nile, I assumed that he spent about a week looking at maps and then set off in the general direction of the river. Oh, how I was wrong. This expedition has taken us nearly three years of talking about it, finalising details, and planning every single day – and we still have a lot more to go. It’s exhausting, but it will be worth it.

Reza Pakravan:

 

“This is an epic adventure around one of the most incredible parts of the world. The girls are super brave and ambitious and I am giving them my full support.”

I will be interviewing locals, getting hands-on with activities such as beekeeping, bushcraft, and metalwork, and experiencing the best and worst things that Wales has to offer. I will enter the bog snorkelling championship, attend my first ever L Fest, and try my hand at taxidermy. It’s going to be one heck of a journey, but it’s absolutely going to be worth it. 

We will walk north to meet self-proclaimed wizards, druids, former satanist priests, blacksmiths, mushroom farmers, rugby players, and millionaires – just to name a few. The more research we have conducted, the more we have become convinced that Wales is absolutely one of the wackiest places around. It’s very exciting.

Some of you may now be asking, why us? After all, we are untrained, a little naive, and can’t even navigate with Google Maps. Heck, we’ve never spent more than a week camping combined. But regardless of all of this, we are passionate, impulsive, and ready to get more than a little messy. Inés comes from the Celtic nation of Galicia, Trianna is a weeb for Welsh culture, and I myself am Welsh through-and-through (Swansea Abertawe boiiiis) – and we all want to dig deep into the heart of the country.

Our all-woman team is going to face unsurmountable highs and lows, and spending every hour of every day with one another is going to be the ultimate test of our friendship. Plus, we are going to see a lot of each other – and as someone with Crohn’s Disease who knows that she’s going to have to sh*t in the woods, it’s not going to be pretty. But what better way to spend the summer than sleeping on mountains infamous for making you awaken either a madman or a poet? Kicking back on islands where all of the inhabitants are convicts? Meeting the people loitering around abandoned insane asylums? It’s an expedition where really, nothing could go wrong.

Crohn’s Disease is something that I have talked about before on the blog, but have never really delved into the details of. It is an immobilising, merciless disease that no one actually wants to talk about. It seems that the general public still knows nothing about Crohn’s (and even a lot of gastroenterologists are clueless about how to treat it), and so I’m hoping that by undertaking this journey, I can bring light to a subject that is commonly avoided.

Ed Stafford:

 

“[These girls] are embarking on a fantastic adventure to capture Wales in all its gritty glory. I wish them well and give my full support to the project.”

 

I know that over the course of the journey, I will face the same stomach pain, weak joints, scarred skin, and malnutrition that I face on a daily basis at home – but man, I want to be an explorer, so it’s just something that I’m going to have to suck up. By the end of it all, you guys are going to be fluent in Crohn’s-related vocab, and the stereotypes relating to auto-immune diseases will be thoroughly challenged. It’s going to be a wild ride.

I will try to update you all on our expedition as it progresses – but the fact that we will spend days even without food means that I can’t guarantee a stable internet connection. I’m hoping that we will be able to find some sort of local accommodation most nights on the road when we haven’t planned anything, but understand that a goat will stop us from a lot of people letting us stay in their houses. But hear me out: to undertake this walk with a weird-looking dog in tow would be funny, and thus, worth it.

We have already received support from numerous explorers and celebrities, such as Ash Bhardwaj, Ed Stafford, Darius Arya, Chris Bonington, Benedict Allen, Reza Pakravan, Hayley Long, and Bill Bryson – all people I have spent my life looking up to. It’s as exciting as it is scary – but knowing that we have so much support from not only the people mentioned above, but radio stations, magazines, and local businesses, makes us feel as though this is a journey that really means something to people. And if they have faith in us after knowing how hopeless a team we are, well, I guess we have to do it.

To follow our journey, why not stalk our Twitter and Instagram?

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