I had the idea to go on a road trip in the UK at the beginning of the year. I wanted to have a holiday and to get away for a while after finishing university. I decided to stay in the UK because I thought about going alone and am not brave enough to go abroad, especially for the first time. I also started thinking that we live in an amazing country and I have not seen very much of it, usually choosing to go abroad for holidays because there is often more guarantee of nice, hot weather. I cannot say whether my trip in the UK was more expensive than going abroad because 1, I went away for two weeks, usually abroad I would go for one and 2, I decided not to calculate the total of my recent trip because I think too much about spending money so I would have constantly been watching what I spend and therefore, holding back. The decision to go alone arose from friends having other plans and the more I thought about it the more I liked the idea of challenging myself. I swayed between feelings of excitement and nervousness. My nervousness was displayed through avoidance. The day before I left instead of finalising my itinerary (I'm a bit of a planner) and packing I went to the cinema. When I did get around to packing, before going to bed that night, I packed almost everything (prepared for all types of British weather). This was ok because I had the space in my car, what I didn't consider though, was carrying my full size suitcase and other bags up the many stairs to each of my rooms and back down again on the day of my departure. I had big plans to do some crazy things, things that I haven't done before, like kayaking and surfing (feel like you should if you visit Cornwall).
This didn't quite happen. I felt a little deflated towards the end of my trip because I felt I hadn't achieved what I wanted to. However, throughout the trip I weighed up my own feelings, what I wanted to do and what I thought I should be doing. In the end I decided that I should be enjoying myself and doing what I wanted to do rather than constantly trying to challenge myself and stress myself out. So I did a lot of wandering around exploring, quite often accompanied by my camera and book and broke up my days with coffee and food breaks. I experienced euphoric feelings of freedom at periods while I was away, it felt so nice to be away from daily stresses and responsibilities. Although, on the other hand, at times I was not sure how I felt. I think this is because I am currently in limbo, one chapter is closing and I am waiting for another to begin. As I have already written about, I have submitted my final university assignments and am awaiting the results and am due to start a new job in around two weeks. I also felt a great sense of space, whether I was by the beach in Bournemouth and Cornwall or out on the Moors in Dartmoor National Park or by the rivers in Bristol and Bath.
Hopefully more photos will follow but my laptop is running really slowly and I fear it may not handle ones from my DSLR and there are no more phone camera pictures because on my third day away it broke!
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