Let adventure commence

I’ll blog on WW tomorrow when we’ve actually done a full day but wanted to catch up on here with first impressions.

We left the campsite this morning after charging everything up and having showers and Willow started and got here fine. We only had a postcode and the community is not marked from the road. We drove up a narrow road where I could see a likely looking bloke and toddler hanging out and sure enough we were in the right place. We parked Willow, shook hands with the guy and were introduced to the toddler then started to walk up the hill. It is about 1/2 mile of the very steepest, fairly muddy pathway. We hailed people and introduced ourselves as we went and then reached the communal building where we met the guy (Jon) who we have met a couple of times before at the Green Fair at the Sustainability Centre. We got a warm welcome from him and were introduced to a couple of other people coming in and out before being shown where we were pitching our tent. They had offered us use of a tent but when it became clear they were digging one out of a buried pile we said we’d use our own. Really pleased we did as it’s gone up perfectly in the space and feels nice to be in a space that we are familiar with. We are pitched even further up the hill but with easily the most amazing view we have ever camped with. It’s right in the woodland too, two pairs of ravens nest in a nearby tree and it’s just breathtakingly gorgeous.

We then trudged back down, bringing a wheelbarrow and poor Ady did three barrow-loads of our stuff up while I packed it all up. Tent, sleeping mats, sleeping bags, pillows and blankets, one set of clothes to get dressed in tomorrow morning – I don’t think we’ll be changing outfits much these two weeks and a rucksack each with various essentials.

Davies and Scarlett had already disappeared into the woods, hooking up with children as they went. There are at least four families here but three of them use the local school, but there are two lovely Home Ed girls here who D & S have already clicked with. Then it was lunchtime – veggie soup and bread. I made the mistake of being heavy handed with the chilli sauce on the side (to try and take the taste of veggies away ;)) and was rendered speechless for about 20 minutes as it kicked in!

Then to the tent. It went up fine, we got it all set up, admired the view for a bit longer and then went to find out what we could do workwise. We ended up helping carry some wood up the hill, stack it up for firewood inside and chop loads of veg for dinner prep. So far I think we’ve talked to everyone and they all seem pretty friendly, some more reserved and cagey about giving too much away more than others. A couple of the families are particularly open and friendly and I’m hoping we’ll get some more chatting time as the days go past.

Ady and I walked back down to Willow to gather headtorches and then it was dinner time, which was slightly crazy and communal. There is definite friction and politics here, I guess an almost inevitable part of a community and there seems to be issues over entitlements, who is doing what and how the finances are sorted. But, it’s an established intentional community, albeit a fairly transitional one with regards to the actual individuals and I think we will learn loads, both from the individuals here and the community as a whole.

The communal kitchen has recently become vegetarian rather than vegan and actually many of the people here are meat eaters. There was much scoffing about consensus and decision making and meetings and I get the feeling we’ll be witness to the odd falling out, it’s a very interesting place to be.

Dinner was a different experience of food, jacket potatoes but they are out of butter and don’t do cheese communally as it’s too pricey so we all had it with cold pressed oil instead of butter and then added marmite and chilli sauce for flavour. It was surprisingly delicious. Then a quiche, made with rye flour and oil pastry, eggs and oat milk and mucho veg. It was interesting – not very quiche like and definitely lacking cheese and bacon, but edible. The kids all had apple crumble – they always feed the children first here which seems like a nice way of doing things.

I’m missing tea – there is hot water and there were tea bags around earlier but I couldn’t easily see them later on and everyone headed off to their own dwellings by about 7pm. We hung around for a while and helped clear up the kitchen before deciding it was cold and dark and we had a crazy hill climb to do so we’d head for our tent, meaning we were all tucked up in our sleeping bags before 8pm. I’m feeling achey of knee – that hill is a killer – and slightly hungry, given I have already eaten and it’s earlier than I’d normally have dinner.

The kids are having a ball, it’s very much their sort of environment, loads of mud, people to play with, dangerous pursuits and interesting adults to talk to, they have slotted in perfectly. I can see us getting plenty of use out of the kindle and limited everything else as although I suspect I could plug a phone charger in a couple of times I don’t think appearing with a laptop, mifi and various other chargers every day would go down well.

We seem warm enough all snuggled in together, we all have really good sleeping bags and in a small space our body heat alone should see us through the night. We have biscuits, and a bottle of brandy and hip flasks so while it is a wildly different experience to what we are used to, I think it will be the perfect start to our adventure in demonstrating how very different other people’s lives are.

So, quick summary, we’re here, we’re fine, I think we’ll manage the two weeks and get loads out of it. 🙂