Lessons from the Woods

Last week we joined 260 hikers from all over the globe for a 50 km hike over three days in the Lake District on the Fjällräven Classic UK. Regular readers might that remember almost exactly a year ago, I did a recce for the route in absolutely wild conditions with a small crew from Fjällräven and a filmmaker and photographer in tow. The the actual event couldn't have been more different, with clea...

Wednesday, January the 11th marked one year since we left our woodland home and headed north for a new life in The Lake District. We thought it would be a good opportunity to reflect on our first year here and look back on how we feel now about leaving the woods, one year on. We talk about the highs and lows, the things that surprised us (and the things that didn’t!), finding a love for swimming i...

We recently recorded this episode from our new home in Cumbria, 6 months after leaving the woods. We wanted to reflect on what it was actually like to leave (spoiler alert, it was a LOT harder than we had anticipated it would be). In this episode, we recall some of the ‘last’ moments in the woods and the heartbreak and grief that we weren’t really prepared for. We also discuss where we are now, ho...

In this episode, we talk about how we’re feeling about leaving in the last week of our time in the woods. We think about what we will miss, how hard it will be to say goodbye to friends (both human and more than human) and what will become of the land we live on. We think about the things we are looking forward to leaving behind too, some of the less fun aspects of our living set up and the stress...

Good and bad, there’s been lots of both over our 10 years in the woods. We wanted to talk about what each of us remembered as being good - our highlights reel of memories - but to also reflect on the bad. We cover everything from getting married, having a baby, family connections, and starting a business to getting trolled, being let down and dealing with emotional and financial struggles. This fr...

This time we’re discussing how much living in the woods has changed us as people. How it shifted our values in ways we weren’t expecting and how we feel about these changes. Reflecting on our situation and how lucky we were to find the set up we did, we talk about our feelings on the way society has made it difficult for people to live closer to nature and how private land ownership prevents this...

Living in the woods gave us an up close and personal insight into the comings and goings of the creatures we shared the space with. Living closely alongside the wildlife of the woodland and surrounding grounds was such a privilege and something we know we might never experience in quite the same way again. During this conversation we recounted some of our most memorable experiences with wildlife a...

In this episode, we look back at the early days of our life in the woods. We reminisce on how we found the place, how it felt moving to a rural location and learning to embrace a simpler life. We remember some of our early wildlife encounters, first lessons in outdoor skills and the transition to being (very inexperienced!) groundskeepers. This episode sets the scene for a series of conversations...

Before we left our woodland home in January 2022 for a new life in Cumbria, we recorded a series of conversations reminiscing on our decade of living there, a time of deep transformation for us and one we wanted to always remember. We did this as a form of conversational journal, recounting the lessons we learned, the ways in which we had changed and the times we shared, good and bad. In doing thi...