No rent, a tent & a camera: Backpacking Britain

no rent a tent and a camera backpack in britain this is my journey working from general groves in scotland lands end in england solo yes i had to run back for the phone every time i wanted to get shot like that this is the tent i'd be using here's a camera and a drone drone for aerial shots and i converted and live in my van that's a no rent pot by the way the food i usually eat pretty good at home but with the energy i'll be burning in the next couple of months i've figured out anything and everything was on the menu chocolate bars fish and chips fizzy drinks wild fruit you name it oh and beer lots of it i'd set up camp wherever my backpack was placed at the end of that day mainly farmers fields forests and walking paths but mainly farmers fields i'm sorry farmers i forgot to mention i'm liam by the way grab some popcorn put your feet up just enjoy the journey before i could even set off walking i had to get a train from crew to inverness which was around nine hours and then i had a two hour stop over in inverness and then it was like three hours to wick train station then from wick car to get two hour bus to general groats i finally made it to the famous general goat signpost pretty knackered though after a quick selfie with a signpost and 1 200 miles ahead of me the only thing left to do is to start walking the route i chose to take when planning a walk was to take the general goats coastal path which would take me around the coast all the way to inverness and that's around 100 miles it wasn't long before i started to see the beautiful rugged scottish coast [Music] after a few miles of walking that evening i'm bumping into an abandoned horse plow which is weird i decided to set up camp right on the edge of the cliffs first camp of the journey then so yeah that's it just a standard one-man tent but wow amazing just while camping in scotland as you do look at the ocean amazing um i feel so lucky the highland midge is a species of small flying insect that swarms in their thousands and bites you whenever it gets the chance this would become the bane of my existence one scotland for anybody wondering what i'm eating so i bought six of these and just some snacks i brought so about three or four days of food um yeah rather than bring my jetboil and gas which is extra weight i ditched it last minute took out my backpack saved a kilo and i'm gonna cold soak stuff so it won't be that nice but it doesn't matter i'll save weight i set off the next morning feeling fresh and ready to get some miles under my legs i come to find out though that the coastal path it was overgrown and pretty damn impenetrable so i decided to take the a9 road that goes from jono groats all the way to inverness i didn't know at the time but i was in for a horrendous next few days of road walking [Applause] first bit of rain i've had all my waterproof gears on you can see there but it wasn't too bad it's pretty warm now so i'm gonna have to take it off again but this is scotland for you back on back off that's it's gonna be like that the whole trip i know where i'm staying today i've been along this road for miles and miles without finding any spot suitable anyway when i come across this abandoned building this was open so they must have got through that way but set my tent up don't have to worry about the rain no midges about perfect it's just you know the little things in life make it perfect i was struggling at the end of this like i was so close to being like oh no i need to stop i came across this little gem the next few days the weather started to look a lot better fueled by some of the best fish and chips i've ever had pass through some small towns and villages slowly but surely make my way to inverness i'm a bit bored so i've been playing the game look how much change i can find on the floor on like the side of the road and i've found a pound so far so that'll go towards a kind of coke another one pound coin you know one thing i miss about normal life let's say is blueberries without fail i eat a couple handfuls of blueberries every day for the past few years i love them and i feel healthy eating them yeah i'm missing them i really feel like some but guess what i've set my tent up in such a random place and i think i found some wild blueberries have a look at this so we're here it's my tent i was just looking at my feet blisters right across here i was like no no blueberries i've searched them off on google they look like them i've tasted one already oh my god fresh scottish blueberries i cannot believe it they're all over the place so in the morning i'm going to be eating these feeling revitalized from the blueberries i set off the next morning determined to get off the a9 road as quickly as possible i was sick of it the goal was to do 20 miles a day and by this time there was a heat wave approaching the uk after over 100 miles on the a9 road i crossed the bridge to get into inverness this is where i could join onto the great glenway great glen way stretches for 118 kilometers from inverness to fort william and follows along loch ness as well as the caledonian canal this is the part i was looking forward to slept right there under this massive tree last night good sleep nice and cool and we got that over there goodbye in vanessa [Applause] the contrast between road walking and trail walking was exactly what i needed peace tranquility and awesome views to take him [Music] that right there then is the first glimpse of loch ness i've had and we're just going to carry on along it apparently now all on the great glen way all the way to fort william and we started inverness so it should take me around five or six days hopefully and if i put some work in i could probably do it sooner [Applause] every now and again i'd come across drinking water taps in the middle of nowhere these were literally lifesavers for me by this time i become in air quotes walking fit and i was getting used to the weight on my back every night i'd roll my legs and feet with a kind of mosquito spray i had it's pretty makeshift but it worked so it's day ten we're about five miles from a town called fort augustus and that there is loch ness i'm just carrying on right along it and what a view it is [Music] after walking the length of loch ness i jumped onto the caledonian canal towpath and one evening a pretty magical thing happened to me just sat on this bench shoes off let my feet breathe i think i'm gonna set up here i've been going for i don't know hours it's like seven o'clock um there's a little way down if you can see like there i'm gonna go for a little dip in the caledonian canal freshen up and get straight to bed what the hell i'm just sitting here the one thing i noticed about the caledonian canal was that it was so picturesque it belonged on the postcard the walking was easy flat just straight walking paths for miles and miles so we just met a lad and we got speaking he was like we basically just asked each of the way you're off and i was like i'm lanza mate nothing you know not too far he's like oh i've just done that well he's doing the opposite way to me currently so he started that land's end and he's going to general growth so i was getting all the lowdown off him and like what it's like and he's like i got some for me anyway i've got some good uh tracks pretty easy stuff coming up and the bit i was worried about not worried about but a bit skeptical about was uh where to take like what kind of route to take while i was in england and he just said go through like cheshire which i'm going anyway and head between like the path of wales and england if you like the board a bit so happy days but you started in may and right now it's like the 20th of july so he's got a good two weeks left so around two and a half three months i'm looking at so yeah i've got all like the low down from it i feel so much better now it's a beautiful day caledonian canal we'll keep going so that there is ben nevis from about 15 miles away right now and you can still see it's july and the snow is still in the mountain one morning i was rudely woken up from a nap by an aurier fighter jet this is when i decided to get off into four william grab the coffee and ironically there was a caledonian sleeper train waiting outside as if to tempt me to go back home the same train i used to get to the top of scotland i needed a shower i didn't smell that good so i booked a hotel room seven pound this was oh feels so much better just had a shower ensuite shower amazing i'm living in luxury right now but yeah happy days man i feel really good the morning after i sampled the local delicacy haggis meh four out of ten i set off and toward fort william for most of the day but i even set up camp at the base of ben nevis next to the river i cooled off in the river ate like a pig and got some rest for the next phase of the walk the west island way is a 154 kilometer long walking route between fort william and milne gavi near glasgow one word hills it was one of the hottest days of the year and though parts of the trail which were vast and pretty remote right now then i'm headed along the west highland way all the way around just up for a water break mountain into the left and the right of me oh it's so hot one of the hottest days of the year in scotland so far running low on the wet stuff sunburned and sick of walking i came across my idea of an oasis during that moment such a long day so dehydrated i really oh i can't even speak i basically banked on everything i've still got some water but i really needed like just a bathe so luckily there was a little plunge pool over there running water should be able to fill up from this as well with my water filler oh happy days i'm so hot okay let's go in there for a lot of the west highland way i was alone but the good alone i could be left to my own devices experiencing the world and challenging myself i didn't know why people were so scared about britain alone i was loving it what's that oh just a laptop can i charge it that's normal oh man it's like an obstacle course oh my legs is too late for the day so i've just set my camp up next to the river and i was just sitting down just about to take my shoes off and through the trees hopefully you can see right there there's a stag a big stag look at that right there about 30 meters away at this point of the west highland way this was the peak of the heat wave 30 degrees in scotland which is unheard of a cold beer at the end of the day and sometimes in the morning it was absolutely necessary it wasn't long before i started to reach the shores of loch lomond 39 kilometers in length with overgrown walking tracks a knock on effect of the pandemic it's like being in a jungle i think it just goes to show how fast nature reclaims its land back from humans in a hundred years our towns and cities will be nothing left of them i'm not too far from glasgow now and that is the only hill slash mountain i can see there's a few in the distance but they're really small and i'm so happy to see the back of them i made it to milne gavi the endpoint of the west island away from me i decided to book a hotel and head into glasgow this is what a 25 pound hotel gets you in the middle of glasgow that's loud but it doesn't matter so i've got bathroom pretty clean pretty modern shower that's good i need to turn off that's too loud like a little lawrence closet just a bed simple but i've got sockets to charge from i've got kettle to make coffee and tea let's go um yeah everything's there i'm just gonna sort my stuff out charge your stuff and just let my feet rest so the past three days i've been without a phone i'm about 15 miles away from gretna which is on the border with scotland in england i was listening to music and my earphones got tangled in um like the chest part of my backpack dropped on the floor screen wasn't cracked but the touchscreen stopped working so i was screwed and yeah it's just pretty bad so i didn't have a i didn't have my maps for three days so i just followed the psychopath from i think it's psychopath 74 all the way down to carlisle got into carlisle last night stayed in the hotel and this morning went to a phone shop fix my screen and touch screen so it works so we can wait we can record but yeah i'm about 15 20 miles away like east of carlisle now i'm heading i don't know what town it's called but i'm gonna go on to the pennine way all the way down to the peat district that's the plan so yeah should be good should be good but the past few days it's just been following crappy roads listening to lots of traffic poured out my mind we've got like the river there it looks a bit murky so i'm not gonna go for a swim above you big pillars protected from the wind right here not too shabby let my socks dry off i just had something sweet i'm gonna brush my teeth and get an early night but not bad location but we're in england and while camping's illegal so i gotta keep down and just keep quiet after some more road walking i'm meeting a great lady called sue let's go check it out if you have a passing yeah that's two [Applause] i was in yorkshire i'm pretty happy now uh hopefully fingers crossed i've left all the main roads all the noise behind and i'm heading towards the pennine way i'm about nine ten miles away from the pennine way so i'm going to jump on at a town called well it's like a little village or something it's called keld k-e-l-d jump on there and just go all the way down let's have a look gotta meet with me right there it was almost like the second i set foot onto the pendant way it started to pour down with rain for a week straight i was drenched this is like the first proper downpour we've had all through scotland it's literally light drizzle that's all i had luckily and now i'm in england it's like if you can see you'll probably hear it but yeah i'm just getting shallower under the tree but welcome to england i suppose my waterproofs became so saturated that it wasn't even worth wearing them anymore my socks and shoes soaking my feet started to suffer from being wet for 12 hours a day too it was vital i had my feet out while i was in the tent or i'll get something called immersion foot which isn't good i used baby powder do you know the white chalky stuff it dried my feet out and help them heal i did this twice a day and it was a lifesaver for the walk when i said it rained for a week straight i mean it didn't stop ever it rained and rained and poured that bit right there that bog was the hardest bit of the walk so far just dated me i just went in like the bog went up to there my knee there's a dead sheep carcass right over there yeah so he obviously or she probably drowned in it and i went through it just being an idiot i am i got absolutely drenched despite all of the bad weather i was enjoying the challenge this is exactly why i was doing it so we've just been thinking on the up this hill you know like how can anyone moan at a life we live nowadays it's so easy fresh running water a nice hot shower ah fresh clean nice smelling clothes to put on every day staying dry warm electricity internet oh my god i can go on and i'm here smelling of crap quite literally going up a hill soaking wet feet has just soaked i just yeah that's why i'm doing it this is exactly why i'm doing it just to appreciate the niceties of life i'm just drenched it's been like raining all day we're lucky honestly you cannot moan a decent view but it's all foggy and raining but yeah i've just had one of them moments this is exactly why i'm doing it i'm loving it i'm not really fear kill him but it's all good not far to go just entered my home county cheshire let's go i'm like 33 miles away from my parents house where i grew up let me just quickly show you where i've come tonight oh please what a view it's cold but amazing it's pretty early in the morning now and um i'm literally one walking day away from my parents where i'm doing a pit stop for a couple days so i can go out go back rest my legs and just chill out for a bit before i set off again before lands end but yeah it's probably the earliest i've set off sun's just rising i feel good i feel really good can't wait just to not do anything had a few days rest i feel good but i kept putting it off you know i kept throughout the day it's like four o'clock right now i kept saying to yourself 10 minutes we'll leave and i kept putting it back 10 minutes just yeah it's the hardest bit i really think that's the hardest bit of anything it's just starting it getting started once you're out doing it it's easy it's just initially getting started it's the hardest bit but we're on our way going to oz westery and i can get on the i think the trail is called offers dyke and just yeah along the welsh english border so broken it down into four stages just to kind of like for my mind really i think we're coming up to offers dyke path is this it hopefully i don't know i said on the map i should be yeah there we go there we go let's just get straight on it now so office dyke is a 285 kilometer long distance footpath that runs between the english and welsh border i never did any research about the route whenever i think of wales i think of hills grey skies and rain i wish i could tell you different but that's exactly what i got just finished walking for the day set up in a forest the pathways like that way up that hill so that's good got a fire going for the first time since yeah i haven't done one on a walk i'm just trying all my socks soaking wet today it's been raining but these are drying quickly just walk through a massive orchard full of fresh kind of like green red apples damsons i think there were cherries so i've got you can see two apples and then that there you can see it's a damson i've never tried a damson i just googled it you can eat them but apparently they're really taut and the best cooked and added you know with sugar and stuff like that but i'm gonna try it i've never tried one but that i'm not an apple guy to be honest but that was probably the best sweetest most flavorful apple i've ever had standing in a little village like a really small village in the middle of nowhere called long town there we go but over there you don't understand oh if you happen zoom in it says village shop sure it was a long time i always feel it's the little things that keep you going and it was finding fresh fruit seeing a little shop in the middle of nowhere these things lifted my mood and spurred me on to keep going throughout the whole walk i'm a simple man i know while i was walking along off his dike i stumbled upon a sick sheep if you're squeamish i advise you to look away right now oh there's a little sheep or i don't know if it's a lamb it's alive but barely moving oh i don't know what to do i'm going to try feed or something cool mate do you want some the poor thing is proper i think it's like a really bad infection all right i've got some like savlon it's not going to do anything antiseptic cream but reminds me of my dog that's why i can't leave it i left the sheep and started to take quite farm roads towards bristol last night then i stayed in a there's a bed and breakfast and usually i've just been staying in cheap hotels you know just as long as i have a bed and a shower but it was the cheapest place in the area it was like 55 pound or something i was like all right i'll get one because i needed to charge my batteries anyway for my you know to charge my phone up and stuff and it needed a shower and whatever i was in there but it was so posh the owners of it there was a man and a woman really nice but i felt so out of place you're like waiting on your hand and foot with your the cutlery laid out you know like posh very posh bringing like afternoon tea out with three different spoons like a pot of tea all that kind of stuff and i just felt it was so awkward that i am not that type of person i'm the type of person to eat a takeaway with a spoon and just one spoon only i just i don't think i'll be ever staying in a bed and breakfast again they were nice enough and it was a nice place but i just felt out of place but it was in a town called kington i think it's close to hereford uh right now i'm about six miles away from hay on y so yeah i'm i'm like 40 miles away from bristol which is really close uh the weather is just really nice now i'll show you it doesn't look too nice but for the past two and a half three weeks it has been pouring down every day without fail oh you can see the blue sky there um but yeah just sit down have a chat with you i'm feeling good my feet have been in a bit of a crap state the past few days just because they've been constantly wet on my socks when i've been drying them they go like really hard and they rub on your feet and just yeah anyway it doesn't matter um should be good if it dries out what does that even mean the world's first book town makes no sense hey on why for the first time in the walk the monotony was eaten away at me so i'm definitely two-thirds of the walk done one third left i want to say 200 miles maybe 250 it's not that much when i put it all into perspective but the hardest thing now is mentally just keeping going i can deal with all the aches and pains and blisters and whatever just boredom that's what's getting me now i've listened to so many podcasts and music and watched videos and i just cannot watch anymore i'm so bored like it's just the brain has just got to mush and especially when uh being on your own you're always in your thoughts and you just you get sick of yourself it is difficult so it's just that now keeping going and i try to break it up each hour just to take my pack off five minutes sit down let's have a rest but yeah i'm con seeing like a state of um just just after you've woken up if you know what that feels like which everyone does like hazy kind of mind and just in like a brain fog that's it's constantly like that all day you know just boredom my brain i can barely remember things it's like i'm getting dementia i know it's not funny but it's kind of like that so yeah it's one of these things you don't really think about just the boredom but it is that's the biggest thing now bristol going over the bridge right now oh you can feel it shaking that's not nice just come across that i've come just there's so many of them kind of tracks that aren't actually there where like farmers just forget to put them where they're supposed to be and because i have like the os maps online i have access to every one of them and it's like like this she's a dense jungle nettles everywhere i'm just going through them getting stung to death got stung by a bee and we're a wasp i haven't been stung for like since i was a little kid and it killed ah like luckily it hasn't swelled up but there where it's red is of killer um but yeah right now just crossed the seven bridge a couple hours ago sorry about the camera work it's just it's a bit shaky this bridge is like half falling in but yeah the uh i don't know what road that is the m4 is it i'm just basically parallel to that there's a seven bridge come across that before and wow it's hot i've been following this path through a farmer's field and we're next to the i think it's the i don't know it's a busy motorway kind of thingy near bristol but look it should be a pathway and it's massively overgrown no one uses it anymore so i'm just looking for a place to stay it's actually quite good this is a little road it's a style and that's like a busy road right there there's a bridge pretty busy right now loud but a few hours the noise will die down but at the bottom let me just show you it's like a jungle you can you can just tell no one uses this put the bottom right there a little bit of a wood and it's flat so i'm gonna set up camp pretty good find actually happy with that i got to bristol topped upon supplies and set off for the final leg of the journey towards land's end i was in the groove of things and the end was in sight i started to enjoy it and take everything in whereas at the beginning it was a mission to finish as quick as possible take a look at this there's a little deer right there see it things can't see it hello just found the thomas the tank engine football i created games myself usually made the day go quicker so for the past day and a half i want to say two days i've really recorded anything just been walking and yeah just getting in the groove of it but uh past taunton yesterday it was um just passed a little town called tiverton went through it chilled out in there for a couple of about an hour it was two hours and uh setting off down just some country lanes has anybody ever heard of fox bark no me neither can't believe it there's a fox it keeps like barking i've had to like scare it away just by shouting and making noise see he's like stalking me so annoying i was finally into devon and i decided to stop at a campsite the best part about it though was that they sold fresh cow's milk in one liter bottles i was in heaven so i've walked about 25 miles today just over and yesterday it was 23 or something so i've done in two days about 48 miles which is probably the most combined in two days of the whole of this walk i feel okay though on a really steep downhill and then it's like on the map there's like free arrows meaning downhill uphill and there's like three up hills after this downhill i'm not looking forward to this it's really steep look at that i just had to go through a hedge to get to the track i'm working on and i just thought to myself i'm so glad i'm not in scotland right now because i would have had like 15 20 ticks crawling over me biting me midges attacking me just insects trying to bite you whereas in england we're really lucky it's really benign and it's nice in cornwall i found another fresh milk farm this one had a dispenser which was great cornish milk from a dispenser this is like a farm oh wow so you suspense your milk fresh milk one pound twenty one liter of fresh milk is amazing [Music] so the past few days i've been taking the the main roads basically to lands and just uh cut the journey not sure but quick just to make it quicker and i'm finally here i'm about a mile and a half away from the lands and signpost i'm on the southwest coastal path but take a look at this sunset the iphone doesn't do it justice but that's probably the best sunset i've ever seen it's come full circle at the start when i was at john o'groats i camped on a cliff the first night and i'm doing it right now right at the end one ending right over there [Music] the signpost is like there i think i set my turn up for the last time and had my last camping meal i fungi i've had six of these in a row and i'm sick of them but i'm just going to enjoy it i'm going to try and enjoy it look at that with the netting oh wow this is my view i'm very lucky right now lands end right there speechless all right just woke up it's i don't know it's like five to six in the morning i'm gonna get ready and then go see that sign just packing my stuff away and i feel a little bit sad this little tent this sleeping pad all my stuff in there it's got me through almost two months of backpacking britain madness let's go hold on i can't believe we made it and there is the sign oh my god london hotel there's even a bench there so i can sit down afterwards i did it we did it the camera i would have loved to fly my drone but they didn't because there's an airport nearby you can't actually fly a drone here oh well that's the least of my worries right now i can go home i can get the train and just oh i can't wait anyway i better start planning the next adventure i don't know what i don't know what's going on top backpack in britain but i'm sure i'll think of something well that was worth it

Channel: LiamBrown

Views: 2,085,574

Keywords: Backpacking, Backpacking Britain, back packing, John O'groats, Lands End, Jogle, Lejog, Liam Brown

Id: 9Fphbcthrfk

Length: 38min 56sec (2336 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 07 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/Huffyseventytwo]

seen this and a few of his videos .likeable bloke.was in the army,asked if he would do it again,he said NO!

[u/Intelligent-Mix-2655]

Superb. Well done chap.