Explorer Mikael Strandberg

Expedition England With A Pram: From Oxford To Leighton Buzzard

Time is 21:48 and I have problems seeing the keyboard because it is already starting to get dark outside again. We have put up camp in a field just off the road, so the traffic noise, as always in England, kind of dominates most outdoor nights. And days for us. On and off, like right now, you can hear birds singing. There´s plenty off them around. I am really tired, because tonight has been one of these nights when Dana just doesn´t want to sleep. It has taken 2½ hours to get her to wire down and sleep. She slept 13 hours yesterday and drank some kind of pop this evening, so this could be the reason. These evenings are few, but demanding. It is of course part of being a parent. Which most of the time have been quite easy on this journey, much due to the great help Georgia has given. She is really tired today, understandable, we have done 26-28 miles during the last two days, pushing on hard. I can´t hear her, so I suspect she has gone off making her daily call to her husband Greg.

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Having moaned a bit, my daily evening moan, I want to add that I almost need this freedom to sleep and live outdoors. And it seems like my daughter have inherited this need and I am sure, no matter what people say as regards to her forgetting this due to her 22 months of age, as Nigel Winser, the great expedition leader said during a vist to his and his wife Shane´s house last week:

“It gets stuck and sucked up by her genes.”

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He also said, which made me the proudest dad on earth, that she was the wildest (in a positive way) 22 months old he has ever come across. Even wilder than Wally Herberts daughter, Kari. I hope I can keep it that way, but I doubt it. Once the education system get their hands on it, it will be hard to keep this instinct. Society wants us all to be the same and behave the same way. However, if it is one thing I am really beginning to like with the UK and England, is the amount of alternative lifestyles that does exist, which is hard to find in Sweden which is very much all the same. This is one issue where England is far ahead. You can still choose to be different. Even though it is getting harder by the day. We met a wonderful Norwegian lady and her daughter he has lived on a canal boat for many years and seemed to thrive.

Last night we stayed with a collective living called Redfield and came across two very nice human beings which gave us a lot of perspective on most things and Peter was so convincing so we have rerouted and we are heading diretly to Luton. I find these people who choose to live an alternative life style much more interesting, inspiring and challenging than the main stream people we come across. I have a feeling they sit with many of the best solutions about our global future and they´re much more well read and insightful than mainstream society here in England. I am thinking a society who has the worst media in the world, these terrible, terrible tabloids, well, I think that says a lot about the English society itself. It beats me than anyone want to read them and more than anything, who choose to work for such inhuman, lying, war mongering rubbish? That must be as low as it gets as regards to life.

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Since we left Oxford, where we met some great people and stayed with my friend the incredibly inspiring and lively Helena Kennedy at her principal office at one of the colleges, we have walked though some very wealthy picturesque areas dominetad by private landowners and the eternal hedges, making it hard to enjoy the scenery. But to be England, very peaceful and calm.

To dark to continue to write, goodnight!

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Do follow our progress on http://punkt.luxson.com/daddyadventurer/

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One comment

  1. Lykke til på reisen!

    Love to all three, and the pram.

    x Olivia, Kaa and Eli

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