Escaping London - Camping

When I first moved to London I was unaware how much I would miss trees. Of course, I'm not saying that there are no trees in London, there are just less. A lot less. Where I grew up, (Luton) I was never too far away from a park. My Grandparents would always take us for a walk on a Sunday to Barton Hills and I would run and jump and splash and breath in fresh air. Now I'm living in London I get excited to get out and explore.

This series of photos were taken on my Olympus OM1 on a trip camping. We loaded the car, turned the music up, and instantly got stuck in Hammersmith rush-hour traffic. It was like London was determined to keep us locked in the city of concrete trees.

When we finally reached the edge of London, the windows wound down and Summer music filling our chests, I finally felt free. We started seeing fields and sheep and horses grazing. To this day I'm not sure where we ended up. It was pitch black and we had reached some water and the obvious thing to do was to drive onto this ferry. We were the last on, the gates literally closed behind us and we hadn't yet turned the engine off before the ferry had begun moving out of the dock.

It was glorious. We wrapped up in our jackets, and looked out in silence.

The field that we had chosen to camp in was rather hidden. Well it was more that we couldn't find the right one and where the bloody hell we were meant to get in. In the end we settled for the one furthest away, drove right the edge of the trees and began raising the tents in the pitch black. London is never this dark. My hand in front of my face was invisible it was that dark. Once the tents were up the guys went to grab wood from the forest and we began making a fire.

Sat there, hovering our hands over the fire, listening to some music, completly on our own in this field was liberating. Talking about it now as I sit in my kitchen in my West London flat makes me wish I was there right now.

Here are some of the photos I took whilst Escaping London. Location: Unknown.

#London #camping #filmphotography #olympus #fire #escaping #35mm #analogue