Bring in the druids.

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There’s some confusion at the campsite over just who to pay for the night. Apart from a few lazy sheep and an inquisitive horse that’s sniffing a young colt’s behind, there’s not a soul in sight. We decide to pack our tents, along with our good intentions, and make tracks to Glastonbury. Nearby we stop to make breakfast in a small clearing, and we’ve just polished off the last of the bangers when a car stops at the side of the road. From the wary look in the driver’s eye, we suspect she wants to make sure we’re not about to make off with a thresher. Lenny turns up the charm and her best finishing-school accent. Benny explains that he wanted to show the beauties of the English countryside to his American friend, a travel writer.

That’s me.

I flash my brightest aw-shucks American smile and try to sound like I’m taking a professional interest in the season’s crops. In the back of my mind, I’m feeling awfully glad that I didn’t take a crap in the woods before she showed up. When she drives off, I’m a little bitter about the whole travel-writer bit. I can’t always get going until my second cup of coffee, and I don’t think I’ve acquitted myself - or my country - all that well.

On the way to Glastonbury, Benny’s getting worked up about buying a camper van of his own. He and Lenny have been making plans to ditch their jobs and hit the road, and there’s a manic glint in his eye as he talks about folding futons and gas-powered fridges. He swivels in his seat and takes quick measurements in his head. Briefly, I entertain thoughts of buying a van to tour the American countryside. What a grand time it could be, stopping in small towns for a game of Minor League baseball and a slice of homemade pie. Mornings breaking in blue and purple bands on the prairie, sunsets over swaying fields of wheat. I’m calculating the cost of gas to drive coast-to-coast when Glastonbury comes into view.

If you want to see what happens when the Renaissance Fair runs amok, make it your business to visit Glastonbury. There was a time when the city’s famous music festival was Britain’s answer to Woodstock; today, even as free love and daisy chains have given way to port-a-potties and corporate sponsors, the town still bears the imprint of hippies past. Crystals are hawked by the side of the road; grown men wear their hair in pony-tails without a whiff of irony. Never mind onerous chains like The Gap or Virgin Music. Here you can do your shopping at Man, Myth & Magik, Heartfelt Trading, or - your one-stop shop for God-knows-what - Magick Box in the Mists of Avalon.

There’s a gnawing uneasiness as we walk the streets. Who are these people with their walking sticks and velvet cloaks, their mild eyelids fluttering over mugs of chai? More importantly: are they having children, and how can they be stopped? “Those were some proper fruitcakes,” Benny notes, as we haul ass out of town. Even as the city recedes to a distant dot in the rearview mirror, there’s a sense that words like “pixie” and “bard” will never again capture the gravity they once had.


In Bath we continue our circuit of Britain’s top tourist traps. Though the sight of the late-day light playing off its elegant façades is a wonder to behold, it’s the crowds and prices of Bath that are even more astonishing. Here you can take a spot of afternoon tea for upwards of £25, or get fleeced by any number of souvenir shops housed in - it must be said - handsome Georgian buildings. After some serious soul- and wallet-searching, we decide to give the baths themselves a pass. At an even ten quid - US$19, if you’re counting at home - I can’t quite justify the expense. Especially when any number of fine views can be gleaned from a nearby postcard rack.

Besides, not all of my interest in visiting the town has to do with Bath itself. I’ve made plans to meet another friend, who’s making the drive from nearby Bristol. Lee and I met in Waikiki; we spent a week hiking and camping our way across Kauai. It was a transformative week for me, in many ways. That’s why I need to take a second to explain the thing about Lee.

THE THING ABOUT LEE

Lee’s about 5’7” and built like a sack of nails. When I met him in Hawaii, he was on the tail-end of a round-the-world trip. He’d just spent a few weeks diving off the coast of Vancouver Island; not long before, he was on an overland trek across Tasmania. At the time, I was anything but the rugged outdoorsmen you have before you today. Still wet behind the ear as a traveler, I’d arrived in Hawaii with a suitcase full of clothing testifying to my urban roots. Yes, dear readers, there was a time when leaving home without four pairs of sneakers and five pairs of jeans seemed like the height of travel folly - though I was mercifully past the point where I still lathered crap into my hair.

I’d also arrived in Hawaii with the sense - after two-plus months of solo travel - that a seismic shift was waiting in the wings for me. Already I’d realized that my suitcase full of fashionable jeans and snazzy tees was overkill (a point proven later, when I mailed a 70-lb. duffel bag back to New York). And there was a restless feeling in my gut that some sweaty excursion into the Hawaiian hinterlands might be the start of some marvelous new chapter in my life.

None of which I mentioned to Lee in our hostel in Waikiki.

I convinced him to hop a flight with me to Kauai, sealing the deal with some glossy photos of the place they call “The Garden Isle.” Of course, there were some logistical problems to work around; nowhere among that 70 lbs. of clothing was anything that might prove handy during a week-long jaunt across the Na Pali Coast. Or, as Lee put it with his pitch-perfect BBC English: “How do you plan on camping in the rain forest without a bloody tent?”

During that strange and wondrous week, Lee taught me a thing or two about packing light and pitching tents and training a fat, overfed stomach to sustain itself on trail mix and packets of tuna. Though I might very well be where I am today without that week in Kauai, I’d like to think some of the bumps in the road were smoothed over by Lee’s patient, slightly patronizing hand.

My timing in Bath couldn’t be better: in just a few weeks, Lee’s planning to go back to New Zealand - possibly for good. He’s brought along his girlfriend, a bubbly and well-traveled blond who’s short enough to make him seem towering by comparison. We spend an hour exchanging travel stories. I bore Jane to tears with tales from Kauai she’s probably heard a thousand times before. She tells me about her first trip to Indonesia. There was gunfire on the streets of Jakarta as she made her way from the airport; one night, a shady local guide took her and a friend to camp near an active volcano. In the morning, their faces and hands were scorched. She could practically peel the skin off in sheets.

She shares some very enlightening facts about the history of the Cornish pasty - an English treat to which I’ve warmed in recent weeks. There was a time when those neat little pockets of dough weren’t just a godsend for grubby backpackers, but a practical way for miners to pack the day’s lunch. Wrapped in dough and snugly folded, the savory stews inside were safe from the dirt that coated your average Cornish miner in thick, sooty layers. Though his lungs might’ve looked like the bowels of the earth, his stew was as fresh as if it’d just been spooned from the pot.

It seems pasties are just one more in a long list of things I have in common with Cornish miners. Afterward I show Lee pictures of the high-tech camping gear I’ve brought along for my trip; it is, he admits, a “pucker” tent. I give him a pair of chopsticks from Japan that have traveled about 18,000 miles in the past year, the reason for which I’ll save for another day. Then we make plans to meet on the other side of the world, sometime in the improbable, distant future.

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