Lockdown Adventures…
Throughout the various COVID-19 lockdowns over the past year, creating my own adventures has been the only thing that has been keeping me going from week to week! Here’s a little insight into what I’ve been up to…
Throughout the various lockdowns over the last year, we have all been forced to limit our travel and stay within the local area. For someone like me who loves to be out exploring new places I knew that this was going to be something extremely hard to do. Having lived in Suffolk my whole life, I viewed my home county as a place that I had already explored and seen everything that it had to offer. I think this is partly why when moving down to Cornwall for university 3 years ago the opportunity came as such a breath of fresh air. I loved being able to explore somewhere completely new and get excited about taking my camera out and capturing the adventures I was having in all of these new locations.
As soon as COVID came about, I had to relocate back to my home in the Suffolk countryside. Now initially this was something I wasn’t too please about, until I started to discovered just what Suffolk has to offer. I began to appreciate the small joys in life, which really were the only things keeping me going from day to day. When everywhere is closed and you are not allowed to travel far, the only thing to look forward too would be finding a new spot to grab a coffee or discovering the best bakery in town! Companies and businesses seemed to slowly adapt to their new ways of working throughout the pandemic, and things became slightly more accessible to do. Me and my boyfriend Harvey, took it upon ourselves to explore as many local places as we could. Every Sunday was our day that we would spend together, and each week we would try our best to give ourselves something to look forward too.
Most weeks we would get up before sunrise and drive to Aldeburgh or Southwold. We would change into our wetsuit and head for a cold water swim as the sun came up! At the point that we started to lose feeling in our fingers and toes, we would head back to the beach and warm up with a cup of tea and breakfast on the sand. Mornings like these were what kept me going from week to week, I appreciated the fact that we lived fairly close to the beach more than ever and was so grateful to be able to switch off from our day to day lives for those few hours every Sunday morning and just enjoy watching the sunrise over the ocean.
It started to become a regular thing, we would take picnics on walks with us and just wander until we found a place to stop. Walks like these, with unknown destinations soon rewarded us with sunflower fields or walled gardens to stop and marvel at! Many of these places I would never have known existed if it wasn’t for stepping foot somewhere that little bit closer to home.
I guess what I am trying to say is that before you pack up the car and head somewhere hours away, somewhere you think holds much more scope for adventure, just stop and think about how well you know the place you call home. Head out in the local area and explore whats on offer, I guarantee you it’ll be more rewarding knowing that your local adventures can be just as fulfilling as those that lay miles away!
Go on, go and have some fun!
Ellie x