About
“let me live, love, and say it well in good sentences”
― Sylvia Plath
My name is Clare. Clare Louise Absolon, if you want the long version. It’s Clare without the ‘i’, because my staunchly un-Francophile father insisted on the traditional English spelling. No-one’s quite sure where Absolon comes from. There’s been suggestions that it originates in Hebrew, or possibly French. Either way, I’m grateful to it for two reasons; it never fails to spark a discussion with a stranger, and it made me first in the register at school for things like injections and sports day. Simply put, it made me unafraid to be the first, alone.
In 2013 I bought a one-way ticket to Bali, where I promptly met the man who later would ask me to marry him on a windswept beach on the Northumberland coast (that’s him above, if you were wondering who that guy was). I travelled, with him and then solo, for the next 12 months, and then it was time to go home. We moved to Manchester, I started a graphic design business online, and we plotted our next trip.
In January 2016 we left for Mexico, and we’ve been on the road since. Right now we’re calling New Zealand home, travelling around in our converted Toyota camper van Dolly, and house-sitting all over the country whilst I navigate running a business as a digital nomad.
THE BLOG
The Wayfarer Diaries is my journal, my place for telling stories. I collect memories, I always have; whether in a box of dusty photographs, the refrain of a long-ago song, a taste memory triggered by a particular flavour, or a collection of words on a page. This blog is a record of my long term journeys, and a collection of memories which I hope will entertain and delight lovers of aimless wandering, seeking the unknown, and the magic of the everyday.
Here you’ll find photo diaries from my adventures all over the globe, musings on life at home and away, off-beat guides to help you wander some of my favourite places, and stories. All kinds of stories. Stories of travel to faraway lands, and stories of the magic of coming home again. Stories about everything falling into place, and about everything falling apart. Stories about long train journeys through Burma and road-trips in the Scottish Highlands in winter, about catching tropical diseases in Thailand and climbing mountains in Nepal, about visiting a guru in India and living on a farm in New Zealand. Stories about food, and family, and the earth and the ocean.
And what is travel, really; or life for that matter, other than a collection of wild and precious stories?
