Honey Davis-Wilkinson shares a week-long, 359-mile cycle from London to Devon — as documented on her 35mm film camera.

As I set off on my bike, heading for Hastings, Hampshire and beyond, I wasn’t expecting to sleep beside a python or find Orwellian coincidences gathering at dusk. But such, sometimes, can be the rules of the road.

I had a spare week during the summer and headed out on a long-ish, multi-stage bike trip, something I’d never done before. I cycle most days and love it but I’d never ridden more than 30 miles in one go. I got my basic bike tuned up at The Bike Project in Camberwell, an amazing charity that refurbishes bikes and donates them to refugees, then I watched a video about fixing a puncture. I downloaded Komoot, an app used by bicycler extraordinaire Lael Wilcox. I often find the idea of the future and technology unsettling but it felt great to be guided hundreds of miles by a kind voice who knows every route in the world.

My journey was a true adventure. The first night was spent in Hastings with my friend Jo Israel. I know Jo from when I was a toddler and she was the girlfriend of my uncle, Jan from the rock group Sea Power. She used to build fairy lands with me in the forest. Now she lets me sleep in her spare room, with Persephone the cat and Caburn the royal python. On this trip, she took me to Rye Nature Reserve and introduced me to John Stezaker, the wonderful artist known for his surreal collages. Jo is also an artist. In the morning, before I continued to the South Downs on my bike, I visited her magical exhibition On The Edge Of Nothingness at Hastings Museum and Art Gallery. I found myself in a room full of ancient art ghosts – Jo’s collection of “shadow imprints”, the spectral shapes that sometimes appear on the backs of engraved illustrations.

The bike ride led me through Brighton, Worthing, Ferring, Felpham  – a return to the Sussex of my childhood – and introduced me to countless towns and villages across England. I snacked on blackberries along the way and was given “free water” outside houses on country lanes. I stayed with lovely friends and in delightful YHA hostels. I travelled across the River Exe on the Topsham Ferry, and discovered the “famous 2in1 pie” at the Coppa Dolla Inn in the village of Broadhempston in Devon. It seems “2in1” means half the pie bowl is filled with cauliflower cheese. I stopped on the old stone bridge at Staverton and ended up seeing a kingfisher and chatting with a free spirit who introduced himself as Hector Chrome, his punk-ish spin on Kodak’s Ektachrome. He was living in a van, having “left the world in 1972”.

My favourite evening was probably at the YHA in Beer. Sitting outside at dusk, I was surrounded by swallows darting across the darkening sky. There were Dutch families and Bavarian archeology students from a university in Bamberg. David from Den Bosch saw I was reading 1984 and told me he’d just visited George Orwell’s grave in Sutton Courtenay. We talked for hours. He told me to read Roland Barthes’ Camera Lucida  – a book I’d been given in Hastings, a few days previously. David of Den Bosch also mentioned a photo by Louis Daguerre. The previous day I’d listened to an In Our Time episode on The Invention of Photography. The daguerreotype had been discussed. I fell asleep exhilarated, happy at how connected this world can be sometimes.

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Honey Davis-Wilkinson is a photographer. You can follow her on Instagram here.