Sean Hood

Honeycomb.io's honeytail ♡ systemd's instantiated services

Sean Hood — Fri, 17 Jan 2020 10:22:38 GMT

Update: For those using Puppet, I've now relased a module to the forge which implements what's set out in this blog post: https://forge.puppet.com/seanhood/honeytail

Second post in a row about Honeycomb.io. Anyway, a question popped up in the Honeycomb Slack channel asking:

A question on honey tail, can you have multiple parsers and log files, in one config file and run a single honeycomb instance, or should you have seperate instances for each type of parser?

I wondered this a few months back and came up with a solution using a feature of systemd known as Instantiated Services I had learned about a few years ago. Which allows you to template a variable in a systemd unit file.

On to how we can allow us to run multiple instances of Honeytail on a server. In this ficticious world we have a server running Nginx and MySQL and we want to parse their logs and send them off to Honeycomb.io.

This guide assumes you're have already installed honeytail, if not here's that guide: https://docs.honeycomb.io/getting-data-in/integrations/honeytail/

Step 1

Create a directory for us to store our honeytail files in. conf.d made sense to me, like how many other bits of software keep their config files separate.

mkdir /etc/honeytail/conf.d

Step 2

Create the config file for parsing the MySQL slow logs:

[Required Options]
 ParserName = mysql
 WriteKey = REDACTED
 LogFiles = /var/lib/mysql/slow-query.log
 Dataset = mysql

Copy this into: /etc/honeytail/conf.d/mysql.conf

N.B. There's more to parsing these logs than just this file, see docs here: https://docs.honeycomb.io/getting-data-in/integrations/databases/mysql/logs/

Create the config files for parsing Nginx access logs:

[Required Options]
 ParserName = nginx
 WriteKey = REDACTED
 LogFiles = /var/log/nginx/*.log
 Dataset = traces

[Nginx Parser Options]
ConfigFile = /etc/nginx/conf.d/honeytail-logformat.conf
LogFormatName = combined-honey

As above information about the actual configuration is here: https://docs.honeycomb.io/getting-data-in/integrations/webservers/nginx/

Step 3

Now we need to drop in the new systemd unit file. It’s not very different than the original except for the modification to line 6. The magic is all in the %i. This goes in: /etc/systemd/system/honeytail@.service

[Unit]
Description=Honeycomb log tailer honeytail - %i
After=network.target

[Service]
ExecStart=/usr/bin/honeytail -c /etc/honeytail/conf.d/%i.conf
KillMode=process
Restart=on-failure
User=honeycomb
Group=honeycomb

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Step 4

Since we have added a new unit file, we need to let systemd know about this:

systemctl daemon-reload

Step 5

All going well we can now start our instantiated services like so:

systemctl start honeytail@nginx
systemctl start honeytail@mysql

Assuming we want these to start on boot, let’s also enable them:

systemctl enable honeytail@nginx
systemctl enable honeytail@mysql

Check that all is well:

root@myserver:~# systemctl status honeytail@nginx
● honeytail@nginx.service - Honeycomb log tailer honeytail - nginx
   Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/honeytail@.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
   Active: active (running) since Thu 2020-01-16 16:26:39 UTC; 2s ago
 Main PID: 32052 (honeytail)
   CGroup: /system.slice/system-honeytail.slice/honeytail@nginx.service
           └─32052 /usr/bin/honeytail -c /etc/honeytail/conf.d/nginx.conf

Jan 16 16:26:39 myserver systemd[1]: Started Honeycomb log tailer honeytail - nginx.
Jan 16 16:26:40 myserver honeytail[32052]: time="2020-01-16T16:26:40Z" level=info msg="Starting honeytail"

I hope you enjoyed this useful tidbit of information about systemd. And if you haven't heard of Honeycomb, go check them out.

Flask + Honeycomb.io - Adding request.route and build.version columns to events

Sean Hood — Sun, 03 Nov 2019 23:30:00 GMT

I've been using Honeycomb.io for a few months now in my day job. I introduced it to the Javascript developers to help them have insight about what was happening inside of their applications.

I'm not a Javascript dev, nor a dev at all really, but I some times dabble in writing applications in Flask, a Python web framework. I wanted take the beeline-python for a spin with an internal tool I had build a few months back at work.

I will skip over the initial configuration as this is covered in quite some detail in their docs: https://docs.honeycomb.io/getting-data-in/python/beeline/

What I'm going to run through is adding request.route and build.version columns to my events being instrumented automatically by the beeline-python library.

Adding request.route

By default the beeline-python library adds a column for request.path, this is useful but it's hard to breakdown which events came from which route within your Flask application. In the beeline-nodejs library, request.route is included by default.

This is our sample Hello World application:

from flask import Flask

import beeline
from beeline.middleware.flask import HoneyMiddleware

beeline.init(
    writekey='REDACTED',
    dataset='my-python-app',
    service_name='my-python-app'
)

app = Flask(__name__)
HoneyMiddleware(app, db_events=False)


@app.route("/")
def hello():
        return "Hello World!"


@app.route("/profile/")
def profile(username):
        return "Hello, {0}".format(username)

We have our beeline library imported, along with the HoneyMiddleware, beeline is initialised and we have a couple of routes we want to instrument.

Adding the route to each event is as simple as importing request from the Flask library and adding this piece of code:

- from flask import Flask
+ from flask import Flask, request

@app.before_request
def before_request():
        beeline.add_context_field("request.route", request.url_rule)

Flask's app.before_request runs before every request, and beeline's add_context_field() function adds context to the current open span. This results in any matching route getting this additional bit of context.

Adding build.version

Now we're going to add some information about the version of the application. This is useful to break down latencies and errors by the build version. It can also help you visualise deploys of new code.

The beeline library provides a presend hook which we can use to scrub any data before it is sent on its way to them. We can use this to append any extra data we might also find useful.

This snippet achieves just that:

def beeline_presend(fields):
        fields['build.version'] = '1.0.0'

And then we call this function from beeline.init like so:

 beeline.init(
     writekey='REDACTED',
     dataset='my-python-app',
-    service_name='my-python-app'
+    service_name='my-python-app',
+    presend_hook=beeline_presend
 )

Further info on the presend_hook here: https://docs.honeycomb.io/getting-data-in/python/beeline/#scrubbing-sensitive-data

All together

from flask import Flask, request

import beeline
from beeline.middleware.flask import HoneyMiddleware


def honey_presend(fields):
        fields['build.version'] = '1.0.1'

beeline.init(
    writekey='REDACTED',
    dataset='my-python-app',
    service_name='my-python-app',
    presend_hook=honey_presend
)

app = Flask(__name__)
HoneyMiddleware(app, db_events=False)


@app.route("/")
def hello():
        return "Hello World!"


@app.route("/profile/")
def profile(username):
        return "Hello, {0}".format(username)


@app.before_request
def before_request():
        beeline.add_context_field("request.route", request.url_rule)

Live in London: BØRNS, Jessie Reyez & Marika Hackman

Sean Hood — Sat, 02 Dec 2017 22:15:00 GMT

In November I was lucky enough to photograph three amazing artists playing live in London, for The 405. Hoping to see this little lot grace the festival circuit in 2018.

First up we have BØRNS who played at Scala on the 15th of November, an American singer songwriter from Grand Haven, Michigan.

Second up we have Jessie Reyez, a Colombian-Canadian singer-songwriter from Toronto, Canada, who played Omeara on the 16th of November.

And finally we have Marika Hackman, an English vocalist, multi-instrumentalist and songwriter from London. Marika played at O2's Shepherd's Bush Empire on the 23rd of November.

Sean’s Summer Summary

Sean Hood — Wed, 30 Aug 2017 22:45:09 GMT

So I’m going to stretch Summer back to about April. Quite a lot has happened this year so I figured I'd make one big post to summarise. Several festivals were attended, many miles were covered, plenty photos taken and several new friends made and with all that going on I landed a job back in London.

First up the April bank holiday, with my dad, I drove up to a small town called Mallaig in the highlands of Scotland to go out sea kayaking. While up there we spent a couple of nights on the Isle of Mull, explored the town of Tobermory, had a tour of the distillery and wild camped on the south of the island. On returning I finally managed to stay a night in Brattleburn bothy.

Festival time

Next up Handmade Festival in Leicester kicks off the first of many festivals for me this year. Enjoyed the likes of Slaves, Peaness, Honeyblood, and British Sea Power.

3,500 Miles around Europe in a van

Then May comes around and now I some how need to sum up spending a full 14 days traveling around Europe in my van with my brother for my cousins wedding in Italy in like 5 photos.

Anyway, here we both are just before setting off.

En-route to Paris, we had a break in a small French village at sunset

Spot of climbing in Fontainebleau, I must re-visit however not in 33ºc weather.

Cleaning bugs off the windscreen in The Black Forest

Sunset somewhere in the Black Forest

Freitag’s Flagship store in Zurich, Switzerland

Switzerland is well pretty ain’t it?

Woo, wedding time!

Where we stayed for the night driving through Czech Republic

Berlin in the sun

Amsterdam in the cloud

And finally back to The NORTH

Glasto: It didn’t even rain

And now we’re in June, week and a half back at work then it was time for the yearly pilgrimage down to a little known festival on a farmers field near Pilton, Somerset. Caught the likes of Radiohead, Lorde, Alt-J, Nadine Shah, Glass Animals.

Pohoda: The best Slovak music festival you haven’t heard of

In July I was lucky enough to be flown out to shoot Pohoda Festival. It’s the biggest music festival in Slovakia and set on the site of an airport in the city of Trenčín. And now it’s one of my top 3 festival experiences, possibly even making the top spot. Not only did I get to go up in a hot air ballon but got to watch Future Islands from the stage side and discovered several new bands and artists I didn’t know of before such as 52 Hertz Whale, Alice Phoebe Lou and Baloji.

It’s so hard to summarise this festival in so few photos. I shot all of this for The 405, so you can check out more shots over there: In Photos: Pohoda 2017

If you need any more reason to visit the pints are €1.50 and there’s even dogs.

Citadel Festival: I couldn’t blag a photo pass so everything is shot on an iPhone

While down in London in mid July for an interview I found out that there was a single day festival on across in Victoria Park. Line up was packed with so many artists I’d either been wanting to see for so long, I couldn’t pass up on going. On their website it listed that only “small personal” cameras were allowed. Failing to find somewhere to buy a disposable or nab a press pass on the day I just went around with my phone. In the end I got so see the likes of Bonobo, Sylvan Esso, Maggie Rogers, RY X, Laura Marling and Foals.

Standon Calling: Dogs dogs dogs

If you weren’t counting we’re on to festival number 4, Standon Calling, a small little boutique festival just north of the M25. What sets Standon apart from all of the other festivals is the sheer number of fluffy mostly 4 legged friends. It’s amazing, this was my second year shooting and I went back purely because I had so much fun photographing all of these dogs last year. The 405 even made it a feature in 2016: Photo Essay: 64 photos of dogs from Standon Calling 2016

Aside from the Dog Show on the Sunday, there’s a costume parade on the Saturday

ArcTanGent

Still with me? Good. I’m pretty sure I’ve wanted to go to ATG since it was first on in 2013, finally I made it happen. Set on a farm just south of Bristol, with two fields and four stages; ArcTangent turns out to be one of the smallest festivals I’ve been to with around 5,000 person capacity. Managed to catch the likes of Listener, Heck, Ho99o9, TTNG and Explosions In The Sky.

And finally

This slightly longer than average “summer” has been made even better with time spent with family, old friends and new friends I’ve made on the way.

So yeah, that’s pretty much what I’ve pointing my camera at for about half of this year. Let’s see how the rest continues.

From me behind the camera, innabit.

Citadel 2017—I couldn't blag a photo pass so all these were shot on an iPhone

Sean Hood — Thu, 03 Aug 2017 15:00:00 GMT

So last month I found out about Citadel festival happening in London, I tried to get myself a photo pass, alas that didn't work out so I just bought a ticket anyway. I couldn't pass up on the likes of Foals, Sylvan Esso, RY X, Bonobo, Laura Marling, Nadine Shah and Hudson Taylor. Maybe next year I'll get to take along my proper camera. Here's a selection of the photos I took:

I have too many photos to share from the likes of Glastonbury, Pohoda Festival, Standon Calling, my 3000 mile road trip down to Italy and in the next couple of weeks Arctangent, so expect a 'Summer Summary' in the next month or so.

Enjoy!

The Rolling Home Journal (No. 1)

Sean Hood — Sat, 11 Feb 2017 22:00:00 GMT

Back in May I stayed the night in the Peak District to shoot some photos of my new Stitches and Steel awning. At the end of last year they appeared in the first issue of The Rolling Home Journal.

I spent a night in the Peak District

Sean Hood — Mon, 30 May 2016 18:00:00 GMT

Needed to be in Chester today so I set off a day early and spent a night in the Peak District and tested out my new Stitches and Steel awning.

Bamburgh & Edinburgh

Sean Hood — Thu, 26 May 2016 17:30:00 GMT

So I drove to scotland…

…and met up with Jenny & friends…

…then took photos of St, Margaret's Loch while overly drunk…

…spent most of early afternoon clearing a hangover and eating cheese toasties…

...I took a wander through The National Museum of Scotland…

…met up again with Jenny for milkshakes and food at The City Cafe…

…afterwards I took a leisurely walk back to the van…

…and spotted a rainbow after driving around Arthur’s Seat…

…set off down to Bamburgh…

…arriving just in time for sunset…

…and woke up to this…

…had a little wander along that…

…then on to Lindisfarne for breakfast and mead...

Handmade Festival 2016

Sean Hood — Thu, 26 May 2016 09:00:00 GMT

At the end of April I went down to Leicester with my camera for Handmade Festival

That time I lived in a van in London for 1 year 3 months 24 days

Sean Hood — Wed, 30 Dec 2015 20:30:00 GMT

Humble Beginnings

It's probably time I write about that year I lived in a van in London. It started in July 2014, I quite fancied a van for festivals and travel earlier in the year, April/May I think. My dad has owned a VW T4 since '07 or so, it has been converted into a passable campervan (more seats, make shift bed, running water and a sink) and since '09 we have taken it to Glastonbury, Solfest and other journeys. Since I was living in London and being quite fond of VW's a T4 wouldn't make sense due to the Low Emission Zone so I set my heart on looking for a VW T5.

Aim was to find an affordable van, 1.9L engine due to being 21/22 at the time and insurance, before the festival season began. A brief 2 and a bit months of looking and I hadn't found a van to take to Glasto with me. The festival came and went (It was great to say the least, possibly my favourite year so far) and I had a few days planned in Bristol as I usually do. Steve/milkypirate (From London, also went to Glasto, lingered in Bristol post festival too) spotted a fairly nice Blue 2006 VW T5 twin sliding doors, 2.5L 174BHP engine and several other factory fitted optional extras. I ummed and arred due to the engine size and twin sliding doors and that is had close to 200k miles on the clock. We decided to check it out, the van was very tidy for it's age and had plenty of power. I knew I wanted it then.

July

I bought a van

Turns out buying your first vehicle requires some planning and consideration, at the very least I needed the van to be checked over by a mechanic. The next day (2nd of July) comes by we get the van checked over, all seems good, get the cash, buy the van, and insurance. I had done it. I'd bought a van. Drove the length of the M4 back to London. And now the fun begins...

Living near Kings Cross, parking is scarce and/or expensive so morning of the 3rd I drove into Zone 3 of North London. And then the problems began, on the way back I lost my steering in the middle of Homerton, less than 24 hours after buying the van. Not ideal. Rang my Dad, rang Steve who had some tools handy and then the RAC. They couldn't fix the problem at the roadside, as I had just signed up for roadside recovery they could only take me 10 miles so home, ~300 miles away, was out of the question. Had the van towed to work, and left it there. The day after I moved out of my cosy Zone 1 flat.

4th July 2014: My first day as a vandweller, with a broken down van parked in work's car park. My mam was not impressed by this situation to say the least. The back of the van was ply lined, I put down a rug from the flat I had just moved out of that day, a mattress topper on top of that and then my sleeping bag.

I don't recall much of my first week living in my van apart from spending time after work finding out what was broken with the steering. Turns out it was the pipe connecting the power steering pump to the steering rack. Problems didn't quite end there, I began the first of many drives home but didn't make it 15 miles before I lost steering again and pushed on until Birchanger Green Services. The day after, the van was loaded onto the back of a truck and I was taken home.

Luckily once home I fixed the problem and it was time to start enjoying my van for what I bought it for. I picked up a Ikea Lycksele double sofa bed from Gumtree and put that in the back to replace my mattress topper. Drove to Derwent water with my brother, Alnwick and Scottish borders with Cat and then Kendal Calling with the van passing as a camper with my brother.

Keswick & Derwent Water:

Alnwick & Scotland:

Kendal Calling:

August

Back in London I began staying in a campsite just outside Bexley between August and October, traveling back home in the days off I had. The first part of October I visited Berlin alas without the van however the middle of the month I had a 4 day road trip which combined Chester, South Wales and Cambridge to visit some friends.

Wales with Olly, Ellie & Taron the Land Rover:

October

By October I had found a few streets near work that were suitable to wild camp in London as such. I would keep rotating locations as to remain fairly unobtrusive. This was considerably cheaper than the campsite. Towards the end of October I spent a week working on the van, adding insulation (silver bubble wrap and hemp fiber battens), a leisure battery, split charge relay, facelifted the van to the newer shaped and serviced it.

My Mam still not impressed I was living in a van for almost 4 months by now, I tried to find a flat to stay in for the winter months however being able to afford London rents and my van would have left me with no money at all. I bought an Eberspacher D2 Diesel night heater and fitted that in the beginning of November, to prepare for winter. Interior was further tidied up by painting the ply panels and fitting some Ikea Dioder LED lights, wired to the leisure battery and some neat CBE switches.

December

Towards the latter end of 2014 I kept on moving around streets in London, turns out it's relatively easy to wild camp in a van that doesn't look anything like a camper from the outside. The bulkhead kept the van secure in the back and the light from leaking out.

With London vanlife in the background, and my very convenient shifts at work (I only worked 14 of every 28 days) allowed the travels to continue. December involved a trip to Edinburgh in which I parked up for the night right beside St Margaret's Loch. Free parking, all day, all night and not that far from the center of Edinburgh. On the way back I visited Lindisfarne which appeared to be a very good place for photos.

The week after I took a drive from London down to Brighton. There are plenty of streets on the North side of Preston Park providing free parking day and night.

January

New year, new travels. By this point London vanlife had become normal to me, I started to try and rack up as many postcodes I had stayed in, however only managed a few before things got harder. They were: E1, E2, E3, E5, E6, E14, E15, E16, N1, SE10, SE13, SE16, & WC1. You can park almost anywhere in London for free after 6:30pm, until about 8:30am. I used an app called AppyParking which gives info of free parking all around London. Always plan toilet breaks, there's less trees to go behind in London when you need to go at 3am however there are a lot of 24/7 McDonalds. Friends both intrigued and perplexed by my new lifestyle allowed me to use their showers which was very helpful.

Towards the end of January Sam from work and I planned a roadtrip to Paris. Once on the other side of the channel in Dunkirk, we took a left turn towards Amsterdam due to the recent attacks in Paris. The first night was spent parked outside of Zeeburg campsite as we arrived too late to check in as we stopped off in Bruges to explore. Day 2 we checked into Zeeburg campsite and wandered Amsterdam. Day 3 we woke up in Amsterdam and went to sleep in Paris outside of Indigo Paris Campsite. Day 4 we explored Paris visiting Ten Belles, Das Boot and the Eiffel Tower. As we couldn't get a place in the campsite we left Paris that evening to find somewhere to stay ending up in a small village North of Paris. Day 5 began with buying a lot of bread from a French bakery and making a leisurely drive to Dunkirk for the ferry via Lille.

February

1,200 miles later we were back in London. The weather was getting colder however my heater that I had fitted made the 0c nights not an issue. My van experienced its first snow in my ownership in February.

Later in February drove across to Wales to wander mountains again with Olly & Ellie. No vandwelling in Wales as Olly kindly put me up for the night.

At the end of Feb I went out to take photos with Hayley but it was absolutely freezing, we stayed the night in Alston but returned the next day after failing to get to the Llama Karma Kafe as the roads to Penrith were too icy.

March

March began the festival season preparation and as such the van required "fitted washing and cooking facilities". I designed a kitchen pod that incorporated a camping stove and as small sink passable basin. The pod was made from 12mm birch plywood from Fall Timber in Bedale.

Wiring was the next job to tackle, I fitted a Blue Sea Systems 5029 fuse box to some ply behind the leisure battery in the seat. And replaced the current wiring with some 1mm2 thinwall auto cable.

April

In April Steve and I went to an Instagrammers London meetup at Blenheim Palace and we both took our vans. And took photos of stars that night.

May

In May I had the clutch fixed, very surprised it hadn't gone well before then based on what it was like when removed. I also bought some 17" VW steel wheels to replace the stock 16" steels. Apart from that vanlife went on as per.

June

As June came around I got H&R Coilovers for a price I could never have refused. As Glastonbury was fast approaching I took most of June off work as holiday, heading home I stopped off for the night in a layby just outside of Telford before picking up my sister from uni in Chester.

When in Cheshire, you need to visit the Cheshire Ice Cream Farm

With the van loaded full of wheels, tyres and a box of suspension bits I set off for Elgin where my uncle helped me fit the wheels to the tyres and replaced the old suspension.

Possibly one of my favourite photos of the van just after it was lowered:

Vanlife got way better on the return leg from Elgin as I decided to take Inverness, Glencoe, Dumfries route back home. And as such I spent my first night wild camping in a small wood just outside of Dumfries after visiting Brattleburn Bothy. Which I sadly didn't make it to when I did my 1000 Miles on Kindness trip.

Made it back just in time to get to the North East VW T4/T5 Monthly Meetup which my other van friend Pat took a nice photo of the van.

Glastonbury Time! My dad and I set off for a campsite just outside of Shepton Mallet which later Steve joined us too. Glastonbury was great as usual but I'll leave that for another post another time.

Post-Glasto:

July

July marked the 1 year mark of getting my van along with 1 year of van life.

End of July I wild camped in Leigh-On-Sea, Essex then explored Essex with Didge the day after. Waking up by the sea is great.

In August to further make the van habitable I decided to finally carpet the interior

Mid august I drove up to Edinburgh (again??) as I found some genuine Caravelle sliding side windows.

September

September, finally, almost up to date.

It finally happened, I was asked to use my van for it's intended purpose. Konnaire asked me to help move all of his things into his new flat

Steve asked me if I fancied giving him a lift to Sussex to collect his Alfa which has been in the garage for way too long. Obviously I took the opportunity. Spent the night parked up near Jack and Jill Windmills in Clayton.

Popped into Brighton the day after and visited Mr. Wolfe coffee shop

October

Back in July I had been told my team and I were being made redundant. To make the most of my last month in the South I took a trip down to Cornwall (More photos of this trip in my post *Insert excuse to drive to Cornwall*) where I wildcamped in Dartmoor, visited Eden Project, stayed overnight by the sea in Sennen Cove, visited Falmouth, Truro ending the day back at Mendip Lodge Campsite, the same one I stayed at before and after Glastonbury, popping into Bristol on the way back to London.

On the 12th of October I had rolled over 30,000 miles milestone. It has taken me as far North as Spey Bay, as far East as Amsterdam, as far South as Paris and West as Land’s End. And so many other places within.

I left London indefinitely on the 28th of October 2015, 1 year 3 months 24 days after I moved into my van, thinking it was going to be a short term solution until I found a flat to rent. Here's to many more travels in 2016!

Insert excuse to drive to Cornwall

Sean Hood — Tue, 06 Oct 2015 23:29:41 GMT

This past long weekend I took a drive down to Cornwall via Devon and returning via Somerset, Bristol and Bath. On my travels I took a few photos, this is a selection of them:

Day 1 - Dartmoor

Day 2 - Eden Project & Sennen Cove

Day 3 - Sennen Cove, Land's End, Falmouth, Truro and Mendip Lodge Campsite

Day 4 - Mendip Lodge Campsite, Bath and Bristol

Untitled

Sean Hood — Mon, 08 Dec 2014 01:00:04 GMT

A 12,000 mile adventure via Iceland, USA and Paris in Autumn 2013

Festivals

Sean Hood — Mon, 08 Dec 2014 00:59:35 GMT

Selection of images from festivals from Summer 2012

1000 Miles On Kindness

Sean Hood — Sun, 07 Dec 2014 23:58:45 GMT

I thought to myself on this little adventure if I was missing out on seeing things by traveling by the means of hitchhiking. But then again, I thought I’d have missed an awful lot more had I traveled to each of these towns, villages and cities by train, plane or coach. I was in touch with the world not locked in my own little space but out there. It was nice to have ventured out on a journey that can’t be bought nor repeated in a way.

My trip, adventure, project or whatever, I've yet to figure out what it really was, didn’t begin in the best way. As after my first lift from Washington Services I waited a good four hours at Ferrybridge Services before giving up and writing a sign that just said “South”, nothing more. I got a lift shortly after to Newark-on-Trent, ending up in Nottingham later that evening at my Auntie’s house.

Wednesday was an interesting day, I hitched from Nottingham to Amesbury, the town a couple miles from Stonehenge. Pitched the tent under a large tree in a small wood as I was kindly notified that I couldn’t take tents, big bags or sleeping bags into the perimeter fence of the monument. An hour or so passed after pitching the tent and Robbie and Nick had arrived after a drive from London. Being at Stonehenge on the Solstice is a great experience.

Thursday, or day three of my escapade was a surreal one, it still feels like a dream to me. Robbie and I woke at around 5:15am in a slightly damp tent under the tree which I pitched it, missing solstice by half an hour. We didn’t miss much however as it was quite cloudy. By 6:30am we had our bags packed and had walked the two miles to the Stonehenge car park to hitch a ride to Shepton Mallet. We had a lift in less time than it took to make the sign. They were Matty and Allie who shared coffee and cakes with us. W then got picked up by a couple of dog walkers local to Pilton and walked down to Worthy Farm, after a brief tour of the site and it’s eerie remnants of where nearly 200,000 people enjoy 5 full days of debauchery, we headed up to the farm office. Following chats with Emily Eavis and a few others in the press office, Me and Robbie had a tour of the site from the farm to the Stone Circle to the Pryamid stage. Lunch followed and then wonderment as to where I was to stay that night. John from the Glasto press office sorted me out with a pass to Sunrise Celebration just down the road in Bruton so long as I took some photos for them. Fields full of mud. I had arrived at a proper festival.

Two nights in a small damp tent got too much and I wanted a shower and a proper bed. I decided to hitch to Bath, … picked me up near Sunrise and dropped me in Frome where I had breakfast, scrambled egg and beans on toast, my staple diet for this trip. I got a lift by .. just out of Frome onto the … and then picked up by Joe and his nephew Merlin within a few minutes. They kindly dropped me right at the door of Bath’s YHA.

The night I camped on a hill by the sea in Weymouth I had made a silly mistake to face the door to the sea for a nice view. This resulted in me delightfully bailing water out of my tent with a mess tin at 3am from the rain that had managed to seep through.

I hitched from Weymouth to Bristol with ease. The day started with more scrambled egg and beans on toast at a cafe with a view onto the cloud covered beach. Got my first lift just outside of Weymouth itself where the A354 starts, got each of the three lifts within that 10 minutes and covered the 70 miles to the centre of Bristol in 2 hours and 15 minutes. Only 10 minutes longer than what Google Maps said it should have taken. Milkshake at Roccotillos followed as too did a wander up to Twoday Coffee to find it was closed.

Monday was a day of twists and turns, beginning with an unexpected ride out of Bristol across the Severn Bridge into Wales, to forgetting my phone in the lorry that got me so far up the M6 and finally getting dark before I had reached Lancaster, forcing me to walk two miles to the nearest campsite.

Lost, tired, feet damp and in pain, shoulders aching and midges eating me alive. This is how I spent 5 hours in a forest trying to find Brattleburn Bothy. Not how you wish to spend time but something was pushing to keep going long after I would have normally given up. In the end I had to, I pitched the tent in a field in between a motorway and a train track. As soon as I got into my sleeping bag I was asleep.

I woke to still damp shoes, dried them out with yesterday's Guardian, then shortly after fell in a river, only knee deep cleaning the pans I had just used for breakfast. Wonderful. By this point I had become apathetic to bad things, just like when you first jump in the sea, you avoid the waves, I was now crashing through those waves. Enjoying it even.

A pattern had began to emerge in the first couple days of this trip, the majority of people stopping to pick me up had hitchhiked before. The interesting stories of getting lifts in cranes, to getting single lifts hundreds of miles across Europe kept me going.

A side project to this adventure was to try a coffee shop or two in every town or city in which I visited. I had a list curated by the guys at Pink Lane Coffee in Newcastle, keen on keeping me caffeinated while on my travels. The first coffee shop I got to on the list was Jika Jika in Bath, a very pleasant place, blankets hung up on the walls for sitting outside with when it’s cold to a section for weekly acoustic sessions. Colonna & Smalls, also in Bath sorted my caffeine fix for Saturday. Ran by Maxwell Colonna-Dashwood, the 2012 winner of the UKBC. A flat white with coffee from Finca Santa, El Salvador was enjoyed here. A small shop with plenty of natural light and drawings of coffee cherries on the wall.

Artisan Roast, the coffee shop you can smell from down the street as you approach. With wooden floors, comfy chairs covered in hessian coffee bags and the smell of freshly roasted beans it’s not a place to be missed if you’re near. A flat white again, quite an acquired taste, it was Janszoon their own blend of beans from Sumatra, Indonesia and Brazil.

Money wise I got around on £20 per day (on average). The most costly things were hostels which cost £50 in total. Coffee and the odd cider accounted for about £15 each over the 10 days. I spent £20 on gifts and odds & ends set me back £70, this included maps, various phone topups, buying a new tin opener, film and plenty more. Only £3.40 was spent on travel.

As soon as I returned home I felt lost, this trip was my existence for just short of two weeks and it had just ended. It felt like something was missing. I belong out there.

1000 miles. 42 lifts. 10 days on the road. 1 idea.