ED AND Will have become the best-known wandering minstrels in Britain today.
Now in their late 20s, the pair have spent the last four years making long, slow journeys on foot across Britain, singing for their supper as they go.
The two folk-singers have spent seven months walking from Canterbury to Saint David’s – singing in every town and village on the way – before making their way into Radnorshire where they are currently spending the winter living in the woods near to Pen Y Bont, Llandrindod Wells.
“We’re looking forward to learning Welsh songs, but its slow going. Dween Dusky Cymraig is what I say.
“But walking north in Spring will doubtless enrich our cultural knowledge of Wales. We are learning the old branches of the Mabinogion, and are very much aware that Cymru is sacred ground on which to walk.
“We have moved into a hazel wood in Radnorshire, bringing canvas and hand-tools, and here we have spent the winter outside, trying to learn about coppicing and shelter building. We have built a domed-home, on a hazel-wattle platform, roofed with canvas and stuffed with straw. It took one month and £150 to build.
As well as Ed and Will, their respective partners Ayla and Rose have been staying out for the winter, so it’s not been lonely. There’s plenty to do to keep warm, even in the snow and frost, with coppicing, gathering water and fire-wood, riding the bicycle electricity generator, or crafting items from various woods.
“Spending a winter outside, we’ve found the simplest things can become monstrously difficult, like drying clothes, or keeping food mouse-free.
“Electricity is also a real burden. We have to bicycle for miles just to get on the internet, and the connection is usually rubbish. But there’s always something to do, and every task improves our skills,” they added.
They sing unaccompanied close harmony traditional songs everywhere they arrive – they prefer busking to gigging – and claim walking to be “humanity’s best technology”.
Throughout their tour of the UK, now taking place in Powys, they busk to earn a few coins and to meet good local people. They trade music and work, for food and shelter, and it seems to work.
“It’s an amazing thing, how many people will invite singing walking strangers into their home. Hospitality is not an obscure foreign tradition – it is living, right here in Britain,” they said.
The pair combine old and new technology, walking and living outside, gathering wild herbs and traditional songs, while using the high-tech world of websites and mobile internet. It is a strange juxtaposition, but a hallmark of these minstrels’ journeys, and a sign of the times.
“Traditions move forward, they don’t look back. That’s why they’re still with us.
“Today’s troubadours need to live in today’s world. It is not disrespecting a tradition, but living with it in an honest way,” they added.
On their walks they’ve sung for tramps, Gypsies, OAPs, school-children, pubs, churches, toddlers’ groups, gangs, Lords and ambassadors, mercenaries, police, families, and farm animals. They have also sung for Sir David Frost, and Mickey Miller from EastEnders.
The pair say the most common question asked of them is “why do you do this?”, which they admit to finding difficult to answer.
“Can you say why you ask that question? There are so many reasons for everything.
“What we know, is that Britain has much to offer, and she is best met on foot, in the good old way. As for singing old songs, well that surely needs no justification, and just makes sense on its own,” they added.
“We’ve found that Britain is home to more cultural diversity than we’d ever realised. Because we were born here, there are deeper cultural discoveries to be made than if we were somewhere overseas.
“We can access the subtler understandings of this tribal land, being ourselves a part of it all. Britain’s only real travelling issue is the weather, and with lots of well-woven wool, even that’s alright.”