A sunny day. I’m not sure how long I could last if every day was like yesterday, if there was no hope or chance of sunshine.

I set out with the aim of getting to mainland Croatia, hopping across to the island of Hvar, and then paddling along it to hop across to the mainland. Hvar is another island with that extraordinary torpedo shape, and viewed from satellite it’s green forests and rough, mountainous surface looks like crocodile skin. Unlike other Croatian islands, it does have a large fertile plain, still divided in to sections by walls built in the 4th century BC by Ancient Greeks.

Only 132,000 of Croatia’s 3.9 million people live on the islands, and I feel like I haven’t got to know the people at all, I just haven’t seen anyone. At times on this trip, from France to Albania, I’ve encountered loneliness, but most of the time I enjoy solitude.

It seems to me that we know so little beyond the material world we live in, and I want to go deeper. Back when I was at the rainbow gathering, I wanted to grab one of the hippies by the shoulders, shake them, and shout ‘tell me the deepest, most profound, insightful thing you know’. If these people were interested in the pursuit of going deep, where was the substance? Surely they could just share what they’d learnt?

Or perhaps they were more style than substance, finding belonging in their clan by wearing tye-dye t shirts and baggy trousers, covering themselves in tattoos and piercings and growing their hair. Sure they all looked like people society associates with spirituality, but show me the substance!

Previously I’d thought I could talk or think myself in to a deeper awareness of the world. But I came to realise that if you want to go deep, you have to transcend. And the problem is that language is limited in communicating ideas that transcend the material world – we can’t tap in to each others brains to understand what a word represents. I supposed this is a personal journey, and it’s hard to share.

It felt good to be safe on mainland and i made camp beneath the trees on a pristine sandy beach.