On a good day, you can drive from Canterbury in Kent to St Ives in Cornwall in seven hours. You need to allow roughly the same time for the train. However, rising petrol and ticket costs, nagging ecological guilt and overpriced, rubbery sandwiches from buffet cars and service stations frequently serve to make what should be a pleasant journey fraught. However, there is an alternative mode of transport. The only problem is that it takes, give an hour or two, about five months.
"People love the idea of what we're doing," says Ed, a fresh-faced 27-year-old who, with his brother Ginger, 25, and their friend Will, 26, resolved three years ago to see if it would be possible to leave home without money or mobile phones and travel across Britain by foot. They have since undertaken three major journeys, foraging for food and sleeping wherever they found themselves as night fell. "People respond to the mythic aspect, that dream of England, of being in the woods and living close to the earth."
"If we had a pound for every person who said, 'I would join you lads, if it weren't for the mortgage and the kids,'" adds Will, "we would have enough money to buy new boots."
We're in an orchard at the back of Will and Ginger's parents' house near Faversham - they don't want to disclose their family name - where the three walkers live in converted vans when not on the road. With their wispy facial hair, layered clothing in various shades of green and foliage-based accessories, Ed, Will and Ginger look very much like Robin Hood's Merry Men - which is fitting since they lead a similar lifestyle. It's a wet, close-to-freezing early November day, we're huddled around a fire over which a kettle hangs, and they are planning their next adventure: a round trip to Scotland via Wales that should take roughly a year. They don't use tents: a tarpaulin strung between trees makes for shelter on most nights. How do they cope with the cold?
"When you're moving, it's fine," says Ed, reflectively. "You heat up quickly and see shimmers of steam rising from your clothes."
"If you can make a fire, that's a luxury," adds Ginger, the quietest of the three.
"We have woken up a few times with frozen sleeping bags," Ed concedes. "That does make it hard to get up in the morning, but it's amazing what you can get used to."
Ed, Will and Ginger's itinerant, slow-moving life might just point the way forward, at a time when ecological and financial challenges are forcing us to change the way we live. At present, Britain has the lowest levels of pedestrian travel and bicycle use in Europe. Twice as many trips are made by car as by walking and cycling, and from 1992 to 2004 the number of journeys by foot and bicycle declined by a fifth. All of this despite the fact that the average speed for cars across London remains at 11-13mph, roughly the same as it was at the beginning of the 20th century.
According to Catherine Conway, founder of the new anti-waste food company Unpackaged, the future lies in, "No more driving to the supermarket, no more massive supply chains; instead locally sourced food that's purchased by people who use their legs."
We can all resolve to walk to school or the local market a little more often, but is it really feasible to spend two months getting to the Pennines to visit relatives? The three claim it is not only possible but preferable, since modern communications make it possible to conduct one's business anywhere. The problem is that we have lost the most basic life skills when living in accordance with nature. They have discovered that most of the British population, for example, don't know how to defecate outdoors.
"We're constantly coming across what we call the Ring of Hasty Poos," Will explains. " People need a crap and they're miles from a toilet, so they panic, go into the woods and fling bits of paper everywhere. These shameful poos are a real problem."
"It's a simple art that we have lost," adds Ginger. "You dig a nice big hole with a stick, get some water, wash your bum, and use moss or leaves to wipe it clean and dry. Once you get used to it any leaf will do, although moss is best."
"Or sphagnum," says Ed, a little misty-eyed at the memory. "Ooh, that's a treat ... "
But are you actually allowed to walk across Britain, and sleep in woods under private ownership and open lands controlled by state-run bodies such as the National Trust and English Heritage? Ed, Will and Ginger's mission inspires generous offers of hospitality among strangers they meet along the way, but the bulk of the journey still requires bedding-down on private land. Apparently, this is rarely a problem.
"We haven't been thrown out of anywhere that we have camped, but then we're not usually found," says Will. "We're quite good at camouflaging ourselves."
"Church porches are interesting," says Ed. "Sometimes it's pouring, you really don't know where you are, and you come to a church. So you lie down for the night and remember a line in the Bible from Matthew: 'Come to me, all you who are heavily burdened, and I will give you rest.' We're waiting for a parishioner to rock up in the morning so we can tell him we're heavily burdened, but so far we haven't actually met one."
"Pubs and churches remain the temples of the land," says Will. "You go to a church to pray or to have solace, and you go to a pub to meet people. These ancient systems still work."
Ed, Will and Ginger have discovered another, unexpected aspect of British life: our strange relationship with singing. Needing some money for the occasional beer and new pair of socks, if not toilet paper, the three sing traditional English folk songs in pubs, town squares and village greens. But making music and dancing in public requires a licence.
"The pub laws are crazy," says Ed. "Legally, you can't get everyone in the pub to join in on a rousing version of an old tune like John Barleycorn, but you can shout and swear as loudly as you like and have the television on as loudly as you like. We have to go outside the front door of the pub to sing quite often. Legislation has been put through to control what comes out of people's mouths."
The forthcoming walk to Scotland is going to be their longest yet. It will throw up more questions on the nature of British life, on what we really need and are allowed to do. The trio's walking trips have involved frustrations, but the constant generosity they have encountered has made them believe that no problem is insurmountable.
"This started out as a pleasant stroll," says Ed. "Now it's become something of a social responsibility as more and more people respond positively to what we're doing. We're certainly not just appealing to the bohemian community. We've had dinner with oil directors and slept in car parks with tramps."
"People are scared of the country, you know?" adds Will. "There's this idea that if you leave home you're going to be stabbed, mugged ... we've found the opposite is true. We have found a far greater openness and hospitality than people expect in Britain."
Whether walking for a living and singing for one's supper catches on as a lifestyle choice remains to be seen, but Ed, Will and Ginger have no plans to settle down. They're setting up a website to document the journey and share the skills they learn along the way, and they hope to make a documentary on it too - they're aiming to find a benefactor for this by offering hand delivery of wax-sealed letters from one part of the country to another, like extremely slow messenger boys of old. Ed and Ginger admit their family have expressed "the usual parental worries" about their future, but insist that, rather than dropping out, they are taking on a life that requires hard work and is hugely rewarding - and ultimately beneficial for the country at large.
"People ask us why we're doing this, and we don't really have an answer," concludes Will. "Are we trying to save the world, or become famous, or pretend to be Robin Hood? We don't know. But there's one thing that we've learned about this life that we'd like to share: it's much easier than you think."
· Ed, Will and Ginger can be found at: myspace.com/awalkaroundbritain