Wild man in a suit

He's not out of the woods yet but in a few days Sotheby's employee Hugh Sawyer will bring to an end an extraordinary year of living in the open. Somehow he has managed to survive for 365 days in a wood near Thame, sleeping beneath a tarpaulin tied between two trees, while holding down a demanding job as a bids clerk in London.

Even on a beautiful summer's afternoon, with his camp fire still smouldering, it is hard to grasp how he has managed it: waking up on hard ground in a sleeping bag in his clothes, throwing most of his possessions in a rucksack and then racing to catch his bus to London.

But then try to imagine what he must have gone through in winter, sometimes enduring temperatures as low as -7C, sometimes waking up covered in snow. Many were the winter nights when he was tempted to stay on the bus all night, going back and forth between Oxford and London, rather than return 'home'.

You have to wonder just how good this 33-year-old Oxford University law graduate will feel on returning to normal life after completing the challenge he set himself, while raising almost £5,000 for the Woodland Trust in the process.

Sure, he is bound to miss the badgers and the absence of ringing phones. But the prospect of a bed, waking up fresh and rested, no longer having to keep his clothes at work and having to cook on an open fire must be like paradise coming into view.

All the more so, I quickly learnt on joining Hugh at his spartan woodland home, because he is presently recovering from a dislocated shoulder.

Last week he allowed himself the luxury of inviting a few friends over for the first time to enjoy a dinner of trout for the Summer Solstice and to celebrate the completion of his year in the woods. He suspects that at Sotheby's they think him mad. Doubtless, those who walked into the centre of the remote wood near Lewknor that he calls home were confirmed in this opinion.

Even Hugh sometimes questions his own behaviour. Type into his website (ditchmonkey.blogspot.com) and his diary is full of personal reflections such as: "I live in the woods, I have no other address. It is where I live. Somedays it's great and I feel like I could do it forever, other days it truly sucks."

On reaching his target, he proclaimed: "Crikey, I've done it. It's been a year; I have just spent a year living in the woods. What a very odd thing to do. Little did I think when I started out what an effect this would have on my life. My family and friends, those close to me, already know that I am weird, so why shouldn't you."

But who could have guessed that even now after the ultimate in downsizing, the Ditch Monkey (as his friend nicknamed him) could still could spring a mighty big surprise on all of them.

For there is to be no rush to acquire a loft conversion in Notting Hill, no settling down to a career at Sotheby's in the auction houses, no escaping the call of the wild.

Within minutes of arriving at his camp, which in truth consists of little more than a sleeping bag and rucksack hanging from a tree, he is spelling out his plans to try something altogether more challenging.

It turns out that his year in the woods has barely sated his appetite for the great outdoors. For Hugh is proposing to pack up his Sotheby's job to live in the jungles of Ecuador.

It is something he began to mull over as the anniversary approached. He has been keeping it to himself.

"The plan had been to move back into a house and stay with the job. But instead I am quitting the job and staying in the woods," he said with a broad grin.

"It was just being here, appreciating the wildlife, the fauna and flora and realising how important it is."

The decision seems to have almost taken him by surprise.

"I certainly didn't think it would inspire me to quit my job and take off to live in the jungle for a year. I had different plans, very different plans and thought life would be going in a very different direction right now.

"Among other things on my agenda, but far from the most important, was to become a multi-millionaire art dealer, instead of which at the end of this month I'm cunningly leaving my job, career, pension and health care and so becoming both homeless and unemployed. Some might say unemployable."

He will be living in the jungle in Ecuador with his friend Mike Cormack, who he has known since his Oxford student days.

"It is taking it to the next level. Well, a couple of levels up, actually. We will be trying to raise money to protect the rainforest. Neither of us has even been to a jungle, so we have no idea how we will cope. Mike is scared of spiders. If you had asked me a year ago when I moved to the woods where I would be in a year's time I doubt that this is what I would have pictured."

He is not even proposing to indulge himself in the few months he now has between breaking camp in Aston Rowant and heading to Central America to face new foes such as humidity, mosquitoes and snakes.

His next move will be to find another wood to live in somewhere north of Oxford, while he prepares for the trip. There are also plans to produce a book about his year in the Oxfordshire wood and to set up the world's first jungle-based, solar-powered on-line travel guide, which will seek to assemble weird and wonderful travel stories from across the globe.

They are going to have to be good to match his own adventures. It turns out they began with lying by the river in Oxford one May morning, drinking Pimm's and watching the river flow.

"I grew up in Somerset, where I spent a lot of my time playing in the forest. I suppose the idea of living in woods had been vaguely on my mind for years.

"But it was while I was sitting around in the sun, with bumble bees and people floating past in punts, that I thought that I could do it. I'm afraid the reality in February was very different."

He had read law at Hertford College between 1996 and 2000 and had once thought about becoming an environmental lawyer. The original plan was to leave his flat in London's Docklands and live in the woods for six weeks to raise money for the Woodland Trust and to make a point that modern-day levels of consumption are unnecessary. But finding it "easyish" he extended his stay.

His job with Sotheby's, which ends next week, is split between Bond Street and Hammersmith and given the fact it involves being on show, making bids on behalf of people who cannot be present, smartness at work is essential.

So as well as physical toughness, Hugh's organisational skills have certainly been put to the test. He showers at work, where he keeps his suit and has hanging space in the office. He will tell you that his desk drawers have been taken over by clothing and personal equipment. But co-ordinating laundry has been tricky and it has not been unknown for him to end up in the woods with suits hanging from trees.

As his last day looms, he says: "I really should thank my colleagues in Sotheby's for putting up with the mountains of possessions in the filing cabinet, and the constant smell of damp, wood smoke and mould that marks out my corner of the office."

But he has continued to go to the gym after work and enjoy a lively social life. (His dislocated shoulder results not from any woodland accident but sparring with a friend on a night out, who happened to be a judo black belt.) Nor does he deny himself the occasional evening stay over with friends. The simple rule is that the wood is his home and nights away should not be linked to escaping rain or discomfort.

When he started, his girlfriend, 24-year-old Natalie Skidmore, admitted to feeling "really confused and not sure if he was serious". Sadly, the relationship did not survive, with Hugh insistent that his unusual lifestyle was not to blame.

Hugh says only in recent weeks has he finally worked out how best to arrange his pillow and sleeping bag to get a good night's sleep.

Given the vulnerability of his position, alone in the woods with his scant possessions, he seems to have been surprisingly lucky in escaping the attention of prowlers.

He even manages to look taken aback at the suggestion that he might have been in real danger. "Fear?" he shrugged. "What is there to be frighened of here?"

At a time when Hugh was once suffering from severe sickness, he once had to face an intruder, who attempted to throw a few punches at him. But Hugh reckons the unwelcome guest, probably a glue-sniffer, was in an even worse state than him.

His health has suffered though. He has been ill with bronchitis and suffered severe sickness as a result of various attempts to make river water drinkable and not cooking meat properly.

"The length of the winter got to me," he admits. "Getting up in darkness and getting back in darkness became very depressing. It just seemed to go on and on. Waking up soaking wet or going to bed in a sleeping bag that is still wet from the previous night is not the best experience in the world."

So why is such an intelligent man continuing to punish his body in this way?

"The thing is, though, that living in such close proximity to nature for so long has led me to realise a few things. They are things that have been said before a thousand times and will no doubt sound a little trite but they have a real resonance.

"Firstly, money can't buy happiness. Secondly, the natural world as we know it is on the verge of destruction and it is up to us to do something. Thirdly, girls often have unrealistic expectations of personal hygiene for someone who has just spent a few days without running water.

"But never for a minute did I expect that anyone other than my close circle of friends would get to hear about this."

It has also proved a unique way to make friends. He says that before he took to the woods he had 20 names in his address book. Now, as a result of his blog, he has close to 400.

But as I left his camp I could not help but recall the words of the consultant psychologist, Prof John Collings, who had speculated about the difficulty Hugh might face returning to the city life.

"If he sticks it out for a year, it will be difficult to return to the noise of the city."

As he rolls out his battered sleeping bag for the last time in his wood next week, it will be not be the sounds of London but those of the jungle that Hugh will be contemplating. It would seem getting out of the woods is proving altogether more difficult and dangerous than going in.