Travel

Travel - To go, move, journey from one place to another.

I've lost count of all the places I've travelled to in my life, both in the UK & the World. I've had wonderful experiences & met wonderful people. I've also had dreadful experiences & met dreadful people. I have been very priveleged to have the money to travel for enjoyment & have learned a great deal about different cultures & places.

Now I'm in my 70's I'm beginning to question whether I want to keep travelling. All that research & preparation beforehand, which I used to really enjoy, seems more onerous & takes a lot of time. I've always wanted to know a lot about places I'm going to so I see the important things. Now I'm beginning to think that I ought to just go & see what happens, who I meet.

Conversely I now wonder whether travelling, especially going on holiday, which is different, is a sustainable & justifiable thing. It's another "issue" that is full of grey areas. We need to know about other people, their beliefs & the way they live. In travelling to do that we are using finite resources, polluting the world & giving large amounts of money to multinational corporations, but very little to the local people who are often less well off than we are.

We are a culture who takes holidays as a right. Many people don't really think about the impact, often very adverse, they have on the places they go to - think about the Southern coast of Spain for example.

One of the less desirable aspects of our ability to travel is people who literally tick off a list of the places they have been, much like Birders do with different species. Then there is the tendency to brag about where they have been & what they have seen. I've done it too - so I can't take the moral high ground.

I've got two holidays in the pipeline - Rome & The Hebrides. The latter because I love the sea & landscapes. I also feel it's important to support our UK economy & see my own heritage. Rome because of the art & architecture.

It would be very easy not to travel any more. The thing that concerns me about doing that is I would get more stuck in the rut of comfortable routine - people & places that I know. I do think you have to deliberately remove yourself from your own comfort zone or you vegitate rather than stimulate. You deny yourself new experiences.

Just not sure I've got the energy anymore.