Around the world in 80 days - bookshelf inspiration

This blog is about family travel around the world without leaving the UK. Impossible? No. Here's how Around The World in 80 Days inspired this blog (and how books all to often inspire travel). This post is by Nicola Baird (see www.nicolabaird.com for more info about my books and blogs).  

Have you guessed that this blog aroundbritainwithoutaplane is named after Jules Verne's classic book Around the World In 80 Days? I hadn't read the novel when I dreamt up my blog title, but during winter 2011-12 read it aloud with my then 10-year-old, Nell, and we found it fascinating. You can find copies easily in the library or secondhand shops - ideally choose one with illustrations, especially if you are reading it aloud to a child.

The main character, phlegmatic Phileas Fogg (who most of us know from the snack brand), is an insufferable bore who travels in the exact opposite to the way anyone should. He prefers the card game whist to views; timetables to experience. But his uncharacteristic comment: "I will bet £20,000 pounds that I will travel round the world in not more than 80 days," creates a marvellous novel (and, shhh, geography lesson).

Starting from Number 7 Savile Row, finishing at the Reform Club, P Fogg Esq plans to go:

• From London to Suez (Egypt) (via Mont Cenis (the pass over the French Alps) and Brindisi (Italy)) by rail and steamer - 7 days
• Suez to Bombay, by steamer - 13 days
• Bombay to Calcutta, by rail - 3 days
• Calcutta to Hong Kong, by steamer - 13 days
• From Hong Kong to Yokohama (Japan's 2nd largest city), by steamer - 6 days
• From Yokohama to San Francisco, by steamer - 22 days
• From San Francisco to New York, by rail - 7 days
• New York to Liverpool and on to London - by steamer and rail - 9 days.

Slow travel is actually quite fast, but it's expensive too. It costs Phileas Fogg close to £20,000 to make the journey (admittedly he travels in some style, and with at least one companion, his man-servant, the loyal Passepartout).

Just for the record, the cheapest round-the-wold air ticket I can find on offer in April 2012 is £749 but the flexibility is extremely limited and doesn't include any accommodation. Add on 80 days of food and beds (say £40 a day but no trips) and you need at least £4,000 to go around the world in a rushed three months.

Step into the great man's shoes (on a different route)
After a quick google I also found a copy-cat Phileas Fogg 80-day journey, see here, which costs £6,400 (and needs two people to be doing it). But what a journey, what an itinerary - completely organised for you with a complete disregard of the things that happen as you travel: lost purses, ill health, a desire to slow down and chat to people, and most of all weather...

Over to you
Jules Verne teaches us that travel cannot be micro-managed. He shows us how the unexpected turns up, and urges us to step in where wrongs need to be righted. He's half mocking the people who want around-the-world tickets, half luring us into buying them. Maybe this blog is doing the same for it's readers. For me, the blog writer, it's satisfying an insatiable desire to travel simply by looking for stay-at-home-but-feel-abroad experiences.

Let me know if it's helped.

Air pollution is very high in dot dot dot

This blog is about family travel around the world without leaving the UK. Impossible? No. Here's how air pollution in London makes me think of all the places I'd rather not live. Except that I live in one of them. This post is by Nicola Baird (see www.nicolabaird.com for more info about books and blogs).   Pic is of numbered pegs - try the air pollution challenge. Which county (or country) do you think is the most polluted, peg them up... Or pop an answer in the comment box.

Air pollution today - 16 March 2012 - is very high in, dot dot dot.

Actually I'm thinking London. But it's also bad in Kuala Lumpur, New Delhi, Los Angeles, Beijing and a spread of Chinese cities (not long ago a report found that 16 out of 20 of the world's worst polluted places were in China).

"It's the fog," says my husband looking out at a gloomy London.

"NO it's not!!" I reply, almost screaming (sorry). It's pollution trapped by the fog. The fog is not the cause.

Wake up people - ask your local councillors what they can do about it. Ask your MPs. Then remember that this is the exact perfect example of where we have to think global and act local.

This link gives you up to date facts around the UK. Purple is very bad. Red is pretty terrible. Today London is wearing purple. Lots of good info about how to campaign for clean air here.

This clip is of my youngest daughter talking about how air pollution triggers asthma. More precisely, how she feels when she gets asthma.

Over to you
Which countries/counties do you think are the most polluted?

World's best long distance walks

This blog is about family travel around the world without leaving the UK. Impossible? No. Here's how to use your walking shoes to take you over the horizon - and away to Rome and even Santiago de Compostela. This post is by Nicola Baird (see www.nicolabaird.com for more info about books and blogs)   

My family is so very close to finishing the Capital Ring - a 70 mile (126km) route circling London. Sometimes I worry about finishing it - we'll end the joy of discovering new bits of London. Highlights include the Brent reservoir used for a long-ago Olympics, the art deco 1930s splendour of Eltham Palace, a peep into the grand schooling of Harrow School and the endless views of London from hills you didn't know existed. Honestly it's like tramping over the seven hills of Rome.

To compensate my loss there are some wonderful long-distance paths around the UK (and nearby) that could perhaps be revisited and allow me to dream up being in another place altogether.

Five best long-distance walks

• Camino de Santiago de Compostela - the route of St James (patron saint's day 25 July). I've met people who have walked this in the sharp winds of April with a baby on their back. I've seen the film with Martin Sheen and son, The Way, and long ago I stayed in the stunning parador (hotel) at Santiago de Compostela in northern Spain. Somewhere in the back of my mind I want to try this 780km journey too, but it's one that will have to wait for the children to leave school. Indeed if you go past the cathedral you can end at Finisterre, which Medievals thought was "the end of the world". More info at this website.
• Walk with the Romans along Hadrian's Wall. We've nearly managed the whole 135km, just a short two, maybe three, day section left between Newcastle and Hexham. The May half term is pencilled in, but we may have to give up on this idea as Nell, 10, is very wary of cows and they will certainly be out in the fields by then. Bulls and all. See a previous entry on this blog here about the moment we reached the end (before quite completing the beginning).
  
• West Highland Way - runs 152km from Glasgow to Fort William uphill. Well, as good as uphill. It's midge heaven and the few chunks I've tried out (along Loch Lomond for instance) are remarkably free of snack shops which makes walking more of a slog. Perhaps this is the one that best echoes Camino de Santiago de Compostela?
  
  
• Coast to Coast - success! Pete and I spent three years popping up and down to the Lake District in order to walk Alfred Wainwright's fabulous 190 mile path (sorry, it has to be miles in respect to AW's memory) from St Bees Head over to Robin Hood's Bay in Yorkshire (dreamt up in 1973, more info here). I'd never heard of Wainwright when Pete first suggested the idea. Now I am willing to watch reruns of his extremely slow TV programme, just to get back in the zen mood of walking through the Lake District with my eyes mostly on a compass rather than mountain tops...
  
  A tip from the cantankerous AW: "If you must take a companion, take one who is silent."
  
  I was quite upset when an energetic friend and her husband managed to cycle 225km on the C2C (a very similar route) in a weekend - the time it took my lumbering feet seemed to add to the magic of the journey. But if you are less hardy, but still speed-inclined try the 12-20 day holidays run by this group.
  
  
• Across India - isn't this what Gandhi did in some form of anti-British protest involving salt? Have you seen the size of India? 

Over to you
Where have you walked in the UK that makes you think you could be somewhere else in the world?

Saffron Walden: love the dark ages

This blog is about family travel around the world without leaving the UK. Impossible? No. Here's how to immerse yourself in British history, just by a trip to an Essex market town. This post is by Nicola Baird 

800 years ago history had a story-telling blip. There was no one around who wanted to write stuff down or, if they did, they clearly put their books in the wrong storage depot. So when you get to a town like Saffron Walden, in Essex, which started life as a small settlement (possibly) in pre-Roman times and then progressed to being a market town (from 1141) to a rather fab place to visit where the houses are painted in shades of ice-cream flavours and the post-xmas rubbish gets put out in Waitrose bags. I bet Tunbridge Wells gives off the same sort of comfort zone...


But Saffron Walden has a secret, and it's not the Devil's Fingernails in the pic. It's a site once seen that leaves you asking far more questions about all of our ancestors.  Here's why.


Saffron Walden has 15,000 people. It's not far from Cambridge. It's always been on my list as a must-see destination and yet it's taken years for me to get there probably because its train station was shut in 1964. Nearest stations are Audley End and Newport, plus a bus or taxi ride. 


Once you've got there though it's easy to stroll around. The tourist information centre has a free walking guide which leads you around the biggest church in Essex, past Oliver Cromwell's HQ (yet another), over RAB Butler's grave (remember him - born in India, a consumate politician perhaps, "the best PM we never had" and in 1944 gave us a great education system), past a plethora of pretty houses with beams and plaster, mouldings and stories (see photos).  


It can take in the Old English Gentleman, a CAMRA pub, that allows dogs in one bar, and children in the other. Sensible: albeit a problem for a family like mine with children and a dog...


Sodding mystery
It can include a Norman castle with fabulous ruins, and an award-winning museum - purpose built for the job which has a famous ethnography collection including Innuit (eskimo in the display and Nell's 21st century version in the photo) kit and plenty of memories for Oceania fans (such as my family). Oh yes, and the guided walk takes in a skateboard park, and a restored Victorian garden, known as Bridge End. Through it I found out the town had been a melting pot for Quakers, philanthropists and politics. Learnt that it's a stone's throw from lovely Audley End and the miniature railway. But bizarrely nothing much seems to be known about England's oldest turf maze, created 800 years ago and  still in amazing shape on the far side of The Common.   


Nell, 10, lay down in the centre of the maze. Lola, 13, stalked around the turf paths trying to figure out the pattern muttering "I've got it!". Pete was puzzled why it wasn't fenced off or made more of a feature. Maybe it's obvious: the turf love-knots (if that's what they are) have to compete with saffron (the yellow powder on the stamens of the crocus) that gave Saffron Walden it's name, so maybe it is clear why this particular British curiosity plays second fiddle to a flower.


Over to you
Is there a place you know that undersells something you think is amazing? If so, do let me know - or tell me what you love about Saffron Walden so I can make sure I treat myself to a second trip.

Take a lemon: tastebud travel

This blog is about family travel around the world without leaving the UK. This post is by Nicola Baird 


It's so easy to eat your way around the world. You can do it at a restaurant (fancy a Mexican?), food mall (noodles anyone?) in the supermarket aisles, in your store cupboard (just keep harissa paste, curry powders, and pesto in stock for a chance to cook Thai, Indian or Italian).


But it's British food fortnight - the time when we're all urged to try eating local food, to get a sense of place on our plate. 

So if you are in Leicester have an apple and a hunk of Stilton cheese. If you are in Somerset have cider and an apple pie. Etc...

I love British food, but was quite surprised how little I long for it when I'm not in the UK - what I like is to eat food that's grown locally wherever I am because that way there's a chance it will be fresher, tastier and possibly even prepared with love. Jams bought at a fete or pre-Christmas event are a brilliant way to stock up your store cupboard without ploughing yet more of your money into a supermarket.

There are loads of ideas about how to find and choose British specialities, without paying over the odds on this website.

Lemon curd recipe
I love tarte citron, but thought it was out of my cooking orbit being so French.

But lemon curd is a traditional English condiment (think Little Miss Tuffet eating her curds and wey), and it is surprisingly easy to make. You could even make blackberry curd if you wanted to remove all food miles and a bramble bush is easier to find than a lemon. I adapted a Nigel Slater recipe - just melt butter with sugar over a bain marie (I put some water in a saucepan, got it boiling then removed the lid and put a thick china bowl to rest in the saucepan). Then I squeezed in the juice of one a lemon, and as it was unwaxed grated the rind too. I was quite pleased to use up this lemon as I had no other plans for it. Then beat a fresh egg and pour into the melted sugar/lemon/butter mix. Stir, then beat (with a whisk or fork), for about 10 mins - until you can feel the mix thickening.

From the Observer...Makes 2 small jam jars (or for 1 jar)
zest and juice of 4 unwaxed lemons (or 2 - but I only had one and a half)
200g sugar (100g)
100g butter (100g)
3 eggs and 1 egg yolk (I used one egg, just ignore the egg yolk unless you have one to use up)

Then pour into a clean jar and when it's cool add the lid. It keeps in the fridge well for about three weeks, and is stunning - spread on toast or as a filling for a pastry based tarte citron. I even spead it on filo pastry, rolled it up and cooked as a surprise pudding.

I say surprise meaning my family were impressed when I suggested we could travel with our tastebuds, right now, for Sunday lunch, to France - except that actually lemon pie is really a British dish. Enjoy!

Indian tastes change

Pete, Nicola, Lola and Nell love to travel. With this blog find out how to travel the world in a very low carbon way. This post is by Nicola

Dear friends arrive from Wales for a cuppa and then some spaghetti pomodore - and being generous they bring along a treat. It's a box of delicious Indian sweets from Drummond Street behind Euston where you go to get the tastiest, and best value Indian buffet in London. Conversations later we're talking about the iniquity and misery of boarding schools. The children know them from Harry Potter (or even friends) and aren't taking the sides that George, Pete and I are. Turns out George's dad was sent to England from India when he was just three and then neglected in schools here. Pete's dad didn't board but he certainly got bullied. Mine boarded and remembered secondary school as a bullyfest, with him as the whipping boy. It probably didn't help that he was 4ft 6in aged 14 - though subsequently grew to 6ft!

Our dads were at school when England still had an empire. I find this quite astonishing, and of course the links to India are still there. Our friend Anthony, just turned 70, was born and grew up in India where his father worked. George's grandfather was military in India. Taking it further back one of my famous relatives (possibly famous for bad temper rather than actually famous) was Sir David Baird - on of the winning generals at Seringapatam (sp?) in 1799. If you don't know the battle, you might know the pic of the Fall of Tippoo Sultan, see here.

"Still it's all different now," muttered someone at the table. Did they then say modernity started with George Orwell and the Road to Wigan Pier? I can't remember, might have dreamt it, but checking up on these facts suddenly saw that George Orwell was born in India too. When it comes to my generation, or my kids' generation for that matter, the people I know who were born in India are no longer repressed Englishmen/women sticking to Victorian values, way past their sell-by date. They are sassy, bright young men and women who are making up the rules for the new media age. We do have something in common, all of us  still like those luminous coloured, teeth-rotting, exotically enormous Indian sweets...

Gritty world tales

In 2007 Pete, Nicola, Lola and Nell spent three months travelling around Britain in a low-carbon way. We're home now but still like to travel, and blog about it. This post is by Nicola.

Part of the year I teach feature writing to university students. this is a real pleasure and has enabled me to meet many very lovely, bright and ambitious young men and women on the cusp of their careers. It's a kind of virtual travelling as I get to meet people from places I doubt I'll go to. For all of us it's about realising everyone has different norms.

When students do a feature assignment for class I always say "write what you know". This year I'm regretting it. Many of my students have interviewed friends/ family/ acquaintances who have harrowing stories about family life around the world.

Life changing journeys
From Nepal there's the misery caused by students lured to the UK enrolled into fake colleges, or Visa Factories, who then end up in debt and with no chance of getting the promised degree.

From Nigeria there's examples of the causual violence inflicted on girlfriends and wives because it's OK for men to be seen to be the boss.

From Bangladesh there is the problem of arranged marriages leaving young women, new-to-Britain (often with no friends and no English language skills) trapped with violent husbands and consentingly mean mother-in-laws. If these women manage to leave these husbands and divorce they are shamed and shunned by their own family, destroying their lives if they even can get a ticket home. They are also stuck if this happens within the first two years of their marriage/visa as the UK rules mean they cannot get any support from the state. Any unfortunate woman with a baby would be in a horrific situation.

There's the Albanian girl who knows her life will be mapped out for her. She may be a student know but you get married before you're 24 or that's it, no man will want you.

Or in India, the semi-Royal-behaving family who was so angry with their daughter's choice of boyfriend that they packed her off to the UK and then faked her death in a car-crash. This is a particularly harsh story as the girl was treated like a princess right until the moment her family realised she had been a friend of a Moslem man. Clearly she didn't realise she was living in a gilded cage and had misjudged the love her family had for her. Daddy loved her but only if she did what they wanted, which isn't love at all is it?

And there's another story from India recalling the clashes in 2002 which left 1000s dead in a city on the "other side of the bridge". For the Moslem teenager on that side the experience was scarring enough to bring on post-traumatic stress disorder. Yet his contemporary, a Hindu girl, remembers the three months of curfew on her "other side of the bridge" as a happy time with far more leisure and indoor activities that she almost misses now the troubles are over.

Nobody knows the trouble I've seen
It's a right set of misery pieces, all written so well. And I so hope my students can take these ideas and shake them up and make an effort to change things. At the very least I think we all deserve safe homes, and yet for so many women this is painfully not the case. My students' writing show the world as cruel and unfair - and yet their own generosity, happy spirits and kindnesses demonstrate another path.

Here's a good luck message to anyone baffled by the things going wrong - the lost housing deposits, the fake colleges with dud courses, the family or cherised boyfriend/partner turning against you. I hope things will get better for you, and that you have the skills to share your stories. I've never read about the stuff my students chart in my favourite newspapers, but I cannot tell you how many times I've read about how to reuse a plastic water bottle, what film to watch or summer festival fashion tips - useless, simplistic journalese.

I guess the message of this piece is that when you travel - anywhere, even out of your door - try to see if your friendship can ever help people too proud, or confused to admit to the pain their nearest and dearest are giving them.

Another country: perfect Costwolds

Nicola, Pete, Lola and Nell love to travel - but try not to rack up their carbon footprint as they go. Here's how...
“Is it one of the made up Cotswold towns,” asks my London neighbour after I describe a weekend in Tetbury glowingly. I’m not sure about this – guessing one of Oxfordshire’s Upper or Lower Slaughters could have been just to keep the visitors trapped in a Cotswold beauty ghetto – but the old wool town of Tetbury http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetbury is astonishing. We arrive in perfect September sun to see many other visitors enjoying pavement gourmet meals, the public loos are squeaky clean, the postcard recommendation to look out for St Mary’s church and the Chipping Steps easily found. No surprise it is a 2009 Britain in Bloom finalist.

The evening is spent at a perfect wedding held in the nearby Great Tythe Barn – then again Helen and Chris claim they have had 20 years to plan it!

Back in Tetbury central on the Sunday there’s a food festival (with English wines, Highgrove organic produce from the Veg Shed, prize winning local made organic smoked brie) and the village hall has an art show Even the B&Bs are themed – the lovely one we stayed in was pure House & Garden perfection with its low beams, model owner and delicious breakfast; another is above a chocolatier; a third transports you to India through artifacts and incense.

Tetbury has always been the place you might meet royalty – and since March 2008 you can step into the shopwindow opposite Somerfield’s thanks to Prince Charles opening the Highgrove shop www.highgroveshop.com/ . It’s an upmarket style center for modern posh with wooden apple trays, hen-bedecked aprons and pottery tablewear. Old farm tools have been clustered together like decorative weaponry. There are books extolling the organic, country life and I love the fact that profits from the sale of these products goes towards The Prince’s Charities Foundation – an altruistic offer that makes me wonder why people so often slag Charles off (or should I be writing “Your Majesty/Sir??”) as a NEET who is rich (or silly) enough to be not in employment, education or training.

A local resident resists praise for the town too. He claims the problem with Tetbury is it has no middle class, just posh or forelock tuggers, and it’s only really bustling at weekends as the townies drift in for their Saturday of rural unwinding with the very best food. He says I need to get myself to Nailsworth, or read reports of crime from Stroud for a real touch of Cotswold life. Even so, the next visitors I get who want to see a snapshot of old fashioned England –will be given a map to get themselves to Tetbury.

Water garden

Nicola, Pete, Lola and Nell want to travel the world with a difference. We hope to get a taste of many countries without adding to climate change (with needless emissions from aeroplanes) or having to waste hours of holiday time in airport terminals. We hope our adventures inspire you to take a Grand Tour of your neighbourhood whatever the weather. This post is from Nicola

Alnwick Gardens - the amazing 12-acre creation of the Duchess of Northumberland funded by European money and NGOs such as Northern Rock Foundation - is deliberately focused around water, http://www.alnwickgarden.com/about_the_garden/index.asp. While the rest of England seems deluged - Worcester, Battersea are apparently flooded - up in Northumberland they are coping fine with rain, indeed they are used to cold, wet summers.

On the hour, and half hour, the fountains on the cascade are set off by computer and either bubble their way down the waterfall in the manner of a great French palace, like Versailles, or they shoot spurts on to the pavement soaking the innocent who screech in shock. At the base of the fountain is a huge pool with water draining off the walls which children are encouraged to play in.

About 20 solid-looking plastic diggers are parked there and the kids pedal from one side to the other with cargoes of water they have collected, usually getting wet but invariably grinning from ear-to-ear. You'd have to be a strange child not to enjoy doing this water shuttle all day, every day. Even in their raincoats the kids look as happy as children in India celebrating the first rains of the monsoon.

In contrast all those families who have either had to move out of their homes or got stuck on roads thanks to flooding must be loathing the recent deluges. As ever for anyone with insurance it's always alright in the end - albeit inconvenient for days or months - but with so many floods this year I think we can all expect higher premiums, and less coverage from the insurance companies at our next policy renewal date.

In Northumberland the farmers are very worried about the weather spoiling their crops. This is the time for the silage (grass) to be cut and for grains like wheat and barley to be harvested - something that is not easy to do if your crop has been flattened by yet more rain. Potato blight is also a risk too as the endless rain is washing off the chemical treatments conventional farmers rely on to keep this in check. People's immediate misery from heavy rain is of course the most newsworthy, and provides better pix, but bad harvests are in the long term much more worrying for us all.

I want to find out if this year's wet weather results in more people flying off to drier parts of the world for their holidays... I'm hoping it won't. But I know lots of people feel rain is the big bully that ruins their borders, picnic plans and holidays and thus they deserve a bit of sun, regardless of what it takes to reach that location, or how that adds up to making climate change (the very thing they are trying to escape) worse.