Travel tips from travel writers

This blog is about family travel around the world without leaving the UK. Impossible? No. This post has a look at the way travel has changed - from adventure to grim necessity. Seems like a shame to all of us who still feel that travelling is a joy, and it is often better to travel than to arrive. Words from Nicola Baird (see www.nicolabaird.com for more info about my books and blogs).   


The photo above is of a gorgeous certificate my Great Aunt Aline was given for gamely taking a flight on 1 August 1949 across the Atlantic Ocean from London to Boston. It's an "overseas flight certificate" from the "captain of the flagship, Scotland" which states, "may all your journeys be pleasant ones". Ahh. Nowadays getting on a plane is so often the worst part of the journey - not just for you, but for the planet. So how did well-known travellers face up to the burden of getting there?


What the Dickens
I'd have loved to talk to Charles Dickens about his travel snaps. If he wasn't listening intently, ready to nick your lifestory then he was getting slightly over excited about how to get around, say taking the train to France (and remember he had no Channel Tunnel so had to use a boat too). Later, in 1865, he survived a train crash coming back from France close to Stapleton, Kent - it'd be interesting to find out what mental revisions he made to train travel then, although he comes close in this letter.

"There is a dreamy pleasure in this flying. I wonder where it was, and when it was, that we exploded, blew into space somehow a parliamentary train, with a crowd of heads and faces looking at us out of cages, and some hats waving... What do I care? 

Bang! We have let another station off, and fly away regardless. Everything is flying. The hop gardens turn gracefully towards me, presenting regular avenues of hops in rapid flight, then whirl away. So do the pools and rushes, haystacks, sheep, clover in full bloom delicious to the sight and smell, corn sheaves, cherry orchards, apple orchards, reapers, gleaners, hedges, gates, fields that taper off into little angular corners, cottages, gardens, now and then a church. Bang. Bang! A double-barrelled station! Now a wood, now a bridge, now a landscape, now a cutting, now a - Bang! a single-barrelled station - there was a cricket match somewhere with two white tents and then four flying cows, then turnips - now the wires of the electric telegraph are all alive, and spin, and blur their eges and go up and down, and make the intervals between each other most irregular, contracting and expanding in the strangest manner."
Charles Dickens on Travel (Hesperus Press, edited essays, 2009 from The Flight, 1851, p55)

Orwellian
What a contrast to George Orwell.

"So long as a machine is there, one is always obliged to use it. No one draws water from the well when he can turn on the tap. One sees a good illustration of this in the matter of travel. Everyone who has travelled by primitive methods in an undeveloped country knows that the difference between that kind of travel and modern travel in trains, cars, etc, is the difference between life and death. The nomad who walks or rides, with his luggage stowed on a came or an ox-cart, may suffer every kind of discomfort, but at least he is living while his is travelling; whereas for the passenger in an express train or a luxury liner his journey is an interregnum, a kind of temporary death. And yet so long as the railways exist, one has got to travel by train - or by cr or areoplane. When i want to go up to London why do I not pack my luggage on to a mule and set out on foot, making a two days of it? Becasue, with teh Green Line buses whizzing past me every ten minutes, such a journey would be intolerably irksome. In order that one may enjoy primitive methods of travel, it is necessary that no other method should be available."
The Road to Wigan Pier (Penguin, original edition 1937) p175

Backseat driving
See how jaded poor Bill Bryson, writing in the early 1990s, had got.

"If you mention in the pub that you intend to drive from, say, Surrey to Cornwall, a distance that most Americans would happily go to get a taco, your companions will puff their cheeks, look knowingly at each other, and blow out air as if to say, "Well now that's a bit of a tall order," and then they'll launch into a lively and protracted discussion of whether it's better to take the A30 to Stockbridge and then the A303 to Ilchester or the A361 to Glastonbury via Shepton Mallet. Within minutes the conversation will plunge off into a level of detail that leaves you, as a foreginer, swivelling your head in quiet wonderment."
Notes from Small Island (Black Swan, 1999 this edition specially for World Book Night p31)

Over to you
In contrast I tend to love where I go - else why leave? Let me know where you hope to go this year without using a plane.

A travel dilemma - can you help?

This blog is about family travel around the world without leaving the UK. Impossible? No. But what happens when your family say there's no option but to fly? This post is by Nicola Baird (see www.nicolabaird.com for more info about books and blogs).   Pic - yes it is of ducks (now with us for 3 weeks). They need to grow their wings. We humans need wings too.

My daughter is presenting me with a lot of big world problems. She's been invited on a school trip to Spain (flying there and back). And now a friend has invited her to stay in their apartment in Spain, at a different time (but it involves two flights as well). If I decide not to think about the financial cost - and instead focus on the opportunity, then she's an amazingly lucky girl, with a good selection of friends and a forward thinking school.

But if I think about the carbon costs, I'm in an utter dilemma because she must not go, at least not by plane. Flying has to be kept to the minimum, and ideally not done. See why in this learned report on low carbon travel from Sustrans.

I have allowed myself to be talked into the school trip - it's all to do with learning the language. But I feel wretched about it.

Her age luckily saves me this year from being evil mum and saying no to the friend's invite (or good citizen and saying no, depending on how you look at it) because the airline doesn't allow unaccompanied minors (ie, under 14s) to fly with it. There's something to praise EasyJet for!

Over to you
What would you do in a situation like this? It seems so simple - say no. Actually I have looked up the London-Madrid rail cost to see if I could take a merry jaunt across Europe to pick her up, but it's very expensive without having pre-booked by two months or more. However if you are organised, or one day wish to be, and can imagine travelling cheaply across Europe by train then start getting to know the maninseat61 because it's FAQs are better than anyones.

New start

Pete, Nicola, Lola, 10, and Nell, 7, like travelling around Britain on public transport (don’t laugh). We spent three happy months exploring during summer of 2007 but now we’re home, you can still join us for the occasional sightseeing - plus tips on how to shrink your carbon footprint. This post is from Nicola

I’ve worked at Friends of the Earth for nine years (this is my desk after a serious clean up) and it seems like a blink. Working to magazine deadlines for Earthmatters (and all the others) is rather like being in the tropics – you just don’t feel time passing because of the lack of seasons.

When I lived in Solomon Islands (working as a magazine trainer at a development education NGO) I tried to notice time by noting when the mangoes were ripe or the flame trees blooming but it didn’t work. When I think back to Solo now, 16 years on, I just remember blue skies, blue sea, sweat, dust, magazine deadlines and friends.

Maybe I'll compress the whole Friends of the Earth experience similarly: stormy deadlines, sweat, paper, shut windows and friends.

But right now I'm remembering a really enjoyable goodbye pub drink plus some of the most perfect presents from my team, and ex-colleagues. These included a Baird poem; inventive vouchers from colleagues to cut my hair, photograph my pets and create a poster; and a Eurostar voucher for a great escape. An incredible, and lovely haul!

So here's a big thank you to Friends of the Earth - t h a n k y o u.

Hen on a bike

Pete, Nicola, Lola, 10, and Nell, 7, like travelling around Britain on public transport (don’t laugh). We spent three happy months exploring during summer of 2007 but now we’re home, you can still join us for the occasional sightseeing - plus tips on how to shrink your carbon footprint. This post is from Nicola

This is the way my hens travel – on the back of the bike. This contraption carried nine of them yesterday for their summer break at Freightliners Farm.

We need transport too as we are invited to a wedding in a pear orchard in Kent and finding it hard to get to. As a result Pete has developed a new green radicalism. “There aren’t even instructions on how to get there by public transport,” he keeps moaning unable to find the nearest station (or a taxi rank) without ringing the long-suffering groom for instructions.

I explain that most people have cars, remembering my book The Estate We’re In: who’s driving car culture (Indigo, 1998). Pete says they don’t.

So we try counting the people we know with primary school aged children who don’t have cars. There are just five of us out of an acquaintanceship of more than 500 in this area (that’s thanks to school networks not enormous friendship powers). Normally Pete loves creating lists, but this time he seems a bit depressed.

For me it is a lesson to book the car club car in better time. Then we’d have the moral high ground and the wheels to make it to Kent with tent, food, spade and really wedding heavy gifts. For Pete it is an attempt to stop me getting more pets. “OK, we can do it by train this time,” he growls, “but if you got a dog then we’d have to have a car. And you don’t want that, do you?”

Waiting rooms

Pete, Nicola, Lola, 9, and Nell, 6, spent three happy months during summer of 2007 traveling around Britain. Now we’re home, but the travel bug is still there. Join us for the occasional sightseeing plus tips on how to shrink your carbon footprint. This post is from Nicola

I hate waiting normally, but it's different at Cambridge station waiting for a train in the mock (c1945) panelled room by AMT's 100 per cent fair traded cafe. There's ethical ice tea for starters, but better still an atmosphere (thanks to a few framed photos) that almost transport you to Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard's famously Brief Encounter at Carnforth station. There's the endless announcements for journeys half-remembered, never taken, anticipated.

Lola, Nell and I have to spend an hour here waiting for Pete to drop something off. By the time he's ready to catch our train home we reckon the AMT franchise needs to cordon off a floor sitting space for kids to flop on; add some shelves of books and open the windows. I'd also like an area to dress in glamorous tweeds, so I can take a snap of myself with lipstick and a big engine backdrop which can be emailed/texted off to friends. Or maybe these waiting rooms could be filled with manuals - how to change a tyre, how to stop stockings running, tips for using up leftover fruit and bread, or atlases so you can mug up on pub quiz questions/holiday geography?

Our ideas were for simple stuff that doesn't involve eating... and enables the people who just can't relax to spend every waiting moment on a learning curve rather than an anxious gap between rush hours.

Crowded train

Pete, Nicola, Lola, 9, and Nell, 6, spent three months during the summer of 2007 traveling around Britain. Now we’re home but the travel bug is still there. Join us for occasional sightseeing plus tips on how to shrink your carbon footprint…

It’s a September Saturday and we’re off to our friends John and Ann’s wedding in Bristol. They’ve organized a BBQ and lazy afternoon at Bristol Zoo so we aim for the 10.05 out of Paddington Station. The Circle line seems suspiciously crowded but when we get to the main line station it is a sea of gold and green shirts worn by the crowds of one-time Sydney residents trying to get to Cardiff Millennium stadium for the World Cup rugby match between Wales and Australia. There are probably some Welsh fans in the melee, and less sporty travelers too but at Paddington’s glass-covered concourse it looks as if Australia has the most supporters.

The one charter train has already packed itself to capacity and left for Cardiff which means that we share our service with hundreds of fans desperate to get to the stadium on time. Our carriage is so crowded it would be wrong to sit in all our reserved seats, even if we could persuade people to shift, so we squeeze all four of us on to just two. Inevitably that means we have to earwig the surrounding conversations and that’s how we learn that Australians – when not talking about the rugby – are obsessed by European traveling, budget insurance (eg World Nomad), and have a check list of places to visit while in Britain which includes Brighton, Cornwall, the Regency circus at Bath, Stratford-upon-Avon and a pretty Cotswold village. Edinburgh Festival (in August) and the Munich beer fest (in October) are also obligatory.

Pete regularly travels on trains full of footie fans so he’s not phased by the over-crowding or surprised when our train is unable to pick up passengers at interim stations even ones as big as Reading and Swindon. Instead he enjoys the bonhomie, shared bottles of cider and sport talk.

In contrast I’m shocked that the train companies, like First Great Western, are so untogether that they don’t run longer or more trains to get fans to the ground. These big sporting dates aren’t a surprise so why do train operators let us all down by making zero effort to handle the demand? And why are trains allowed to be so over-crowded in an age when allegedly health and safety is a top priority?

As for the result: a 71,000 crowd see Australia beat Wales (20:32) in an allegedly good game. And because we were cheek by jowl with the Ozzies for most of the journey we can’t resist shouting a good on yerrrrr - even though we're now having a nice day at a white wedding.