Wanderlust

A constant desire to travel used to be called wanderlust, which was seen as something a bit abnormal. But now wanderlust is the norm and hordes of people are forever travelling the world as if it's the obvious thing to do.

A couple of times recently someone has asked me about my holiday plans, and when I say we're probably going somewhere in Britain, there seems to be a slight sense that this is strange, that we should be going somewhere more exciting and impressive, like  Machu Picchu or Angkor Wat.

But this wanderlust tendency isn't limited to an occasional thrilling holiday. Lots of people, it seems are travelling more or less permanently, with only the odd pause to catch up with domestic needs. Jenny's brother and his partner (both retired) are always either on holiday or planning the next one.

Some cruise enthusiasts go from one cruise to another, and are away from home for months on end. And then there's Anderson Dias, who visited all 195 countries in 2019.

Unfortunately the increasing and apparently insatiable desire to travel is what's causing over-tourism in lots of popular destinations and greatly upsetting the locals, whose daily lives have been disrupted by a huge influx of inconsiderate and demanding visitors.

Personally I'm not gripped by wanderlust. I've been to several countries that interested me and that's enough. I've no restless desire to tick off more and more places on the global map, no burning curiosity to see what this or that country "is really like".

Machu Picchu will just have to get by without me.

A question of trust

Another heated debate about parenting and to what extent you should trust your child to do their own thing without fussing and fretting and watching them like a hawk.

There's been a lot of criticism of Kirstie Allsopp, the presenter of a TV property programme, for allowing her 15 year old son and a 16 year old friend to take a rail trip round Europe on their own.

Even the local council has got involved, with Social Services starting a file on her for supposedly neglectful parenting.

Kirstie Allsopp insists that she knows her own child and had no doubt he was mature enough to make such a trip and cope with any problems that arose. Which he did.

It seems to me that it's entirely up to the parent to decide what their child is capable or not capable of. What business is it of other people to judge them and tell them they made the wrong decision? What do they know about the child's capabilities?

The assumption is that parents are too laid back and let their children do anything they want without properly observing them and keeping them out of harm's way.

As you know, Jenny and I don't have any children, but I imagine that if we had done I for one as a rather anxious individual would probably have been over-protective and over-watchful, deterring my children from spreading their wings and finding their way in the outside world.

I'm sure I would have exaggerated all the dangers and conjured up all sorts of dire eventualities. I suspect I'd have been an alarmingly neurotic parent.

Pic: Kirstie Allsopp

Waning wanderlust

I'm of two minds about travel. On the one hand, it can broaden your mind, undermine prejudices, give you novel experiences, show you how other people live. On the other hand, planes and cruise ships are massively polluting and many popular cities are plagued by over-tourism.

I've got the point where, for now at any rate, having travelled all over the world, I've had my fill of travelling and I'm quite happy to stay at home and enjoy my own city and my own country. People who're perpetually travelling find this sudden lack of wanderlust strange and try to persuade us to keep on the move.

It doesn't help that air travel is becoming such a complicated business, fraught with unexpected difficulties like computer failures, strikes, staff shortages, lost baggage, cancelled flights and unforeseen extra charges. I could do without all the hassle and stress and uncertainty.

And then there's the hefty charge for travel insurance. Once you're over 75 and you have one or two medical conditions, the cost of insurance goes through the roof. Is it worth paying such huge sums?

As for travel broadening the mind, I didn't see much evidence of that in my parents, even though they visited Italy many times. My mum professed to love Italy, but she also disliked Italian food. Pizza, pasta, tiramisu, whatever, she wasn't a fan. She still preferred traditional English food.

So for the time being I'm staying at home and marvelling at all those hardened travellers who'll put up with anything the airline throws at them to get their two weeks in some exotic location. Rather them than me.

Globe trotting

It's taken for granted nowadays that tourism and travelling around the world is completely normal, and anyone who prefers to stay at home is a bit weird. Don't they want to see other countries, sample other cultures, see how other people do things?

When I was a child, this huge appetite for global tourism didn't exist. Most people took their holidays in domestic seaside resorts and had no wish to jet off to some far-flung location. Did that mean their lives were somehow impoverished? I don't think so. They just didn't have the modern wanderlust.

But is mass tourism necessarily a good thing? Personally I think it's gone too far. Many popular holiday spots are now so overwhelmed by tourists that the local infrastructure and services can't cope and longstanding residents up sticks and move somewhere quieter.

The huge extent of air travel that underpins this feverish globe-trotting is not only polluting the planet but has led to declining in-flight comfort as airlines cram more and more passengers into their planes.

So what is gained from all this travelling around? Are people generally better-informed, more open-minded, more interesting? Not that I've noticed. People can fly all over the world and still be remarkably ignorant and ethnocentric.

I've got to the age when I've lost the taste for long-distance travelling, now that my energy levels are less than they were. And I'm happy to stay at home. It doesn't make you an unadventurous stick-in-the-mud. It doesn't mean you're uninterested in the rest of the world. After all nowadays you can find out anything you want about other countries by half an hour's googling.

It seems to me this escalating desire to zoom all over the globe has got a bit out of hand. Why not appreciate our own country a bit more?

Casual flyers

I've always been captivated by planes. As someone with no understan-ding at all of aerodyn-amics, I constantly marvel that these incredibly heavy machines (the Dreamliner is 190 tons) somehow not only manage to take off but travel thousands of miles across the world with no visible means of support.

Jenny is even more captivated. She was an ardent plane spotter as a kid, and often visited Heathrow, which was close to her parents' house.

When we first met we were always financially stretched, so we didn't actually fly anywhere until 1994, when we went to Venice, Florence and Rome. Before I met Jenny my only flights were in a private plane flown by a friend's mother, and a short family hop from the now defunct Lympne Airfield in Kent to Paris.

Now of course we've flown all over the world and think nothing of it. Unfortunately millions of other people are equally casual flyers and the resulting pollution has made us rethink our flying habits. We may abandon long-haul trips altogether. But short-haul trips are unavoidable to go elsewhere in the UK.

I've never been afraid of flying. Planes are maintained to much higher standards than the average car, and besides, the flight crew don't want to die because of some botched repair job. If the crew are happy, so am I.

I do always wonder, when I'm in a really massive plane trundling down the runway, whether it'll actually take off or end up in the adjoining field, but of course it always does take off.

Our only edge-of-the-seat experience was when our plane from the US was coming in to land at Gatwick in thick fog. The pilot circled several times before deciding it was okay to land, and when the plane touched ground there was a huge round of applause from the passengers.

I could say something about in-flight conditions - and the food - but I'll leave that for another day.

Cruising for a bruising

Jenny and I were never much interested in cruising. Being cooped up on a boat with thousands of other people, with maybe only fleeting visits to the various cities en route, isn't our cup of tea.

We may have had a lucky escape. Now there are three cruise ships in lockdown over a mass of coronavirus cases (one in Yokohama, Japan, one in Oakland, California, and one in Luxor, Egypt) cruising looks distinctly risky right now. Passengers on other cruise ships must fear they too will catch the virus before they get back home. Then they'll have to go through the same ordeal of being in quarantine and possibly having to change their onward travel arrangements.

The chance of catching the virus is increased by the fact that the air conditioning on a cruise ship is constantly recirculating the air and helping to transmit the virus to previously healthy passengers.

A lot of people are so worried about any kind of travel, in case they pick up the virus while travelling, that the hospitality industry has been badly hit. Hotels, restaurants and airlines have seen such a huge slump in bookings that they're facing big financial losses.

Personally I don't think travelling is any more risky than going into a crowded supermarket or a crowded cinema. The chance of catching the virus from a random stranger is surely very remote. Jenny and I are still planning to visit Vienna in early summer, which seems sensible enough given that Vienna has so far only had 50 confirmed cases (most of them recovered and no longer infectious) in a population of nearly two million.

My attitude is, either I catch the virus or I don't. There's no point in worrying myself to death over it.

Pic: The Diamond Princess, now docked in Oakland

Itchy feet

Why the increasing urge to travel? Why the burning desire to go to all those far-flung places? Why the need to check out all those famous spots, despite their often being over-run with thousands of other tourists?

I had little desire to travel when I was young. It wasn't a big thing in those days anyway. Staycations were normal and families up and down the land would spend a fortnight at Southend or Torquay or Eastbourne and not even contemplate going "abroad" or going "to the continent". That was strictly for the nobs, the celebrities, the political bigwigs. Not for the likes of us.

Even well into middle age I had no great yearning to travel the world. I was happy enough sampling the cultural delights of London, or having a day out at "the seaside". Why would I want to go down under or visit the yanks or look at sacred temples? It seemed like an awful lot of effort for some nebulous benefit.

It was only after I met Jenny and she wanted our holidays to be a bit more adventurous that we went all over northern Italy and then farther afield to the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. And enjoyed it all immensely.

Now of course, just as half the world is getting itchy feet and jumping merrily onto long-haul flights, the spectre of climate pollution is stopping us in our tracks and forcing us to rethink our holiday plans.

Should we give Eastbourne another try? A quick trip to the Shetland Isles perhaps? Should we dial back to the nineteen fifties and decide we've done enough "abroad" for the time being?

The problem is, those casual mentions of "our trip to the Maldives" or "our little break in the Bahamas" are now so common that we'd have trouble convincing anyone that we really really enjoyed our rain-swept week in the Lake District.

I might even have trouble convincing myself.

Hitchhiking

There's a lot less hitchhiking now than when I was young. It's rare these days to see that familiar thumbing motion as I cruise around.

Back in the legendary sixties there would be a dozen would-be hitchers lined up as I left a motorway service station or entered a major cross-country road.

They'd stand there hopefully with their tatty bits of cardboard saying Exeter or Birmingham or Aberystwyth. Or sometimes Glastonbury or Aldermaston as people hitched to rock festivals and political protests.

I'd pick them up and have fascinating conversations about everything under the sun with complete strangers from who-knows-where. A bit like blogging in fact.

I hitched once or twice myself in my pre-car days, but usually the thought of indifferent drivers hurtling past showering me with muddy water was enough to put me off and I caught the train or bus instead.

But now these cardboard signs and imploring eyes are not often seen, and I miss those unpredictable encounters.

Many people are afraid to hitch after stories of deranged lorry drivers raping and murdering their passengers. Others prefer the comfort of trains or coaches. And nowadays we're all more likely to have our own cars.

So this wonderful custom seems to be virtually obsolete, done away with by fear and the desire to travel in style. And our collective wish to have our own little gas-guzzlers rather than sharing someone else's. Hitchin' will soon mean nothing more than a town in Hertfordshire.

There's a very old urban myth about the driver who picks up a young female hitchhiker. When the destination is reached, the woman has disappeared. The driver later discovers that she died several years earlier, on the exact date his wife died.