Before We Leave

Totally irrelavant photo but it just makes me smile anyway.

Here are some thoughts by other thinkers about tavel and why to bother:

'Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do.  So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbour.  catch the trade winds in your sails.  Explore.  Dream.  Discover.'

Mark Twain

'Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accouts.  Braod, wholesome, cahritable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.'

Mark Twain

'All travel has its advatages.  If the passenger visits better countries, he may learn to improve his own. And if fortune carries him to worse, he may learn to enjoy it.'

Samuel Johnson

'For my part, I travel not to go anywhere but to go.  I travel for travel's sake.

The great affair is to move.

Robert Louis Stevenson

'A traveller without observation is like a bird without wings.'

Moslih Eddin Saadi

'Embrace the detours.'

Kevin Charbonneau

'Not bound to swear allegiance to any master, wherever the wind takes me I travel as a visitor. Drop the question of what tomorrow may bring, and count as profit every day Fate allows you.

Horace

'Time spent laughing is time spent with the gods.'

Japanese proverb

'The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page.'

St Augustine

'We live in a world of beauty, charm and adventure.  There is no end to the adventures we can have if only we seek them with our eyes open.'

Jawaharial Nehru

'Do not follow where the path may lead.  Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.'

Ralph Waldo Emerson

'Travel and change of place impart new vigour to the mind.'

Seneca

'Bizzare travel plans are dancing lessons from God.'

Kurt Vonnegut

'I haven't been everywhere but it's on my list.'

Susan Sonntag.

'Don't tell me how educated you are, tell me how much you travelled.'

Mohammed

'The traveller sees what he sees.  The tourist sees what he has come to see.'

G K Chesterton

'All that is gold does not glitter; not all those who wander are lost.

Tolkein

'Decide how you want to feel and go wherever it takes to feel that way.'

Andy Hayes

'Laugh a lot and when you are older all your wrikles will be in the right places.'

Anon

'When you travel remember that a foreign country is not designed to make you comfortable.  It is designed to make its own people comfortable.'

Clifton Fadiman

Swimming in Spain

Ok, so it wasn't quite this beach but sort of similar and remembering it recently gave me a great whoosh of  happiness.  In Spain, last Spring, Ann and I went through a little valley to a hidden beach where we swam in turquoise sea.  Then, because there was no one else there, for the first time in my life I skinny dipped and when getting out waved my wonky boobs at the world and felt completely liberated!

Travel Writers

My top five travel writers but for today so expect more to appear at another time.

A Tramp Abroad

Mark Twain



William Dalrymple

Bill Bryson



Mark Tully

This links to the Desert Island Discs Podcast featuring Mark Tully

Freya Stark

This links to the Desert Island Discs Podcast featuring Freya Stark

Make your own Geodesic Dome

As part of our travel blog, 360 Degrees in 360 Days, Nick got in touch with a man in Brazil who has developed mapping software to make geodesic shapes which show the world.  You can read the blog entry on our site but here is a map of the world that he made especially for us.

Nick and Juli's World Map and route PDF

His name is Carlos Furuti and he is the Systems analyst, course author and instructor at Prógonos Consulting.  This link takes you to some of the mapping projects he has been working on:

Mapping Projects

He includes a number of map foldouts.

Isn't it amazing that someone in Brazil can be working over a weekend to make something for our trip?

Taking a World Tour

360 Degrees in 360 Days

So where I have I been and what have I been doing since the last blog entry on this site?

It's been a hectic time of planning and arranging our world tour.  We are leaving in June for a trip that will take us 360 Degrees in 360 Days.  How exciting is that?  It's the most smiley thing we could be doing.  We could have waited until we retired and taken the 'trip of a lifetime' but why wait?  Carpe Diem and all that.

It's a trip of three parts starting with an overland section from Hammersmith to Sydney in Australia with a company called Madventure. We will be travelling by truck along the Asian Silk Route, through Mongolia and China into South East Asia, to Indonesia before taking a short flight to Darwin where we travel on through Australia's Red Centre and Blue Mountains, arriving in Sydney in December this year.

We will then start section two.  We plan to travel around Australia for three months seeing as much as we can and visiting relatives on each side of the country, mine near Brisbane and Nick's in Fremantle.  We will be travelling using Greyhound Kilometre Passes which we can trade in for tours like the one which crosses the Nullarbor Desert, or the Coral Coast Trip or the Great Ocean Road Tour, just to name a few of the trips we have planned. Kellie, the supervisor at the Rockhampton Greyhound Terminal has already gone beyond the call of duty in the help she has given us in planning this bit of the trip and will definitely be getting a beer or two when we pass through the beef capital of Australia.

Part three sees us leaving Sydney on a cruise ship that will take us home via the South Pacific Islands:  Bora Bora, Moorea, Hiva Oa, amongst others. We have gone for a little bit of luxury with the Oceania cruise.  It will take three months to get us back to Southampton. After visiting Pitcairn and Easter Island, we reach the coast of South America giving us a chance to do a side trip to Macchu Picchu before we travel through the Panama Canal, stopping at several Caribbean islands before visiting a number of places on the East coast of the USA and Canada.  Crossing the Atlantic in early June we arrive back in the UK exactly 360 days after we started.  We are still working on the plan for the five days that would mean we had been away for a whole year.  Current thinking is that we will walk back to London.... well, we'll see.

It's going to be fabulous.  Plenty of chances to Fill Up Our Eyes and to go 'Wow' every day.

You can follow our adventure on our travel blog: 360 Degrees in 360 Days