What is travelling?

What is travelling?

I often wonder this. Putting a your first tentative steps together when you are a year old, going on summer camp when you are a cub, going on your Queen Scout Expedition when you an Explorer Scout, heading off on your gap year, rucksack slung over your back. Taking a year out to work abroad when you are on a career break?

Could it be something as simple as taking a drive to your local coast? Could it be a road trip around the UK? Could it be your work, taking you to different corners of the county, allowing you to drive along some incredibly beautiful road, through chocolate box villages in Sussex and allowing you to meet interesting people where ever you go?

All the national papers have a section called ‘Travel’ or at the very least offering something that could be deemed as travel. The red tops are tempting you out to the resort destinations, beaches to top up your tan, to have a drink and socialise with friends and locals. The broadsheets are offering voyages, safaris and other independent trips, asking you to consider the culture, the local people and their cuisine whilst admiring the breathtaking beauty of the desert or mountain or fjord.

I’m at a stage in life where exotic independent adventure travel is now slightly limited by babies, mortgages and a restriction on annual leave. But I still like to think I travel. I drive for my job – that’s travelling. Literally. I also have the opportunity to go to different places around the UK. Today, I’m in Alum Bay on the Isle of Wight, for a week last month I was in the Peak District, the month before delighting in the craggy, rocky environment of North Wales.

It is all travelling. To me travel is about different place, different experiences, different cultures they can be local they can be far flung. The important thing is to travel. If only on your doorstep. Become a doorstep traveller. Explore what is on your doorstep, what is in your county and what ever else your local area has to offer. You are still travelling. I’m still a traveller, even with a baby, a mortgage, 4 weeks off a year not really any money – from my first few tentative steps 36 years ago, I am still a traveller. Pack you rucksack or travel bag and always Love the Adventure.