Philosophy of Travel
We love travelling, and since our honeymoon over 30 years ago we have avoided package tours choosing to set our own itineraries, taylor make our own trips, and travel off the beaten track. We’ve seen much of southern Europe in this time but the greatest experiences of travel have been in the USA.
We were first drawn to America in the mid 1990s when a single two week trip to California, as a pilgrimage to photographic heroes Ansel Adams and Edward Weston, we found ourselves benefiting from what amounted to a years worth of free transatlantic flights through the process of volunteering our seats on an over crowded plane, to take a flight the following day. This enabled us to experience a little of New England and a whole load of the Western States, Hawaii and British Columbia.
In 2003/04 Dave got a teaching exchange in Tucson Arizona for the academic year. Through this we gained a valuable insight into how it was to live in the USA. Sadie spent that time volunteering with a number of different arts and cultural organisations. Through this time we were able to take holidays and weekends to see places as far away as the Grand Canyon, southern Utah, New Mexico, LA and Northern Mexico. Making the most of our full year in the States we had a whole 10 week trip at the end where we toured the western States staying mainly on primitive campsites with occasional nights in motels.
A thirst for travel never seems to be satisfied except by more and more of the same. We found ourselves leaving the country on flights to Europe, south to the Canary Isles and transatlantic to America at least once every year.
However, we haven’t flown since 2019. This was a conscious decision made in early 2020, before Covid had even been a thing. We had flown enough, and clocked up three flights in 2019! This did not bide well with our understanding of global warming and our part in it. We had to find another way! Did we need a regular winter break in the sun? Did we need to fly to Europe when trains, ferries and buses would get us to the same locations? We aimed to find a way to tread more lightly and sustainably on the Earth.
Philosophy of Walking
There’s nothing quite like shutting your own front door and stepping out into the world to explore using just your own 2 feet.
This approach has been acquired over a number of years, consciously choosing not to drive and incorporating walking as much as possible along with local public transport if needed.
Walking helps to clear the mind, often leading to the creation of new ideas and solutions to problems. So it is very therapeutic and an absolute necessity in our lives.
Walking from the front door sometimes requires a bit of planning, with access to digital GPS maps to guide the way, to join up the pavement to the footpath, to the track, to the byway, to the beach, to the unmetalled Road, to the bridal way and literally build a route from scratch. But it is often more spontaneous, going out not knowing what you’re going to see, who you are going to meet or what you are going to come across; with the flexibility to change a plan on a whim as there are always many ways which will eventually lead you home.
We used to be avid devotees of Sunflower Books, using their walking guides and maps to discover often quite hidden places and find unusual trails, like hiking along a narrow irrigation canal in Tenerife. But the advent of GPS Topo Maps for smart phones transformed our approach to mapping our own routes. We always make sure to have a downloaded portion of the map area we are traversing downloaded to our phones as you can never be sure that there will be enough data signal to find yourself, but you can rely on that GPS satellite in the atmosphere.
The Topo GPS map has given us tremendous freedom, always knowing where we are on the planet, with the street names and topographical detail to able us to navigate the terrain.
Now that’s exciting!
