I really am not an adventurer!
There is nothing like a two-and-a-half-hour flight sitting next to two people discussing interior design to make you wish you were safely tucked up with your headphones watching a good film on a comfortable long haul! Mind you, I did once make the mistake of choosing a Tom Hanks film (because he’s always so good), momentarily forgetting that it was the one where he is a pilot landing a packed plane in the Hudson River. It was a good film but perhaps not the best choice at the time.
I had been forced to pause my solo travels, first by the pandemic and then by a nasty fall and I was dipping my toe back into the world of international travel, in a very gentle way, by flying to Italy and joining some family members who were already there on a long holiday. The trip so far (I was typing this while on the flight home) had been a great success and it had re-ignited both my love of travelling and the desire to travel to far off places again. I managed to arrive home without any incident, an absolute win for me, considering my usual track record for holiday accidents.
I am used to people telling me how brave I am and how “they couldn’t do it”, as if I was a female adventurer from the 19th century. Travelling alone these days is not in the least brave, it’s just what some people prefer. In normal circumstances, I like to have the ultimate choice of where in the world I go, when I go and what I do when I get there. I know that sitting in an open jeep at 6am looking for tigers in a national park or flying over Everest in a 16-seater plane is not everyone’s cup of tea but it’s MY cup of tea and I’m bloody well determined to drink every drop.
I have always had a desire to see wild places, ever since I fell in love with David Attenborough at the age of 7 after seeing him on Zoo Quest. I wanted to be his assistant and travel around the world with him but, as with most people, life did not pan out like that and visiting far flung places, was something that I only dreamed of.
Eventually I did make it across the Channel at the invitation of my French penfriend who, 60 years later, remains one of my closest friends and we exchanged regular visits until we both had our own families. As far as my family (self, husband, 3 children) was concerned, exploring France became our regular holiday, often combining it with a visit to our friends. Time went on and the children grew up and went on their own holidays and my husband and I continued to travel around Europe by car and coach. As he got older, my husband developed a fear of flying and nothing could persuade him to try out the holidays which so tempted me when we saw them on holiday programmes. We imagined that, as we got older, our future holidays would consist of more leisurely and longer explorations around our favourite places.
Then, sometimes life just comes and kicks you in the gut, a kick that makes you lie on the floor winded, at least for a time and this happened to me when my husband died suddenly in the spring of 2003, when he was only 55. But eventually there also comes a time when you must pick yourself up and carry on with your life. I was in my mid-fifties, self-employed and getting used to being independent. Much as I love my children and appreciated their offers to join them on holiday, I knew that this was not going to be the way forward. A long-haul flight to stay with relatives the following spring convinced me that I was ready to take a big step and start to explore. I decided to investigate travelling to some of the places on my bucket list. I told myself that I would never have that “We could have been here together” moment because I knew we would never have been together in any of the places that I wanted to go to.
My first visit to a travel agent was not very inspiring. They suggested a cruise, because:
“You’ll not have to be on your own, there are always gentlemen on cruises whose job it is to dance with unattached ladies.”
I pictured myself dancing with a man who had been paid to travel or had at the very least got a free holiday on the back of dancing with “lonely” women like me and I retreated hurriedly with a pile of brochures for every possible type of holiday except a cruise.
One of the brochures provided me with an idea for my first solo trip. I was reminded that I had once seen a TV programme where the presenter drove in a convertible, through miles and miles of New England countryside during the time when the trees were changing through browns, yellows, oranges, eventually to wonderful deep shades of red. The scenery was beautiful and the idea really appealed to me, even if the part about the convertible was not going to happen, so “New England in the Fall” was my choice for my first solo holiday.
As a precaution and in case solo travel turned out not to be my thing, I booked a ten-day coach tour and skipped the optional additional stay in New York. I decided that, amongst a coachload of people, even if no-one spoke to me, I would at least feel safe. And, if I enjoyed this holiday, then I was ready to unleash myself across an unsuspecting world…..
Ready for the re-make of “Bridges of Madison County” (and for the advent of the digital photo!)
One Anne and Her Dog 