Planes, trains and automobiles – that’s where I’ve been for the past few weeks. I’m not complaining – honest! I love travelling, seeing new places, meeting new people. I even thought I was quite an adventurer, until the other day.
Last year I spent a couple of days exploring Bangkok on my own before buckling down to a series of meetings. This Spring I flew out to Botswana where I was immersed into African life, while attempting to capture stories and activities from a host of people from southern Africa. On my return, I was buzzing but exhausted. Then after a short turn around I was back on a plane to Greece for more of the same
I thought that was busy until I watched the BBCs Race Across the World series the other day. Five couples, then four, were racing each other from London to Singapore. They weren’t allowed to fly. They were given a limited amount of cash and their mobile phones and credit cards were taken off them. It was a challenge. But most of all it was an incredible adventure. My recent flights and wanderings paled into insignificance. I have great admiration for all those who took part and the way they were changed as they responded to each twist and turn of the road. I loved the way some of them got chatting to locals and asked for help, directions, even money. Over the 50 days travelling there were dozens of sleeper trains and buses with varying degrees of discomfort and the couples even had to work their passage, which ranged from serving in a Turkish bazaar café to cutting down rice by hand in the soaring heat.
Spoiler alert!
The winning pair were older than me and battled through aches and pains and bad backs to triumph in the end. Who would have thought a couple of teachers from Yorkshire would outrun their competition?
But they’re not the only travellers I’ve been in awe of this week. I’ve borrowed a friend’s book and I’m going to recommend it, even though I’m not even half way through. It’s all about a journey. Reading the cover, it sounded just like the kind of thing I’d love to do. Walk the 600 plus miles of the South West Coast Path from Somerset to Dorset – we’ve even started totting up little local sections of it here in Dorset. But this is so much more than a walking book.
The Salt Path, by Raynor Winn is a humbling story. It starts with a series of disasters and tragedies that would send any marriage over the edge. It’s against this backdrop that this 50 something homeless, penniless couple set out on a walk one summer. It’s hard to sit comfortably while you read about their struggle to survive, to live on dandelions and thyme crumbled into rice and scrape together some change for a cup of tea in a pub, where they dry their sodden clothes. They’re not experts, they don’t have all the kit, but they want to walk and they hope that in walking they will find some answers.
I don’t know what’s going to happen next, they’re still in north Devon right now and I’m dying to catch up with them again.
One thing it’s showing me is, that I’m not really an intrepid traveller… not yet anyway.
The night before we moved in we enjoyed a stay in a local hotel overlooking Lulworth Cove. It was a real treat. We were even upgraded and that never happens to me. The suite had its own colour coordinated settee and tea and proper coffee and an enormous bed. The trouble is moving house and all the excitement didn’t equal a peaceful night’s sleep… At 4am we were discussing a nightmare about a crab (something to do with what we’d eaten apparently), when I was unnerved by something and let out a bit of a scream. Moments later there was a knock on the door asking us to, “keep it down in there.” One of us shouted that we were all right, convinced they would think there was a murder happening. Breakfast was a little awkward. Moving scrambled egg around the plates, we wondered which of the other couples had banged on our door and did they know we were ‘the screamers’?
As dusk settled into darkness and the tide had begun to ebb we let the fire die, bundled up what was left of the food and followed the sandy banks of the estuary towards the sea and the lane where the car was parked. As we rounded a ruined tower we saw yet another fire set back on the sand. A lady in a long skirt was fuelling it with sticks, while her dog wandered in the shadowy undergrowth. Now there were three fires on the beach.
My parents both discovered a life-changing Christian faith in their twenties. They both attended a church youth group and my father made his commitment at a big rally in Kent, along the lines of a Billy Graham gathering, but on a smaller scale. A British evangelist and author, called Roy Hession, gave an alter call and my father responded. Meanwhile, my mother decided to follow Jesus Christ after reading that famous booklet ‘Journey into Life’, handed to her by a Christian friend. Thank God for that. They went on to have five children and brought us up in a loving Christian home. Billy Graham and his sermons stood in stark contrast to the popular culture of the 60s and 70s. Our home reflected similar values, yet as a child I sometimes struggled with this.
rachelfarmer 