Travel CV
The Travel Bug - Where Did It Come From?
Travel has grown into a passion of mine ever since I went on my first solo trip as a 16-year old. I’m not one of those people who can say that I have always wanted to travel. We never went abroad as a family, holidays were to Wales and Cornwall. I first went abroad when I was nine, a school trip to the Isle of Man. Is the Isle of Man abroad? If not, it was some three years later when I went to Blankenberge in Belgium with the school football team to a tournament which we didn’t win. The four-hour ferry crossing on the way to Belgium was horrendous, but I do remember being one of the few people on board who did not throw up. My first real taste of life overseas came through further school trips, both to France. The first, just after I finished my ‘O’ levels took me to Normandy, while the second just after my ‘A’ levels further south to the Mediterranean area around the Cap d’Agde. However, on both trips, I don’t recall ever thinking this was the life for me. Anyway, with ‘A’ levels in French and Spanish (and History, too!), I went off to Wolverhampton to do a degree in the two languages. It snowballed from there as the ‘Previous Trips’ section bears out.
The Thinking Behind The Current Trip
Before I left Jordan in July 2006, I had been planning a round-the-world trip which would involve not flying. I was also toying with the idea of doing a second MA — this time in Education. Having tentatively started to plan the trip and applied to join the MA programme at Bath University, I received a surprise visit in Amman from Marta, who I had met on a training course the previous year in Bucharest. The weeks of one day saying that I would travel and, then the next of deciding to study, were over. I made up my mind to go back to England for a year to study as Marta was based in London at the time. When the relationship ended a few months ago, similar questions reappeared: should I stay in Barcelona (Marta’s home town) where we had moved to or, should I go travelling? Once I had plumped for the trip, I took my mind back a couple of years and thought — round-the-world without flying? As a keen cyclist, I had toyed with the idea of cycle touring for at least some of the round-the-world trip. However, I was no longer keen on going round-the-world. I never made firm plans, anyway, nor even an area of the world or a country or a region of a country to visit.
Where Would I Go?
I love Africa, but the idea of cycling there didn’t appeal. I had no desire to go back to Asia at that time. Europe didn’t appeal either after my previous summer’s interrail trip. For years, I had wondered about cycling from the north of the American continent to the south. As an English, French, Spanish and Portuguese speaker, being on a bike would mean more regular close encounters with local people than travelling by other forms of transport. It made perfect sense. As the idea became a reality, I wondered if I just wanted to cycle tour. With who-knows-how-many trips behind me; more than a decade of teaching experience in England, Mozambique, China, Turkey, Jordan and Spain; other work experience in factories, on farms and plantations, in shops and on campsites in England, France, Spain, Switzerland and Australia; a degree in Modern Languages and two MAs (Latin American Studies and Educational Leadership and Management), was there anything I could do to make it more of a trip? At the same time, I though about the fact that I never made such firm plans as having a final destination, especially where it involved a 14,000km bike ride that would take at least a year, or maybe two.
I booked a one-way flight to Anchorage, the capital of America’s 49th State, with the aim of cycling from the northernmost point of the Pan-American Highway in Prudhoe Bay/Deadhorse to who knows where? South, most definitely. But, how far? I certainly wanted to get as far as Central America. After my MA dissertation on ‘Principal Turnover in International Schools’ was accepted for publication at about the same time as the trip became a reality, an idea that had slowly been germinating for a few years came to fruition. I wanted to write. I had always kept much of my travels a closely guarded secret, but had been toying with the idea of chronicling them in some way or other. I would definitely write about this trip. I had written a blog about my Sri Lanka trip but nothing else formally. Hence, this website…
August 2010
