A Grand Tour? With hats?

Val Poore has asked me to blog this. (If you don't know Val - you can find her at her Watery Ways, here.)

Some years ago a daughter gave me a book, not just any book: "The Queen Newspaper Book of Travel" - the 1905 edition. It includes some wonderful advertisements, for cruises, for costumes that do not cockle, for Mrs Pomeroy's toilet preparations, for Ganesh Chin Straps (no, I've no idea what those are either.)

And it tells you all you need to know about undertaking your Grand Tour - where to go and at what time of year, which hotels to stay in, where to catch trains or carriages, how many hats you will need. So I know that 'Avignon cannot be recommended as a winter resort', that 'Rouen is a healthy city for residence on the high ground.' I know that Oberstdorf is '2660 feet above sea level, a climatic air station and whey cure'. (A what?) I know that March is 'probably one of the best months to be out of Great Britain.' The steamer fare to St Petersberg from Hull cost £5 5s. There are maps and routes an illustrations - and it's wonderful.

Would it be possible to do such a tour now?

Yes, it would. Some things would be different - I can't imagine the response to the polite letter to the hotel requesting rooms, so bookings would have to be be email. Travelling by train with Serious Jewellery would be bonkers - though piles of hat boxes might be possible. But the routes - they're still there. The towns and mountains haven't moved since 1905/

So go, said Val - she'd even help me organise it. I am sure there would be a loyal band of you cheering me on.

So why not?

I think a project of this kind needs a sponsor. In Cuba (and on previous trips), once I've paid for my flight the day-to-day expenses are not much more than I'd spend at home. A Grand Tour, staying in Grand Hotels and eating in Grand Restaurants wearing Grand Frocks, would be outside my price range. Stay in cheaper places, I hear you say - and of course that's the sensible way forward. But, even so, three months travelling in Europe, with hats, would be far more expensive than staying at home, and if too many financial corners were cut it would miss the point of trying to recreate the Tour in the first place.

On top of that - the point of it would be to publicise it, make sure plenty of people knew what was going on - and that needs sponsorship. It needs a newspaper, or journal, or publishing company with an advance to fund it. And most of those, as we know, believe that the shenanigans of celebrities make more exciting copy than some woman wandering round Europe with hats, even if she can string a sentence together.

So that, Val, is why it's a dream. But, as you said, it doesn't have to be. You never know ... maybe a sponsor will creep out from somewhere ...

The craft of travel writing.

Travel writing through the ages. No - I don't mean from the eighteenth century onwards, but rather the different way younger and older writers, men and women, approach the task of travel writing.

What's brought this on? Well, a while ago I read Trish Nicholson's Journey to Bhutan: Himalayan Trek in the Kingdom of the Thunder Dragon, and more recently I won Alessandro Gallenzi's book Inter Rail on Jenny Woolf's wonderful blog.

Maybe it's not entirely fair to compare them - Inter Rail is a novel; but the writer informs us that it is based on his journey around Europe as a young man. So I'm assuming he built on his meetings with some rather shady characters and developed that into a tale of derring-do, of drinking and meeting women and careering around in very fast cars with a man who is clearly a con man. What struck me, reading this, is his lack of reflection - he is too busy laughing to think that maybe not paying for a taxi might be funny once, but the driver may have a family to feed and his larks have consequences. I found myself thinking like a mother, wanting to know what he did for clean pants when his clothes were stolen.

Of course, I have missed the point - he's a young man. Behaving as young men do - and having terrific fun doing it. Sometimes I need reminding of that.

In contrast, Trish's trek in Bhutan was instantly recognisable. She paused to drink in the mountain air, to marvel at the mysteries of the culture, to tiptoe round the edges of Buddhism. Her descriptions are wonderful - for those of us unable make it to Bhutan she offers such clear descriptions of her travels that we feel we are following her footsteps. She is hugely respectful of everyone she meets, as aware of her impact on them and their way of life as she is on her own thoughts and processes. (She is also enviably fit. How does she bound up mountains like that?)

Not difficult for me to identify with her. We follow similar pathways, notice the same things. Her lovely book feels gloriously familiar to me.

So why think of them in the same blog? Because they are, in many ways, trying to do the same thing. To show me a place, and the people in it. Their starting points are different, but equally valid. Both have something to say about the writers themselves, though Trish's book tells us more about Bhutan while Alessandro reminded me of the glorious energy of young men.

And did they both tempt me to visit their chosen destinations? Of course they did. But, while my thoughts may be closer to Trish's, I have to admit I'm not immune to joining in the folly of the young (as those who have dipped into Hidden Tiger Raging Mountain already know!)

And you - do you need jolting out of the familiar from time to time?