The art of wandering.

Two months, many weekends

Two months is a useful amount of time to spend in a country. Long enough for the weekend to become a recurring opportunity rather than a deadline. I could choose a place, go, and still have other weekends ahead. Across the UK, the road trips became a collection of different interests: universities, football, old stones, a friend in an unlikely destination. Somewhere along the way, Guildford supplied twenty-pound leather boots. My memory has retained the price with admirable accuracy.

Oxford, and the places where people learn

Oxford appealed to the part of me that is still curious about what happens when people gather to learn. I visited university campuses during these travels; Oxford added the pleasure of finding a university woven through a city. I am an engineer, and an educational institution can still make me want to look around like a prospective student. The buildings are interesting. So is the thought of all the questions being worked on inside them, while a visitor is occupied with the view.

Birmingham with a television companion

I took a television association to Birmingham: Peaky Blinders had got there before me. It is amusing to realise that part of the luggage is a story somebody else wrote. I liked having that recognition, then looking at a city that had its own day to get on with. I was the visitor carrying a television drama. Birmingham was not obliged to perform it.

London, Liverpool, Manchester

London gave me a particularly vivid encounter with public life: I was there during King Charles's coronation. Alongside the celebration, I heard the protest: ‘Shove your coronation up your ass.’ That is the line as I remember it. The language was considerably less ceremonial than the occasion.

I liked having to hold those two Londons together. A royal event can look very complete when seen as a spectacle. On the street, the country has more than one voice. Some people had come to celebrate; others had something quite different to say. My memory of the coronation includes the interruption.

Liverpool had its football feeling, Manchester its buildings and streets. They brought other interests into the weekends. Across two months, I could follow the mood of a city, then go somewhere that asked for a different sort of curiosity. The journeys were becoming pleasantly difficult to reduce to one kind of trip.

Tube lines and railway connections

I enjoyed the Tube as a practical puzzle: a line, an interchange, a destination, then London appearing above ground again. Rail travel across the wider European journeys gave me another kind of pleasure. There is satisfaction in a connection that works and in watching a place name become somewhere you have arrived. The road trips remained their own attraction. I liked having more than one way to get somewhere, and more than one way to understand the distance.

Guildford: twenty pounds well remembered

Guildford was quaint, and I found leather boots for twenty pounds. That is a complete travel memory in itself. I can be interested in architecture, history and the shape of a town while also being rather pleased with a purchase. The boots give the larger account a useful interruption. Somewhere between all the significant places, I found something I could actually wear. No grand explanation has improved on the price.

Surrey: a peaceful afternoon

Surrey was a peaceful afternoon outing. After the cities, I liked having that quieter part of the visit: countryside, daisies, and an afternoon I remember for its ease. It is one of the gentler memories among the weekends. I enjoy a journey with enough variety that a quiet afternoon can stay beside the famous places without having to compete with them.

Water, stone, and the edge of an island

Driving into Bath felt like entering a gothic town. The buildings gave the drive a sense of arrival before I had finished arriving. The Royal Crescent belongs to that memory, with the celebrations around the King's coronation adding to the royal associations of the place.

Stonehenge surprised the painter in me. It felt like modern art: a great arrangement of forms out in the open, with the spaces between them doing as much work as the stones. I knew I was looking at something ancient. My eye was responding to it almost as an installation. I enjoyed that disagreement between what I knew and how it struck me.

The engineer wanted to know how it had been made. The painter was already considering the arrangement. Neither had much interest in leaving the other at home. Bath and Stonehenge made good companions in the journeys for that reason: buildings I could enter a town among, and stones that changed the way an open space felt.

From Southampton, across the water

The ferry towards the Isle of Wight felt surreal. There was the long line, the anticipation of crossing, then the water with speedboats and yachts behind us. After roads, town centres and railway connections, the journey had suddenly acquired a very different movement.

I liked the sense of being carried towards an island while other boats made their own journeys around us. Southampton had become a departure; the Isle of Wight was ahead. The crossing was already part of the outing, something I would remember alongside the coast on the other side.

The island's lookout keeps that outward feeling in the collection. What began as weekends to fill during a two-month stay had grown into roads, cities, water, and several ways of arriving. The ferry is one of the passages I would happily keep longer than the practical business of getting across requires.

Loughborough: a call, a friend, and another meal

On the way back from Liverpool, a call turned into an impromptu stop in Loughborough. A friend was studying at the university there. It was an odd destination until there was someone to meet, which is a very effective way for a place to become worth going to. The return journey had acquired a person, and with him, a different kind of day.

Breakfast had its own small complication. The town was quaint, but on the weekend it seemed to begin rather later than my appetite. We went out into the countryside for a classic English breakfast. I liked the turn the morning took: a plan to eat in town became a reason to go a little farther. Hunger can be a surprisingly efficient travel organiser.

We made Indian tea in his dorm and had lunch together too. English breakfast, Indian tea, and another meal with a friend: the unplanned stop had organised itself rather well. I remember the university town through that company. There are places you choose because you want to see them, and places that become yours because someone is there. Loughborough began with a call on the way back from somewhere else. I am glad I did not treat getting back as the only thing left to do.

The bus had other plans

We missed the last bus in Giethoorn. That is the short version. The longer version includes a month in the Netherlands, a country that kept finding ways to occupy us, and an afternoon whose leisurely pace failed to influence the timetable. Best, near Eindhoven, was my work base. From there, other towns, Amsterdam and Rotterdam kept the exploring going. Paris remained a plan. The Netherlands was being rather persuasive about staying.

A month in Best, and farther afield

A month gives a place time to acquire everyday associations. Best was where work had brought me; the towns around it supplied reasons to go out and look. Trains added to the pleasure of exploring farther. Amsterdam brought canals, cafés and streets I wanted to keep following; Rotterdam gave me another city to be curious about. I liked that the month could contain work and all this movement. There was already enough to do without reaching another country.

King’s Day: the street joins in

King’s Day seemed to have invited the country out. Orange, crowds, streets in a mood to celebrate. A friend of ours had a corner apartment for the occasion, and that changed how the day felt. For a while I could imagine being a local, belonging to the place rather than only passing through it. A friend and an apartment had done something a list of attractions could not: made the visit feel briefly like a life I was inside.

Giethoorn: a very peaceful place to miss a bus

Then there was Giethoorn, very good at making time feel negotiable. Canals, little bridges, boats: everything encouraged lingering. The last bus disagreed. Having missed it, we found two young women from Malaysia who had achieved exactly the same result. A peaceful village had produced a small international committee with one practical objective: reach the railway station for the next train.

A hundred-pound lesson in the timetable

There was a joke about mushrooms making people forget the time. The two women had missed the bus without needing that explanation. We now had a problem that required a taxi rather than further reflection on the afternoon. The fare, as I remember it, was a hundred pounds. It is an amount that has stayed with me rather more faithfully than the bus. Even a lovely village can become a little less enchanting when you are calculating the cost of leaving it.

The cab we shared

We shared the cab. Our group paid fifty pounds, and the two women paid fifty pounds between them. The station became reachable and the mishap acquired company. I like that the most complete story I brought back from a village of canals is partly about strangers helping divide an expensive consequence. Giethoorn was lovely. It was also where we discovered that the village and its last bus had quite different ideas about how long an afternoon should last.

Bir Billing, sky and sunset

Bir Billing brings paragliding into my mountain memories. I like that change in the idea of a journey: most of the time I am interested in where the road goes, and here the attraction includes leaving the ground. It belongs to the adventurous side of my curiosity.

But I have kept the sunset too. Above the dark ridge, the sky still has colour; a small shape crosses it. The evening gives the visit a different pace from the thought of flight.

I recognise both inclinations in myself: wanting to try something, then wanting to stay a little longer because the sky looks good. Bir Billing gets to keep both.

A pause beside falling water

At Sissu, I have a waterfall for company in the picture. It falls down the rock behind me, much larger than the person who has stopped in front of it. Lahaul supplies that sort of comparison quite efficiently.

I like this as a short entry in the journey. A face of rock, falling water, and me looking very much like someone who came to see it. The waterfall has the more impressive part.

Some places make me want to follow a question for pages. With this stop, I would rather keep a brief postcard: I was there, the water was falling, and it was good to have come this way.

A little distance from the city

An umbrella is a modest thing to bring into a scene with this much water. In Wai, near Mahabaleshwar, I am beside rocks and a lively stream, with green rising behind them. It is a good change from the city.

Mulshi belongs to my habit of returning to the country around home. Wai has this particular memory: umbrella, water, hills. I like the small comedy of a person arriving prepared to keep one part of himself dry while choosing to spend the day beside a stream.

This is why I want Wai here. A little distance, a different setting for the day, and a while in which the city stops being the first thing on my mind. I would happily make that arrangement again.

A sanctuary held against the mountain

Paro and Tiger’s Nest brought the mountains, architecture and spiritual curiosity I had taken to Bhutan. Thimphu added a rather different chapter: partying with locals and karaoke. I like that these memories sit beside each other. I had come with an interest in ideas and places; people supplied a very enjoyable interruption.

Tiger’s Nest still catches the engineer in me. Buildings held against a cliff make me wonder how something is made and how people keep caring for it. My interest in spiritual traditions brings another set of questions. Then the memory turns to Thimphu and a night out with people who lived there. The country becomes more particular, and considerably more sociable, than the image of mountain stillness I might have carried in.

My entirely unofficial tip for getting into conversation involves a packet of cigarettes. I do not recommend acquiring a smoking habit for the sake of the itinerary. Making time for company is the part I would happily recommend. The karaoke belongs in this story as much as the monastery: one drew me towards the cliff, the other into an evening with locals. I am glad Bhutan refused to fit into only one of the interests I brought with me.

Monks Who Love Ferraris

Bhutan made a surprisingly good case for becoming a monk. Its monasteries have some of the best views I’ve ever seen. I was ready to give up worldly comforts, provided I could keep the view.

For me, devotion might begin with what I do once I’m home. Can I give the work in front of me my full attention? Can I listen properly when I’m in a hurry? The mountains made it easy to be present. I’d like to learn to do that on an ordinary Tuesday, too.