Traveling.
Here is a story of a man who had an terrible holiday: The first thing
that went wrong was that the country we were going to decided to have a war
a few days before we were going there. So that was the end of that. But the
plane we were going on was stopping off at Rome. So rather than not having
a holiday at all, we thought we'd go to Italy. Very nice. See the sights.
Go to the beaches and get fat with pasta. We were at the airport waiting
for the plane and a friend of mine who lived near the airport had come to
see us off. So we were having a few drinks in the bar and joking with this
friend of mine, Peter, saying 'Poor old you in cold rainy England. This
time tomorrow we'll be in Italy on the beach.' And I went down to see if
the flight had been called and discovered it had gone. It was a terribly
stupid mistake. We hadn't checked the time of departure. I was sure it was
going 9 something but it was going at 19 something which of course is 7
o'clock. So we were actually there in the bar when it went without us. We
were determined to have our holiday. The irony was that Peter was now going
back to his comfortable home and we were stuck in the cold and the rain at
10 o'clock at night. You see, it was a charter flight so we couldn't book
another one. We lost our money and all the other flights were booked up.
Well, we got a train to the South Coast and caught the midnight boat across
the Channel, froze to death all night, it was a terrible crossing with
people being sick everywhere. And eventually we got to I think it was
Dieppe and then a train to Paris. We got to Paris very early in the morning
and I thought we'd be all right. You see, we now had to hitch hike because
a lot of our money had gone on the boat and the train, but I thought 'Well,
it's very early in the morning, we'll get a good place to start hitching
and we'll soon be well on our way.' We got to the start of the motorway and
I just couldn't believe it. I've never seen so many people trying to hitch
a lift in all my life. Well, it was then it suddenly dawned on me. It was
August the first wasn't it? and on August the first in France the whole
population goes on holiday and there were hundreds of people, stopping the
traffic, banging on drivers' windows trying to persuade them to stop and
give them a lift. It was chaos, disastrous. Well, we got moving
eventually. A lorry driver gave us a lift. And then things started to get
better, as we got further south and it got warmer, you know, and we thought
'At last, the holiday's beginning.' Well, we camped that night and we then
set off again the next day. We got some lifts, and met a great chap who
owned a vineyard. He took us back to his farm and we tasted all this wine
-Burgundy, my favorite - and we had a great time. Now the holiday really
was starting. Well, he took us back to the motorway, and there we were by
the side of the road, the sun was shining, we were a bit merry, sang a few
songs - you know, life was great. And we got another lift from ... well he
was a maniac, complete maniac. He seemed nice enough, but within a few
minutes he was driving at about a hundred miles an hour, overtaking on the
inside on the motorway, with his stereo at full volume, one hand on the
wheel and well the other hand on various parts of Susan's body. What! So
what did you do? I don't know why I'm laughing I've never been so
frightened in all my life. We were absolutely -helpless. Susan tried to say
that she had to go to the toilet, but he wouldn't stop then she pretended
to be sick in his car, and he stopped in seconds. He had this really flash
expensive car, and as soon as he stopped we just jumped out and ran. The
worst thing was this tremendous drop from feeling so good to thinking that
we were going to get killed. We eventually got down to the south of France
and began to have a good time, and then down to Italy. We ran out of
money, of course, but apart from that, it was good. I've never had such a
tiring holiday. When we got back, I was exhausted. At the end of the
holiday, I needed a holiday! And this is a story of an old woman. She has
traveled all over the world in her tiny van. It's a nice way of having
holiday. Now at this moment, somewhere on the other side of the Atlantic,
Olive Gibbs is probably chugging along the road, in the early morning in
her tiny camping van. The travel bug came to Mrs. Gibbs rather late in
life. About 14 years ago, to help her get over the death of her husband she
went on an overland bus trip to Katmandu. This fired her with the
enthusiasm to travel more, but as she couldn't afford to go on extensive
organized tours, she bought a camper and took to the road alone. Now at the
age of 72, she's clocked up about 75,000 miles on trips that have taken her
to America, Australia and South Africa. Ann Catchpole met her at her home
on the Sussex coast just before she was setting out on her current venture
another wander around America, Canada and Mexico, that'll take about a
year, and she'd been very busy that afternoon packing up the van, mainly,
as she told Ann, with stocks of food. Of all the meals that I have during
the day, my breakfast is the one that I like. It's not that I have a large
breakfast but I do like my toast and marmalade. I've got quite a few pounds
of marmalade in my van at the moment, I should think I have about 10
pounds, and when that run out and if I'm down in California by then I shall
make some marmalade. I take English things like Marmite which not many
other countries of the world seem to appreciate. I'm also taking crisp
breads to the United States because I don't care for their bread very much.
And I take biscuits because I don't care for their biscuits very much. But
otherwise I can buy everything I need in the United States. But I don't
like wasting my time shopping, so I carry as much as I can and visit a
supermarket only when I'm forced to. Well, I know vaguely which way I'm
going to go, but I do change my direction if there's something I hear about
which I think I would like to see, or I don't like the road I'll go a
completely different way. And at the beginning of the day I don't know
quite where I'm going to sleep at night. I wait until I feel tired or I
wait until I see somewhere that attracts me and then I stop. The first
thing I do, and I do this deliberately, I make myself a cup of tea, and I
sit outside my van because I think it, it pleases the Americans to see an
English lady having afternoon tea. But as soon as I really ... as soon as I
arrive, especially in the United States or Canada, the men all want to talk
to me about places they've been to when they were in the army during the
war over here. Other people want to know and tell me about where their
ancestors came from, and nearly always I have been to the places, or at
least know something about them, because I do travel quite a bit in my own
country as well as going abroad. In fact when I'm trying to unpack at the
end of a day's journey and get a meal in the evening, life becomes very
difficult because people gather round and want to know all about me and
it's almost dark before I can get on with my unpacking and getting a meal
ready. But I do try to get my cup of tea in first. In Zimbabwe, at that
time called Rhodesia, and I was actually camping in Zimbabwe by the
Zimbabwe ruins. And during the night someone went by with a torch. It woke
me up, and I just thought it was somebody going to a toilet, and I took no
notice. But when I woke up in the morning I found that a lot of my papers
had been taken, and the wallet in which I kept them. And of course I didn't
realize at the time what was going on. It must have been the noise of the
door closing which woke me up. I suppose I'm very foolish but often I don't
lock myself in my van at night. Sometimes I do if I feel at all nervous or
if I'm in a camp site on my own, then I do lock myself in. Each country has
something special about it. But I think the beauty of South Africa is
something that I shall never forget. I used to stand sometimes when I was
there and say to myself, 'Just look and look as much as you can in case you
don't come this way again.
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