I look forward to my visit to Great Britain each night. Sometimes it is for a ride behind pony Freddie as he trots our cart along Shetland roads. Sometimes it is a prowl through busy London streets or walking the vast estate lawns of Stowe in search of the Folly, depending on where I choose or the algorithm takes me. Adventures await when one is an Armchair Traveler; with the click of a mouse we can be wherever the mood or the algorithms take us. The destinations for me come courtesy of YouTube, BritBox, “Visit Britain”, “View Out My Window” on social media or dozens of other possibilities. The algorithms know how to find me, and they do. After many years of leaving home to see the world, this is my travel now, and it is a happy choice.
For over 50 years I seemed to be packing every few weeks for a business trip or a personal adventure. My slender hanging bag of many tiny pockets held safety pins, Band-Aids, cold meds, sewing kit and anything else that might be urgently needed away from home but hard to find in an unfamiliar place. (There was even a much-used clothespin to hold hotel curtains closed against bright lights.) Pockets were kept filled, then it was often quickly rolled up along with a change of clothes and placed into an always ready suitcase. Business travel might seem glamorous to friends, but in reality it meant very early morning drives to the airport and exhausted flights home doing reports. Still, I never tired of it at the time, often falling asleep before takeoff and relishing eating a meal, even with a plastic fork on a plastic tray, that I hadn’t prepared. It was wonderful to see so much of the country, if only from a rental car window, while following instructions (pre-GPS) taped to the dash, listing directions needed to find a business in a new city. Adventure travel, alone or with a partner, was exciting and educational, when international travel required letters back and forth instead of emails to make reservations and library books for research.
On my social media now there are currently postings from friends traveling in Italy and exotic places. A dear friend just returned from a month in Africa at age 82. She has amazing stories of elephants and lions, but I’m glad I wasn’t with her. Her energy is still boundless, mine not so much now, so it’s enough to share in her adventures just by listening. I do miss doing the research before going on an interesting trip though, since it was important for me to know a place’s history and what happened there before I experienced it. A graceful brass seahorse from Venice on my bookshelf reminds me that it was the only decoration allowed by law on the black gondola we rode, avoiding ostentation by Venetians in past centuries. The deep bonging at 9:05 p.m., always 101 times, of the huge bell Great Tom in Oxford’s Christ Church for hundreds of years meant students must be back in their dorms or be locked out for the night, something I would not have known without Wikipedia. Now a YouTube video can remind me of my summer there, and I don’t have to leave home to hear Tom’s distinctive impressive chime. My daughter, again working in England all summer, will walk around lovely villages with her tablet in our weekly zoom call, showing me her surroundings. I can be there with her but without the interminable plane ride to get there. Magic!
Perhaps one can’t appreciate staying home unless one has needed to leave it again and again. How lucky we are to be Armchair Travelers if we wish, having seen the places in person that we wanted to see and now content to again see those, or new ones, from the ease of a cushy chair at home. As Jane Austen said: “There is nothing like staying at home for real comfort”. So true, Jane, so true.
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