HOW TO TRAVEL

Greymouth Evening Star, 7 August 1931, Page 3

HOW TO TRAVEL

THE REAL SAVOUR. “To me the savour of travel comes from the circumstances that pleasure in travel is a product of the moment, that delight is founjl in what you see and experience, and not so- much in the things you think you ought to see in order to confirm long-formed ideas,” writes “J.W.” in the “Birmingham Post.” “In such -a way,” he adds, “are discoveries made, adventure found round every corner, romance discerned in .every novel experience. In such a way has the idler, tli q rambler, a distinct pull over the tourist, and that knowledgeable individual with programme cut and dried and movements regulated by the clock. To be sure, he has an advantage in regard to ‘sights.’ But 1 am willing to concede him that. If I happen on something that intrigues me —well, the ‘sights’ ■will have to go, but I shall enjoy my-, self.

“And what more, after ail, can one want from a holiday? For what else does ono travel except for a change and pleasure if not for health or business, necessity or intrigue? To improve one’s mind? To broaden one’s view? I doubt it really. ; The intellectual justification of travel .is often more apparent than real. “They say—those who ought to know better —that travel broadens the mind. They really mean, of coprse, that travel broadens one’s experience. Minds-remain narrow after leagues of travel. The narrowest minds, someone has aptly said, are frequently hounded by the widest horizons. We travel (let us admit it) mainly for change and pleasure and fun and new experiences and excitement, ready to pick up anything going in the intellectual line, of course, but primarily for pleasure -and change.

“And if that need is satisfied, does it matter particularly’ how it’s achieved—in conformity with the guide-book and the travel agent’s plan or not, on the beaten? track of the tourist or the wayward pathless way of the rambling idler? It doesn’t, of course.

“For pleasure is relative and travel is relative, and the savour of travel conies from what you make of it and what you take'from it. . And while I can hardly conceive the man of substance, with his. Golden Arrow and Blue Train, his corps of guides, interpreters, and guardian agents, his first-floor suites and Atlantic trunks, capable of extracting a tithe of the fun from travel that I can, it is possible he, on his part, ‘ considers me beyond the reach of new lands’ pleasures with a second-class ticket, one suitcase and a book of useful phrases. “You cannot dogmatise, you see. I merely point out. that he who travels for the fun of the thing should beware lest he miss the best of travel in an effort to fulfil : anticipations. They are all right when they come off—and all wrong when they don’t. Petrarch. I fancy, must have thought of something of the kind to observe: ‘lt is a strange madness—this desire to be forever sleeping in a strange bed’; but that, of course, was in four-teenth-century Italy, before kilometric tickets were invented and books of useful phrases could be. bought for sixpence. “I shouldn’t call it a strange madness to-day—not if you know how to travel. And the way to travel is to be content.”