There were other times when things had been so hectic at home that I wanted away for a little peace, a bit of space for Henry and me

With the farm and businesses up and running I was less needed at home. And with the money Henry made from his manufacturing line in wood stoves and the interest I saved from money my father and an aunt had left me, for the first time we had the time and the wherewithal to travel.

Both being of a thrifty nature, we always looked for the cheapest deals, the best value for money. Why this compulsion to travel?

Perhaps it differs for everyone and at different stages in life the need changes for individuals too.

For Henry and I, no longer was it fuelled by the yearning of youth that things just might be better somewhere else, that there were better lands than this where life would be easier, where any skills we had would be more appreciated.

I, for one, was glad that I had not remained in Canada in the early years.

Much more than three years there and I might have developed too great an affection for the country and never been quite sure where I really wanted to be.

Exiled

Had I remained in Canada I think I would always have had a sad sense of alienation at being exiled from the country of my roots and youthful memories:

Oh! Rowan tree, Oh! Rowan tree

Thoul’t aye be dear tae me

Intwin’d thou art

Wi mony ties o hame and infancy.

For centuries Scots have travelled. Often, in the past, to escape from poverty. Opportunities looked brighter in some distant land we had heard of.

Certainly, sometimes they were and many transplanted Scots did well elsewhere. Perhaps when it comes down to holiday travel, the desire to get away to the sun is one of the strongest motives.

There are years when we see so little of it in this northern land. Oh the joy of being in the sun, even if it is not always a warm one. Nothing lifts the spirit quite like this.

But it was neither the wish to find a better land nor the search for the sun that was the main reason for wanting to travel now.

I simply wanted to see for myself what other places were like.

Just as when young, I wanted to read books, I wanted to know how other people lived, wanted to have vicarious adventures, the world described to me.

Now I wanted it for real. Perhaps I didn’t realise this was my main reason for wanting to travel until one day I met, in Majorca a small Irish lady, insignificantly dressed, a pensioner of indomitable spirit.

“I just want to see,” the Irish lady told me. “I’m a pensioner. I live in a retirement complex. I have very little money but I save up every penny. I know I must eat to keep healthy but otherwise I spend very little and always find the cheapest deals. Every year I go somewhere different.”

She was most upset one day when I met her. “I’ve been on the same trip twice,” she said, “the second time they called it by a different name. I didn’t know.”

I wasn’t quite so obsessive about always having to see somewhere new.

If I really liked a place I was content to return but, at last, after meeting the Irish lady I had defined my main reason for wanting to travel.

There were other times, of course, when things had been so hectic at home that I wanted away for a little peace, a bit of space for Henry and me.

Again, it was while in Majorca that this was well explained to me in a passage from Winter in Majorca by George Sands.

Memorable

She was a French writer but, living in the 19th Century, had thought it more expedient to assume a man’s name. She had indeed spent one memorable winter in Majorca with the ailing Chopin in the middle of the 19th Century. The words of the passage I read stayed with me.

In my case I set off to satisfy a need for rest, which I particularly felt at the time. Because there is not time for everything in the world that we have made, I imagined yet again, that if I looked carefully, I would find some quiet, isolated retreat where I would have no notes to write, no newspapers to read or visitors to receive, where I would never have to take off my dressing gown, where every day would last 12 hours and where I could free myself from the duties of polite society.

Which of us has not selfishly dreamed of leaving, one fine morning, all his affairs, his habits, his acquaintances and even his friends, to go to some enchanted island and live without cares, without troubles, without obligations, and above all without newspapers?

For me, another reason for travelling was to get fresh inspiration to write poetry because that was my chief love.

I would get fascinated by something, say the story of George Sands, take notes, write while I was there, but also, after I got home I would go to a library, and get more information.

I wrote a sequence of poems on George Sands and Chopin and, after a holiday in Cyprus. The places gave me insight into people’s characters I would otherwise not have had.

I often wrote poems on the spot, immediate impressions. I loved to describe place and colour, the essence of everything. I could not have written about these places cold. I had to feel this essence.

I also liked to write about people whom we met by chance from many different lands and from all walks of life. I liked to write about the adventurous things that happened along the way and the amusing things. For me to write down what most interested me, for some reason, gave me great pleasure.

I also toyed with the idea of writing novels when I got back home, often romantic novels. I got a wealth of ideas.

Handsome

For instance, that pretty courier girl in Turkey with the Scottish accent who had fallen for a handsome Turk who was a student doctor-turned-courier for the summer in order to pay for his training.

We heard how he had taken her, with great difficulty, over swamp and rivers in spate, up the side of a steep mountain to see the eternal flame coming from the peak of Olympus.

“The real Olympus,” he told her. “Its flame never goes out.” But it had. It had been so very wet the rain had doused it.

The girl wanted him to go back for a match to relight it; what a basis for a story that would have made. But not one I wrote. Returning home, there was never enough peace or time.

To begin with it was mainly warm islands that we made for. We chose off-peak times to go. Retired and semi-retired people have this advantage.

However, we also visited larger land masses. From Cyprus we took a most memorable three-day trip to Israel and Egypt on the Romantica that years later came to grief after a fire at sea.

More tomorrow.