The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Travel
Travelling life
Lord Mervyn King former governor, Bank of England
How often do you travel?
When I was governor of the Bank of England, I would travel two or three times a month. I liked to get out and about and talk to people around Britain and probably visited every town with 50,000 or more people. The job also involved a fair bit of international travel, usually to Washington DC, Frankfurt or Basel. Over the past four months, I’ve visited the US, Canada, Hong Kong, Singapore and various cities in Europe as part of my book tour.
What do you need for a perfect holiday?
Books, good company and warm weather. The breaks I’ve most enjoyed have been walking holidays, in places such as Italy. The real pleasure of travel is to be had from being outdoors.
Where did you go on holiday as a child?
Wolverhampton is where I grew up and I remember spending holidays on the Yorkshire coast, in North Wales and at Pevensey Bay, in Sussex. They were very much traditional seaside breaks. I remember vivid thunder and lightning over Pevensey Bay one summer, and falling off a lilo and having to be rescued by my father another summer – although for some strange reason doing so cured me of a cold I had at the time!
Your first trip abroad?
My geography teacher father arranged a class trip to Voss, Norway, in the late Fifties and my brother (I was about nine) and I went along too. We took a small plane to Bergen and then a train to Voss. The thing I recall most was the friendliness of the Norwegian people. It was only a dozen or so years after the war and I remember the Norwegian prime minister saying at the time: “We don’t regard the English as foreigners, only as rather mad Norwegians!”
Your most adventurous travel experience?
The most unusual place I’ve probably ever been was Iqaluit, close to the Arctic Circle in northern Canada, which I visited for a G7 meeting as governor. It’s the most extraordinary place – the temperature was never higher than -20C (-4F), and any liquids left on the aircraft froze. I got to see how to make an igloo, but the best part of the trip was travelling across a frozen lake on a sledge pulled by huskies. I had to wear two pairs of trousers and two jackets to stay warm.
The most remote place you’ve ever been?
The high country of New Zealand’s South Island. I travelled to Mesopotamia Station, where Samuel Butler wrote his novel Erewhon. When you venture off the tourist beat, you really do feel that you could be the first person to have ever seen some places.
Most luxurious travel experience?
I crossed the Atlantic from Southampton to New York
Most memorable travel experience?
When I was a graduate student in the US, I took a train across Canada one summer from Vancouver to Montreal. It took three days and three nights, and I’ll never forget the remarkable contrast between the Canadian Rockies – where I stopped off to see Lake Louise – and the flat wheat fields of the Prairies, before finally ending up in the cosmopolitan city of Montreal.
And your worst travel experience?
I always find the period between Christmas and the New Year a rather depressing time to be in England – so I booked a last-minute trip to Barbados. I went expecting sunshine, but no sooner had I arrived than it started raining and it poured the entire three days I was there. What’s more, there was a sign on the beach warning you not to stand under the trees if it rained because they were poisonous. It really was
Your travel essential?
There’s nothing worse than buying a book at the airport, only to discover that you don’t want to read it. So I always take a Kindle, to make sure that I have lots to read. The only way to cope with the inevitable delays one encounters is to have something to cut yourself off from what’s going on around you – and for me that’s a Kindle.
Where next?
Next year I’m looking forward to visiting Latin America, a part of the world I haven’t yet visited. The End of Alchemy: Money, Banking and the Future of the Global Economy, by Mervyn King, is available in hardback, paperback and on Kindle. He is speaking at the Edinburgh International Book Festival on August 13