MOTOR MUSE The art of planning a trip or just winging it

MMM’s Planning Officer is considering the process of what gets us where we go ....

There are some things that cannot be changed in the human psyche. Certain facets of our genetic code that are so thoroughly infused into our soul that no logical argument nor radical experience can change them. Matters like Marmite and Brexit.

Or the way we all approach the process of planning our travels, and where we lie between two the extremities of the spectrum. This scale stretches from the hooligans at one end to the other where the tacticians plot out every last detail. The reckless to the careful, and all the degrees of what is planned or left to fate between the two.

Personally, we tend to lean towards the hooligan end of moderate. At least I think we do, but our own self-image never quite aligns with how others see us, does it?

This is irrelevantly demonstrated by the fact that I honestly thought I was a worldclass winger (in the beautiful game) when I was 15, but the coach at our (then) local nonleague club begged to differ, and offered some very succinct career advice. I was momentarily heartbroken.

Currently I’m thinking I should’ve been a singer in the Matt Monro mould, whereas my good lady lives in dread of the words ‘Karaoke every Thursday’ (or any other day) displayed at any campsite reception we happen upon.

Where was I? Mentally picturing an idyllic scene on the amazing Dalmatian coast of Croatia where we spent a memorable fortnight in the camperhome a few moons ago. What a journey of gay abandon that was, after having set off on a whim from the southwestern tip of Portugal with no plan whatsoever.

Which, I think, brings us back to what I was driving at from the start – how we all arrive at a decision as to where we’re going and what happens thereafter. Whether we plan for months, or if we just press go.

And, before you all open your Complaint App about my use of the term gay abandon, I have just checked it out in the very latest Oxford English Dictionary. When I say latest, I mean latest to us (1996) and it confirms my suspicions that ‘abandon’ is to ‘yield oneself completely to a passion or impulse’. Doesn’t that sound bleedin’ fantastic in a travel sense? Should anyone take offence at this in any way shape or form, I will obviously apologise immediately on my parents’ behalf for anything and everything I may have thought going back to time immemorial.

But back to the trip to Croatia, which was all kicked off by meeting an Irish couple on a motorbike at the southwestern tip of Portugal.

All it took to catapult us off to the other side of Europe was the lovely soft lilting voices of two ardent adventurers telling us that if we had to go anywhere in Europe we hadn’t been before then it just had to be the Dalmatian coast of Croatia. Consequently, come the morrow, we were off to Croatia.

We could (and perhaps should) have stayed in Portugal, as we still haven’t really seen enough of it, but the Dalmatian coast sounded world-beatingly marvellous (in Boris speak), so off we went before good sense had a chance to intervene.

And it was absolutely fantastic, so there are no regrets.

Well, maybe one: it was the end of June when this sudden change of direction occurred and, by mid-July in Croatia, it was as hot as hell.

However, if we’d stopped to think about it a bit more, we might have had second thoughts and, for us, that is no way to plan your travels.

Well, I don’t think it is, but you can see the logic of those more sensible types who work on the ‘better safe than sorry’ approach.

Whilst some folk might say that plans are the straitjackets of fools, others are of the opinion that detailed planning achieves the objectives and minimises the disasters.

Personally we, my very good lady and I, mostly let fate, the weather or instinct carry us where it will. But usually with an idea of what to expect when we arrive wherever we do by whatever means got us there.

Where are you on the spectrum: planner or hooligan or, in our case, gullible?

“Some folk might say that plans are the fools” straitjackets of