WHAT A NEW TRAVEL ‘BUCKET LIST’ SAYS ABOUT LAZY BRITONS

Oh deary me. Can’t we do any better than this? A new survey by the Post Office – “The Nation’s Ultimate Travel Bucket List Revealed!” – has come up with the following dismal findings. Topping the list of “dream destinations” are the Northern Lights (voted for by 44 per cent), followed by Niagara Falls (40 per cent) and the Maldives (34 per cent). How depressing. After all, the Northern Lights are famously underwhelming; Niagara Falls is a cementreinforced tourist trap; and the fact that a third of us want to fly half-way around the world for a few days on a dull seashore pricked with identical over-water villas doesn’t exactly scream the word “inspired”.

Yet there was a time when the British were intrepid, when we showed the world how to travel. Skiing? We fashioned what had hitherto been only a mode of transport for the snowbound, the sort of thing only Nordic types did, into a sport. Backpacking? As long ago as the 1930s, Patrick Leigh Fermor set off alone across Europe just with a knapsack. Laurie Lee did the same, wandering off to

Spain with only his violin to earn his keep.

You take my point? Not one of the adventures that made the top of the list – journeys that for many Britons will surely be a journey of a lifetime – actually involve any effort.

I suppose the fact that these days we talk quite unashamedly in terms like “bucket lists” is a giveaway. Scott and Livingstone never had bucket lists. They devoted their travels to doing something improving, or meaningful. Now, I’m not calling for us all to be great explorers – but I do wonder if we might not put down our mobile phones for a second and raise the bar.

I’m unusually fortunate. Travel, after all, is my job, and in my time I’ve seen many of the things that people hope to see. But then one day I found myself turning down a chance to visit the Pyramids, for – it seemed to me – I’d already seen them: in brochures, online or on the telly.

There was more to travel, it dawned on me, than boldly going where everyone else had already gone.

In the end, the best destinations are beautiful at times, perhaps testing at others – the Skeleton Coast in Namibia, or the forests of

Papua New Guinea, for example. They are not necessarily easy to get to; they might not even be photogenic. But one thing is for sure, they’re unlikely to be found on someone else’s wish list, because they are places only you’d heard of, in passing, and somehow they inspired only you. You had a dream and you set out to pursue it. And with any luck you came back. And what a tale you had to tell.

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