Travel Resolution for 2023: Stop Flying

 Realistically, it was time to stop flying a long time ago. It just took a pandemic to show us that we didn’t need to fly, and physically seeing the bleached coral off Thailand that made us realise that we really shouldn’t fly. In the past we’d justified our excessive travel with the idea that it was good for the children to experience other cultures, and our geographically diverse family required a certain amount of travelling. But these don’t justify our 7 trips to the United States, or indeed any trips outside Hong Kong.

 The first serious lockdown over the spring of 2020 meant that the only travelling we did was walking from our front door, into beautiful countryside that we hadn’t even realised was there. Once we could travel within the UK, a few trips by train made us realise that chasing the dream of exotic foreign holidays for years meant that we had missed out on the incredible diversity on our own island.

We had booked a big summer holiday to Sri Lanka and Dubai in the summer of 2020, itself postponed from 2019 after a terror attack in Sri Lanka. Instead we went on an extended family trip to North Yorkshire, camping due to COVID restrictions on gathering indoors, but relived all the fun of multi-generational trips. We spent our wedding anniversary in the hotel where we got married 20 years earlier but had never been back even though it’s less than an hours’ walk from where we still live. We headed to Bath, for no better reason than the fact that we’d never been there, and took huge advantage of “Eat out to Help Out”, a superb subsidy when feeding 3 teenagers. We bubbled with 3 other families to book the entirety of Dartmoor Youth Hostel, instantly removing my long held Northern prejudice that the South of England has no real hills. 

With our eldest child turning 18 in 2021, we’d hoped to do one last big family holiday, but it was of course cancelled along with most international travel that summer. But the UK travel was as varied as 2020. COVID restrictions had meant that our eldest had not visited any prospective universities, so headed up to his first choice of Aberdeen. We took the 7 hour train journey from London, partly due to environmental worries but also to demonstrate that it’s a really long way. However good weather made both the journey and the city quite stunning. We took a family holiday to York; a thoroughly enjoyable trip taking in the Railway Museum, University, City Walls, the Minster, an out of town shopping centre (not my highlight), and the Shambles. We rocked on to visit extended family on the Lincolnshire seaside; wholesome long walks on the beach and in the countryside, and the best bacon in the world. We celebrated our Wedding Anniversary in a luxury London Hotel while London was very light on tourists. Then off to the Peak District for one of our 3 generations trips cycling and walking through the spectacular scenery. 

And so to 2022, the chance to resume travel almost as we had previously known it looked ready to return. China and Hong Kong remained practically off limits in the summer, so we decided that this final big family trip would be to one of our favourite countries: Thailand. We picked a stunning hotel in Koh Samui with a few days visiting friends in Singapore on the way. It was brilliant. Singapore was a great alternative to Hong Kong, lots of buzz, incredible food, and ridiculously safe. And Koh Samui too proved to be the friendly island paradise that we’d remembered from previous trips. 

Perhaps the biggest wake up to us on this trip was a snorkelling expedition off the coast of Koh Samui. We remembered the clarity of the water and the vibrant colours of the corals and fish from previous trips, sights that cannot be compared to any other natural feature. But now it’s just cloudy water. The delicate coral has been bleached and crumbled into powder. The movement of the sea stirs the dead coral into a murky cloud, so the few fish that remain there can barely be seen. Entire ecosystems are being destroyed already, and it’s our fault.

Lurid newsreels of climate disasters make it clear that we can’t ignore the issue. Sure, we can pay to mitigate some of the impact by paying into a carbon offset scheme. But the principle of making a mess and paying someone to clear it up is not a good one. It’s also clear that we are well behind on reducing emissions, we need to be both offsetting AND cutting our own emissions before more of the world looks like the dead corals of Thailand,  and that means less flying.

We had a great final holiday, but was it really worth the cost, either financially or environmentally, particularly after a series of pretty fun UK trips? Climate change is real, and aviation is a major contributor to it. Should we be adding to that purely for our own indulgence? Do we help low-lying islands by supporting the tourism industry, whilst sinking them through adding our bit to rising seas?

We are part of the problem, and we have to take some responsibility for our own actions.  That means that my travel resolutions for 2023 are to cut down massively on flying. We’ll be travelling locally wherever possible, and using trains where we can. Perhaps our pandemic-era travel will become the new normal. 

Three generations boys adventure trip II: Peak District and Caves

Buoyed by the success of the earlier 2012 trip to the Peak District, we decided to return 2 years later, but with the addition of a few friends this time. Each son brought a friend and each friend brought a father, making 3 men and 4 11 and 12 year old boys for the first few days. We stayed in Eyam, taking over the family rooms in the coach house adjoining the excellent Youth Hostel. This was a brilliant decision, we had a 4-bed room, and the other 2 families had a twin room each, with a shared bathroom. It was perfect for coming home muddy each evening, and waking up after a good nights sleep, at a phenomenally low price. Eyam itself, famous as the plague village which shut itself off from the world during the Black Death to protect neighbouring villages, was a 10 minute stroll across the fields down the hillside. Once again, the Youth Hostel provided breakfast and packed lunches, the excellent pubs of Eyam filled us up in the evening. 

 

We stopped at Carsington Water on the way up for an hour of kayaking. It was the first time that we had all got together, so bonding in wetsuits while soaking one another with oars as water beaters was a superb start to the trip. There is something marvellous about water for all ages. Strangely - everyone seems to be equally good / bad at kayaking, its a kind of natural action that anyone can pick up. This was exactly what we needed at the end of a tedious trek up the M1. From there it wasn’t far on to Eyam.

 

We had made arrangements with the excellent team at Pure Outdoor to provide activities over the weekend. They were extremely helpful on the phone in advance with suggestions, so we had high hopes as we arrived at their outdoor centre early on Saturday morning. After a thorough run through the options, I was outvoted on my plan to abseil off a railway bridge as we had originally planned. Instead we would spend the morning rock-climbing on Stanage Edge, and the afternoon “Weaselling”.  

 

Early adolescence is the stage where not only do boys start to realise that their fathers are not the majestic sporting heroes they thought, but they also overtake us in terms of sporting ability. Nowhere is this more apparent than rock climbing, where progress up a sheer cliff is dependant entirely on the ratio of strength in your fingers to overall body weight. That is to say, athletic skinny boys make a better job of it than middle-aged men with large feet and beer guts. All of the boys felt they were skilled climbers based on their experience of climbing walls. However a cliff face is a different matter entirely. Now the purpose of the ropes and the importance of the safety briefing were very real. But the actual effort involved to pull yourself up from the thinnest of cracks in the rocks is immense. Its also immensely satisfying to achieve progressively harder climbs. And from the top, the views are incredible, and so much more earned than walking round the cliff as on Trip I. The inevitable bloodied knees and bruised shins just added to the sense of achievement.

 

Weaselling didn’t sound like such a fun concept to me, but I was very wrong here – this was one of the most enjoyable parts of the trip, and the part where there was more laughter than any of the other bits. Essentially this involves scrambling over and under the enormous rocks that have cascaded down the side of Higger Tor. Sounds very simple, and it is if you have the physique of a 12 or 13 year old. However manoeuvring my belly between the narrower gaps and crevasses proved very challenging.  There were a number of occasions when it seemed the rocks were attempting to give birth to the adults in our group, although its not normally the baby that makes those noises. Each time we emerged from another gap, in any direction, we were greeted by another awesome view of the countryside, and a gang of four giggling boys.

 

Day Two was the challenging event 5 hours spent underground, working our way through the Cave known as the “Giant’s Hole”, with such a range of physical and technical challenges I sometimes think back and wonder if we really did it. The route begins very easily where some early 20^th century entrepreneur concreted the floor and blasted any obstacles out of the way. Then the fun starts. We abseiled down a deep hole through a waterfall into pitch blackness – thank goodness we had done so much abseiling on the rocks the day before. We then passed through the “Crabwalk” – half a mile of twisting through a crevice narrower than me (but again – wider than the boys) culminating in “The Vice”, which was as easy to get through as it sounds.  The route then goes through a series of steep climbs and descents, some scrambled, some on ropes, and mostly through very cold water. Eventually we got to the “Giants Windpipe”, a 20 metre or so stretch where the roof of the cave is about 18 inches from the floor, and its half filled with water. This was quite a challenging crawl, and our instructor John kindly rewarded us with a very welcome cup of Hot Vimto at the end of it. From there, it seemed a fairly straightforward scramble, climb and abseil back to the start. The pub that night was a very welcome sight!

 

Next day, our friends left us, and Grandad returned to join us for a few days walking.  Mountain climbing was off the agenda this time, so we followed the Monsal Trail and Tissington Trail. These form two of the old railway lines across the peaks which have been restored as foot and cycle paths. The routes are extraordinary, from the days when no expense was spared in building viaducts and tunnels to follow a straight line on a map regardless of the contour lines in between. Some of the tunnels are up to 400 metres long, but fully lit, which gives them a magically eerie glow. Much easier than crawling through the Giant’s Windpipe anyway.

 

This was an ideal adventure trip for boys who old enough to know that their dad’s aren’t cool, but young enough to get some pleasure from our company when we’re doing something active and fun. Most of the activities were things where they could really prove that they were better than us, and that;s oddly satisfying for all of us. The tricky thing was going to be… how do we beat that one?

Three generations boys trip I: Peak District

Multi-generational holidays are apparently one of the biggest growth sectors in the travel industry. I can't really see the appeal of travelling with extended family. Too many people to involve in the detail of eating, sleeping, travelling and days out. However we tried it on a small scale by eliminating women from our trip, and it was so much fun that we repeated it twice more.

The formula was simple, I would drive with to my parents home with all the children, swap my daughter for my father, and carry on the journey into the Peak District. We rented a marvellous B&B in the turret of a house close to Edale, with a room on each of the 4 floors - one for the men, one for the boys, one sitting room, and one dining room.  Wholesome English breakfasts were thus sorted, with the landlord additionally making enormous packed lunches for our daily striding over the mountains.

Grandad time is marvellous for boys of any age, even with me in the party. We trekked over Mam Tor in the early evening, seeing the where the road had plunged down the hill with a few cottages, killing the occupants. As darkness and mist descended, my father terrified the boys with the ghost stories of the victims, and those that had met the ghosts when lost on the hillside. We staggered on through the mist.....

Next day was rather clearer, and seemed ideal to tackle Jacobs Ladder and cross the bizarre peaty landscape of Kinder Scout. I was expecting Jacobs Ladder to be a hearty climb for all of us, but small boys have infinite energy of course. They kindly carried our bags up the steps at quite a pace, waiting smugly for the old men at the top. The enormous lunch then vanished inside us as we looked down on Manchester. For reasons not entirely clear, boys listen to Grandfather's telling of the great Kinder Scout Trespass above my more interesting stories, and on that stunningly clear afternoon you could see what a marvellous day out that must have been.

Then it's compass time across the featureless landscape at the top of Kinder Scout.  The peat bogs sucked down the heavier amongst us, while my youngest son seemed to float confidently over the top.... until he didn't, and sank down like the rest of us. Eventually we could see down into the valley of Edale again, and carefully descended the steeper side of the mountain, not terrifically aided by bifocal lenses. A magnificent pub dinner topped off the day.

And so it continued over the next few days - another day - another mountain - and another view of the others side. We looked down on the beautiful views above the forest across Derwentwater, another opportunity for a Grandad story, this time about the Dambusters. We strode along Stanage Edge viewing the spectacular views of the valley below. We ate very well, 3 times a day. We played wholesome board games in the evening, like scrabble, draughts, and monopoly. We had lots of fresh air, and we all slept very very well!

Most of all though, we talked to each other. We learnt lots about each other and from each other, solving most of the world's problems. This is the positive of a multi-generational holiday, it was a lovely celebration of each other's company.