Editor's Blog Jun 27th 2012
Road Trip
If you really want to see a country, forget about tour buses and their uncanny ability to hit every tourist trap known to man. Trains are ok in under developed countries, as they are slow and you can poke your head out the window. Stick your head out of a modern train and you are guaranteed to end up a foot shorter and cure your dandruff problem for good.
Motorcycles are good (not being biased), but you are exposed to the elements and you are more likely to die a colourful death, with that colour being mainly claret. Bicycles are good too, but unless you got a stainless steel arse and energy in abundance it can be a mode of transport that you either love or hate.
Although I am a motorcycle man, my love affair with the car started when I was seventeen. My grandfather sold me his mini clubman 1300, (yep sold me, his clubman). In the early eighties nobody would buy you anything, and you probably worked at the docks on a 12-hour shift, I was able to pay the mini off in a year.
The border was closed and all I used to do was drive that car in circles, so many times have I driven around Gibraltar I could do it with my eyes closed. Driving around with your eyes closed on a road trip would defeat the object, unless you are the passenger for whom the default position is head bouncing off the window and dribbling down their chin having succumbed to forward motion induced shelep. FMIS.
Shelep is like normal sleep, but every now and then you jerk up from your bent over double, rubber necking position with glazy eyes looking around saying things like Grrnnning or where are we? While surreptitiously brushing the dried spittle off your shirt.
I am a great advocate of the motorcar as the vehicle of choice for seeing a country. It allows you to set the pace, distance and toilet breaks. You can stop when you want, where you want, and all done in relative comfort, blaring music or with the top down.
Put away your Global Positioning System and get yourself a real paper map, which means you have to stop to check your navigational prowess and if you do end up getting lost, what's so bad about that? You are on holiday after all.
The fun in getting lost is finding little gems, hidden in places that you would normally miss because you are in such a hurry to get where you are going. The secret of the road trip is point your car in the general direction of desired travel, switch on your play list, crank up to 10 and sing along until your throat is sore.
And always remember, you can never be truly lost, because wherever you go, there you are.
Ed.
