Yes, I guess I should have put “except electricians and possibly plumbers”.
I was thinking more of the wet trades - bricklaying, plastering and decorating.
Although I suspect things have changed even for those trades in Oz, as it has here in the UK.
Things were different in the mid 80s when I lived in Oz.

I was self employed in the building trade - groundwork and brickwork - for 25 years. My wife was also self employed. We would have 4-7 weeks away every summer.
15 years ago we decided to retrain for jobs where we could live in other countries for a few years and use them as a springboard - for many reasons it didn’t pan out.
In hindsight we should have stuck to what we were doing and take longer off on occasions for bigger trips.
So there’s my answer to your original question.

There’s other advantages to having a ‘home base’ to return to:
A network of of friends and family for a myriad of things.
A network of work possibilities

I do think things have changed in the UK - I don’t think it’s just looking back with rose tinted glasses.

I’m 57 and nearly everyone, my age, I know went travelling when they were younger. Even the ones who didn’t do the whole SE Asia backpacking trail went inter-railing round Europe.
Thinking about my family and friends’ children, who are now between the ages of 19-30, very few have done it - in fact, sitting here right now, I can only think of 2.

Once I was talking to a friend about doing something that would take 3 years. My friend asked me what was my life like 3 years ago - ‘much the same as it is now’ I replied. ‘Well then’ my friend said ‘if you’d have started that thing 3 years ago your life would be different now’.

When I went off travelling in my early 20s, I came back a couple of years later and nothing had changed; I went back to work, back to the rugby club and back to the same social scene - but those memories of travelling 35 years ago are still as vivid as ever and it feels like yesterday. Oh and I was a much better rugby player :D

Yes, I remember it well - the hippie trail to India, the secret beach in S.E. Asia etc. Being even older than you (late 60's) it was the background to my teens and 20's. Someone I knew back then built a business bussing people to India to find 'nirvana'. Because of the number of factory jobs around it was possible to go off for a while and find some kind of work fairly easily when you got back. University was very much a minority route.

Times, as you say, have changed. That's why my experience of the path through life; trying to balance work, 'family' in all its definitions, and travel will be of minimal interest or help to Terry, and it's why I mentioned what my children have done over various bits of the last decade. You're right that gap years have gone from being time out to find yourself to being seen as a year of hedonistic indulgence - sex and drugs in the sun. That's bad enough before uni but to go off afterwards can be a hard sell to future employers in more conservative industries. We thought the risk worth taking with our kids, and its worked out. They came back far more rounded and self reliant individuals and that's stood them in good stead when dealing with people - employers for example.

The reality is though that taking a year out in your late 20's is lost in the noise a decade or two later. My brother in law even took five years out of his high end professional career (medicine) to be a tv presenter (corporate stuff, not public broadcast) and 20yrs later he's been back exactly where he would have been for some time. There may be some people who regret taking time out to pursue a passion - where it didn't work out for them - but the vast majority of people I know who've done it have benefitted long term.

So I'd say there's some real value in what you've said here.

First off, what I should disclose is that I've got a permanent mental disorder called wanderlust. See source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dromomania
So that year or so is got to happen, on a medical basis.

I'm curious how you or your children played that travel? I post here a bit mixed; I'm not entirely fulfilled by my work (that's up to me to sort out) but I also would like to create a skill set that enables travel in a more sustainable way. In a perfect work, returning from travel wouldn't be such an ordeal.

Just out of curiosity, do you think this observation has more to do with the finances or something else?

I'd die immediately.

I would describe my job in engineering as just that a job not a career, I qualified and got on with my job albeit with several different employers as I came and went from my travels, I did not try climbing any career ladder or gain promotion I just updated my skills as the industry progressed. I did cheat a little on my CV in that I pulled to ends of employment periods together sometimes to make a continuous run without the time away showing, I left work to travel on probably 10 occasions but my employment record only showed twice and I was not caught out, not that it would have mattered.


The only child of friends that I can think of who has travelled is an electrician of which there is a shortage, no pun intended, in the UK, he gave in his noticed after finishing his apprenticeship and was told come back and see us when you get back, your job will be here. Those who have gone to university seem to have to climb on the career ladder and keep climbing straight away.

No. The financial lives of my nieces/nephews and friends children are much the same as their parents, when they were their age.
I think it’s a cultural thing. I met my wife when I was 30 and the thing that drew us together the most (apart from the obvious) was talking about our travels and we really fell in love on our first bike trip. Her relatives and friends had also been travelling - it was a thing that young people (at least the ones I knew) did back then.
The next generation seem to want to go to university, get a job and a house (whether rented or bought) as soon as possible. They appear to be more interested in material wealth such as nice cars etc...
I’m not saying they’re wrong, I’m saying that fashions change.

I had a good life to return to. Good friends and fun times. Sport is a great thing to have in your life for many reasons.
My job was physically hard, I couldn’t say I loved it but it paid well (physically demanding jobs usually are in the UK - hard to find people who are fit and strong).

This whole thing about travel - why we do it, why we want to do it, what we get from it, what we give up for it, has been rolling around in the various parts of my mind for many decades. Recently (about 3yrs ago) I started planning a project to try and explore it in more detail but Coronavirus has stretched the timescale out somewhat. I'm planning (eventually) to write it all up in book form (partly written at the moment) because, as the saying goes, 'I don't know what I think until I read what I wrote.'

I came to travel both early and late. Early because as a child the only real travel we did was from our various homes (we moved around a lot when I was young) was to visit my mother's relatives in Ireland. That wasn't so much a trip to another country as a voyage into the past - about 50yrs into the past (or that's what it felt like anyway). That would be really interesting now but then, as a young child, I found it depressing. It wasn't until I started travelling with my peer group in my late teens that it (and bike travel in particular) became a passion. And at roughly the same time I had to try and balance that with the world of work.

My planning for a working future started early - probably around the age of 10, when my parents started 'hothousing' me for the 11 Plus exam. Anyone (of any age anyway) in the UK will know that as being one of the fork in the road moments. Pass and you'd go on to an academic school, fail and you'd go to a technical one. Out of my class of 33 that year, 3 of us passed... So for me the route then went O levels, A levels, Uni and a professional career as a biochemist in a research lab. That, on a generational basis, was a considerable step up from my parent's world of hire and fire low end jobs with tied houses and no certainty beyond the end of the week. So how do you say a few years later, I'm giving it all up to travel. Right through the 70's (and my 20's) I had to wrestle with that.

So when, years later, I could see my kids exhibiting the same desires we encouraged them to face it head on and at least do something substantial. My son spent a year in China. Part of his time was spent teaching English as a foreign language (he got a qualification part time before he went) in a couple of cities, the rest of the time doing whatever he wanted. The teaching part filled in the blank on his CV - and was seen as a considerable positive by subsequent employers. He came back quite relaxed about living in other countries, chose to do his Masters in Amsterdam and his Doctorate in Stockholm. His PhD supervisor told us last year that he was very impressed by his Chinese experience and that he could speak (fluentish) Mandarin. Travel as a positive rather than something to try and cover up.

Ok, that's one person's experience but the point is that we tried to anticipate what problems might come along down the road and do what we could to head them off.

Our youngest is about to (not) sit his A Levels. For those not familiar with the UK education system these are the exams (when they are held at least) that 18 year olds sit at the end of school - normally in three distinct subjects but up to five is not unknown. In Scotland they have a similar system and they are called Highers. My son is thinking about taking a year out before University and as a result of this thread he has been challenged with fleshing out what he actually wants to do in that year - so far that has run to doing football refereeing and scouting courses and working. He appears to have no great desire to travel as yet but it may be voiced this evening. I don't want to have him lounging around stealing oxygen from those of us with things to do.

Having said that, given his current workrate he will be resitting his A Levels.....

To answer this specific question:

Now, I'm a consultant in engineering, HSE, Leadership, and project management (and a few more bits and pieces). Until the pandemic we travelled a lot, mainly on business, with a week or three tagged onto each trip to explore the places we went, all over the world.

How did I reach this point? Experience in engineering and management for many years, also in many parts of the world, in Mining and Energy.

How did I get into these industries? Degree in Engineering, post-graduate in business administration, then jumped into the most interesting work opportunity I could find, which was a mining contract in Botswana.

We're now into a routine of a year working and a year travelling...

3,2,1, Go!
 

I would recommend travel, for me a small period of travel suits me.
I grew up on a housing estate in one of the toughest and most deprived areas of Glasgow with an alcoholic mother who had mental issues and a stable hard working father. Life expectancy was higher in Bangladesh than where I lived. There has to be something more than this I thought and low and behold-there was! I worked as a labourer when I left school and travelled to Russia by train. I continued to work as a labourer and went to night school to gain qualifications. I got into Uni, first of my family to do so. Worked in London, hated it. Went back to Uni and got a Masters then went to America and travelled for two years in the Americas by bike. It wasn't all sunshine, but I wouldn't swap it for anything.

Came back to UK, had some crap jobs but eventually got a good job on the basis of the guy asking about my travels. Still working for the same crowd. Travelled all over the world, paid off the mortgage early then bought my bike. Threw everything into paying off the mortgage early and I did 5 years early. Will be 62 in April. What does the future hold, I don't know but if I can keep working I will. Plan B is to retire at 66 and piss off to India/ Malaysia/ Sri Lanka October to April. However, as you age your health window of opportunity naturally declines, so need to try and stay healthy.
Have a plan and stick to it. Being on the road full time is not for me, I like my house and I like the UK. So, good luck, be kind and take care of yourself.

I don't have a lot of time for A levels as they're currently devised. I remember going for an interview with my son's sixth form tutor at the end of his first year. The tutor asked him what he was planning to do. He replied 'go to university'. The tutor looked down at his notes and said 'you might want to reconsider that.' He went on, post gap year, to get a first at undergraduate level, a merit at masters and 'one of the best doctoral submissions we've seen' from his PhD examiner. That from someone who if it had been down to the tutor (as it may well be this year) wouldn't even have made it to university at all. I won't bore you with either my wife's or daughter's tales but they have similar stories about how it nearly all fell apart at A level.

My daughter spent the first half of her gap year travelling and volunteering - mainly in west coast Canada and the US. She then got a job in Sainsbury's. That, as much as anything, taught her that she didn't want to work the checkouts for the rest of her life. Neither, she quickly decided, did she want to do the uni course she'd signed up for (politics) as she thought the rest of the students (and a good number of the tutors) were 'idiots'. Because of the gap year she had the confidence to tackle the uni authorities about changing her course to something completely different (life sciences) even though she didn't have the A level results to warrant a place on the course. Most of her friends who went straight from school said they'd never have been able to do that. So by and large gap years, travel, and the independance it brought about has been a good thing for both of them.

I must say I’m really enjoying this discussion, what a shame we’re not all in a pub somewhere having a few beers.

Things were going very well for me when I went travelling in the 80s. I was in my early 20s and had a small firm employing 4 men. I’d just completed 2 nice contracts and had another lined up, and I had money in the bank. It wasn’t the obvious time to go but I saw the trip as enhancing my life rather than escaping it.

I wanted to see more of the world (obviously) and play some Southern Hemisphere rugby. Mainly, though, I didn’t take life too seriously and I thought it would be a laugh - and it was. I didn’t worry about the future, I always thought I’d get a job doing something and so far I’ve been right - I’ve done some pretty tough jobs over the years but we need money to live and to travel so I just got on with it with a smile on my face.

I must say I have changed over the last 10 years, not for the better, but I’m trying to get back to my old self and as soon as we’re able I’m off on a trip with my wife.

I was a bus driver, and many other things before I decided to go into the trades (Electrician in BC, Canada) for the specific purpose of not having to be tied down to an employer where I can't take extended time off to travel.

I finished my basic Entry Level Training and joined the IBEW local 230 on Vancouver Island. Due to the project oriented nature of construction trades, it's quite expected to be laid off after the project is done. I've mostly relied on the union dispatch list to get work and tried to travel during my "downtimes". With our local we can easily take off as much time as we want with no negative consequences.

It's worked out reasonably well so far but some of the travels had to be a bit more spontaneous to fit into the slow times.