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.