What kind of traveller are you?

I've been on organised holidays abroad but what I used to like was taking my camper van over to France and Spain and just exploring smaller roads, and visiting Art Galleries and Buddhist Centres.. just wandering and exploring. When I was in my 60's I managed to get a year's sabbatical from work, let out my house and just set off..
wouldn't have that confidence or energy now sadly..

I'm a great believer in travel expanding the mind, We took our children out of school on a couple of occasions and marched them around cultural places, amid loads of moaning and groaning. I was always having to visit castles, battlefields, cathedrals as a child with my parents, being bored to tears, I'd say to mine at the time, "you'll appreciate all this one day", and that has been the case, often it's in retrospect, as it was for me, they have told me as adults, "can't believe I was bored when we were at such and such a place"

I think there is a great example of just how much travel can have an uplifting effect on a young person, anyone who has seen the first "Race Across the World" might remember father and son, son aged 17 in the first leg whining quite a bit and coming out with classics such as "I'm having a breakdown, I'm missing my XBox" by the time they'd reached the final destination having travelled through some truly amazing places, rising to challenges, embracing and admiring cultural differences, he'd turned into, to all intents and purposes a fully fledged adult.

I feel somewhat cheated if I don't see something of the country I'm visiting, I met some tourists in Mexico who just wanted the beach, amazing as the beaches are there, the ancient sites and flora and fauna are far too unique to miss. Having said all that, last summer it was particularly hot when we went to a beach resort on the Spain/Portugal border, I found myself just wanting to lie by the pool, swim and read, having previously done a couple of week long city breaks in Seville and Cordoba, Granada as well as Lisbon on a separate occasions in cooler months. These days I find heat strength sapping so I don't feel like doing a culture trail, but that's not because I'm not interested in the country in question.

Fleurpepper

Aveline 'Holidays as holidays are great and don't deserve to be so snobbishly dismissed.'

what do you mean by this. Who has done this?

I wasn't aware anyone had. Thought we were all just sharing our preferences.

As long as everyone enjoys the type of holiday they have chosen, that's fine.
I'm testing a new adventure at the end of the month, taking the dog to a rental abroad for 3 weeks to do lots of walking. This is a change from my usual cultural sightseeing holidays, so🤞.

We have been on a number of sea cruises and have 2 planned for this year. We choose carefully. The excursions are often very expensive and we prefer to explore independently and then enjoy dinner and entertainment in the evening. We all like different things. My nightmare would be a self catering holiday in a remote area.

Different ones at different times in my life, depending on who I was going with. Organised foreign tours with parents. The British bucket and spade with DD's, fishing holidays with DH upmarket Paris, Gites in France, Italy and other countries. Had the chance of the Far East and the US and never took it DH .
No regrets.

Aveline

I wouldn't say I was a 'traveller'. I've been to many different countries over the course of my life. Sometimes for work sometimes for holidays. I certainly don't look down on those who don't spend their time immersing themselves in different countries. Holidays as holidays are great and don't deserve to be so snobbishly dismissed.

Well said. Completely agree.

Most people work hard to be able to enjoy their holidays (yes, I know many on here are retired now), so what they choose to do is obviously up to them - whether that means backpacking through remote areas or lazing on the beach for the entire time. I know from previous holiday type threads on here that there are a lot of people who love cruises, for instance - whereas I couldn't think of anything worse. On the other hand, many people probably wouldn't enjoy our kind of holidays. As has been said, horses for courses. It'd be a very boring old world if we all liked the same things.

aonk

We have been on a number of sea cruises and have 2 planned for this year. We choose carefully. The excursions are often very expensive and we prefer to explore independently and then enjoy dinner and entertainment in the evening. We all like different things. My nightmare would be a self catering holiday in a remote area.

Funny. We all like different holidays.

Favourite is self catering in a remote area or skiing.

We do enjoy long river cruises. Very small boats, table for two, never staying for entertainment or group drink bits. Off the boat we take ourselves to see what we wish and eat where we want, alone.

After we see our daughter married we're off to explore Patagonia.

GagaJo I feel like you about travel and want to know a place and its local culture. We don't live abroad- though have done in the past and I think it was this experience that made us change our ideas about what a holiday really is for us.

To get something of the feeling of "belonging" to a place we take up all offers of locals to eat with them, visit places with them and share ideas. We sit in cafés and in the town squares with strangers and return again and again to places we love. We self-cater and stay somewhere that feels like a treat - usually with a pool if rural of in the hub of the ordinarylife of people (as far as we can) in a city.

We have been invited to big family celebrations, intimate gayerings and even to people's places of work. We have been shown places not in any available travel guide and have been taken to some sites "out of hours" or off the usual paths. It is the letting into people's lives that truly resonates with us.

My other love is walking the paths that other people have trodden. I'm attracted to Europe because it's both alike and very different. Those places of ruins and goat paths where marks on the landscapes are visible.

We keep loosely in touch with our "holiday friends" and now it feels a bit like "going home". If I could walk further I'd like to be more rural but arthritis is limiting somewhat.
I draw and paint, I take photos of pebbles and old wood. We are pretty slow but off-season people have more time and more inclinationI feel.. We shop where locals shop and this is the best sort of holiday for us.

MrsThatcher

Aveline

I wouldn't say I was a 'traveller'. I've been to many different countries over the course of my life. Sometimes for work sometimes for holidays. I certainly don't look down on those who don't spend their time immersing themselves in different countries. Holidays as holidays are great and don't deserve to be so snobbishly dismissed.

Well said. Completely agree.

Me too. And no-one here has snobbishly dismissed anything at all.

We went on a Meditarranean cruise 10 years ago and sampled several countries just doing walks around. We went to Barcelona and Madeira and took tour buses around the city and island stopping at various places. Now sadly because of my hubbys health it's unlikely that we could ever go abroad again. Any other trips would have to be in this country where I would have to do all the driving. We walked miles on our holidays but now we can't do it anymore.

"Too much-too little" is grim. My parents used to take us off to Europe with a tent for 3 weeks every summer - it was hell, travelling from one place to the next, pitching and un-pitching the massive heavy tent every day with all the accoutrements for a family of 5. Add in the fact that they were practically planning a divorce by the time we had hardly got to the end of our road and you will see why I hated it!! We children dreaded it.

I like to go somewhere, settle and explore and get to know the people and soak up the place.

Now I am on my own I look at the solo/coach/cruise type holidays and know it is not for me - although it obviously makes practical sense. The idea of dredging round daily excursions does not float my boat!

But each to her own!!

Yes, we do things just for the experience. We did a tourist trip round the QM2 and wondered what holidaying on a luxury cruiser like that would be like, so we booked the shortest cruise, Norway and back, but it was the ship we were interested in, not the destination, and it only occurred to us once we were on board, that it would be a good opportunity to see something of Norway as well, so we hurriedly booked some outings.

We had a wonderful week, got the full luxury cruise experience, but as far as I was concerned, despite throughly enjoying it, it was 'done it, got the video and the T shirt' and I have no desire to do another cruise.

This is what i enjoy about our some what haphazard approach to holidays, we will try anything once - and we have never had a holiday we hated, but quite a nunber we enjoyed the experience at the time because it was new and interesting, but have no desire to do it again, traditional cruises and Christmas Fairs fall into that category, whereas others, like little trains bear repeating(for us).

Norah

aonk

We have been on a number of sea cruises and have 2 planned for this year. We choose carefully. The excursions are often very expensive and we prefer to explore independently and then enjoy dinner and entertainment in the evening. We all like different things. My nightmare would be a self catering holiday in a remote area.

Funny. We all like different holidays.

Favourite is self catering in a remote area or skiing.

We do enjoy long river cruises. Very small boats, table for two, never staying for entertainment or group drink bits. Off the boat we take ourselves to see what we wish and eat where we want, alone.

After we see our daughter married we're off to explore Patagonia.

Brush up your Welsh! 🙂

I wouldn’t know where we “fit in”. Don’t most people have different sorts of holidays, depending on what stage they’re at in life? We’ve enjoyed every one of ours, and feel lucky to have had them. Long tours, both self-drive and organised, city breaks, cheap as chips long bus trips, camping, staying with friends, holiday camps, rail journeys, even - shock, horror - all-inclusive by the beach and cruises. We got to know several places well by dint of living abroad and a couple of month long study trips in different European cities (on full grants - those were the days!), but sometimes we just get a flavour of a place, and sometimes that’s all we want. We like variety.

We’ve definitely always been tourists, not travellers. A friend likes to talk of his travels, always “before the tourists discovered/invaded/spoilt it”. Makes me smile every time. Your trip to Greece in 1979 really wasn’t ground-breaking, Martin!

Callistemon21

Norah

aonk

We have been on a number of sea cruises and have 2 planned for this year. We choose carefully. The excursions are often very expensive and we prefer to explore independently and then enjoy dinner and entertainment in the evening. We all like different things. My nightmare would be a self catering holiday in a remote area.

Funny. We all like different holidays.

Favourite is self catering in a remote area or skiing.

We do enjoy long river cruises. Very small boats, table for two, never staying for entertainment or group drink bits. Off the boat we take ourselves to see what we wish and eat where we want, alone.

After we see our daughter married we're off to explore Patagonia.

Brush up your Welsh! 🙂

I read this book a few years ago, don't know if you've read it. I found it interesting and enjoyable.

Beyond the Pampas: In Search of Patagonia – 26 Nov. 2012
by Imogen Rhia Herrad

I mostly enjoyed flying to Calgary hiring a car and driving over to Vancouver island on my own ! I stayed at Airbnb,s on the way and met the most lovely interesting hosts . I loved the pure pristine beauty of Canada .4 weeks of adventure !

I think the kind of traveller you are changes as circumstances, funds and our age change.

Ive travelled in a number of ways but tended to avoid package holidays for the most part. They are an absolute rip off for single travellers like me with their sleazy single supplements. When I have used a package holiday - usually as a base for a European city I wanted to visit - I bargained hard to lose the single supplement. Or I booked through a site like Expedia where you choose your hotel and flight separately.

I travelled to many academic conferences in my university career where everything was paid for and I did not have to worry about single supplements because the uni paid.

The travels I enjoyed most were going independently to places like Iran, Syria, Nepal and some of the Gulf states. Contrary to common belief Arab countries are very safe for single female travellers so long as you follow the customs of the place and dress modestly. Places like Afghanistan, Syria and Iran are now difficult for westerners to visit so I appreciate the adventures I had there and the many interesting people I met.

Travelling to such places and putting the holiday together requires tremendous organizational skills and a sense of independence beyond the average. When you travel alone like that there is no one to share the responsibility and no tour guide to bail you out!

Definitely not of the "if it's Tuesday it must be Belgium", type. Never been a fan of organised tours, or of anywhere where there are crowds. Always do our own holiday planning, which is always part of the fun, and usually end up basing ourselves in one place, with a few visits to selected places of interest in the area. Never been a fan of beach holidays, although we do enjoy coastal scenery. Travelled widely in our younger days, to the Far East, to the U.S.A. and Canada, to Africa, and widely throughout Europe, but health and mobility issues have limited us to the the U.K. in recent years, where we are finding that there is still so much to see. The most rewarding times as regards experiencing the local culture have been spent not so much on holiday, but in living abroad, in Singapore, Sweden, and Germany for 3 years on each occasion, and for 8 years in Portugal, where we spent from April to September there each year. Don't miss the travelling.... especially as regards the "getting there" via many nightmare airport experiences. Did enjoy the ferries and the occasional cruise, though.

Hiraeth

I mostly enjoyed flying to Calgary hiring a car and driving over to Vancouver island on my own ! I stayed at Airbnb,s on the way and met the most lovely interesting hosts . I loved the pure pristine beauty of Canada .4 weeks of adventure !

I did a similar thing but starting in Vancouver and ending up in Calvary.
Canada is an amazing country and I would love to see more of it.

Thank you all for your comments. Fascinating- we are all so different, and that is great.

We do enjoy long river cruises. Very small boats, table for two, never staying for entertainment or group drink bits. Off the boat we take ourselves to see what we wish and eat where we want, alone.

That’s the only way I’d enjoy a cruise Norah

I watched the recent programme on the Welsh in Patagonia Callistemon - so interesting. Enjoy the visit Norah

I lived and worked in the USA for a year based in uni of Nevada (Las Vegas). It was not a holiday but gave me an opportunity to see a lot of the USA and the many cultures there. Fortunately I am not a gambler otherwise I might have returned penniless. The remark that we are "two nations divided by a common language" is very true. It was a very interesting experience and I made friends that I still correspond with.