For the past while - I can’t remember why I chose it - my tagline has been The World Is Really Not Enough for a Space Tourist. I chose it after I got sick of all the angling queries google was sending my way because my tagline used to be “It’s a fishing rod, not a chain”.
I put them on a par with “What is the stars”, asked by the Paycock in Juno and the Paycock which the Department of Education inflicted on me when I was 17 years old. Arrgghh. I didn’t like it then and from what I remember of it, I wouldn’t like it too much.
Sometimes, the world is too much. I have decided to spend my next holiday in Ireland for several reasons. One, the Ryanair website wouldn’t give me any sort of a reasonable fare to Fuerteventura in May when I eventually got a fare out of the site (I seemed to get quite a few errors back). Aer Lingus don’t fly there at this time of the year, and I couldn’t find a flight only charter on the Budget site and Topflight wasn’t loading for me. Ebookers were sending me lovely 300 and 500E fares with Air France and Iberia and they involved spectacular numbers of changes. Also, the package operators were screwing me on a single supplement. Secondly, I might have to go to Fuerteventura in July anyway to a kite competition so will be going through all this again later. Or soon, if I can sort out those dates now as opposed to the middle of June. Thirdly, it occurs to me that if I don’t go on a sun’n’surf holiday costing around 1100E depending on the flights which I was having some time sourcing, the likelihood was that my credit card bill would be fully clear at that stage and you know I like that feeling. I’ve done it before. Now I really want to turn the screw and front load it before I start spending serious money again.
So I’ve decided to stay in Ireland and already I can think of 10,000 things I want to do. I will look into either surfing in Cork or kitesurfing in Dublin depending on the weather. I’d like to go to Belfast. I’d like to go to the Giant’s Causeway. I’d like to drive the west coast, or some of it. South Kerry is very attractive too. A part of me would like to sit down and do some of the design work I just don’t do because my life isn’t really conducive to it. Another part of me would like to take over my dad’s garage for a week and do the mosaic work I didn’t have time to do this winter. Or do tapestry. Or play the piano. But above all else, not feel I’m losing out by not going somewhere and maybe get some sleep too; that would be good. I’m tired and when I go on holidays I tend to pile on the pressure in terms of places to go things to see and do and worry about whether I’m missing anything. It’s very bloody stressful and really I don’t need it right now. Also, I have to bear in mind that I want to go kitesurfing in Brazil later in the year.
When you look at it like that, a week of going nowhere is actually vaguely attractive.
I made this decision at some stage this afternoon after another abortive attempt to arrange the holiday, this time in France, in Hossegor, if only because flights to Biarritz were somewhat easier to come by than flights to Fuerteventura.
Anyway.
I was in Easons this evening, because bookshops can and often are my downfall. I escaped intact, fortunately. But that was after I spent a monumental amount of time perusing a few Lonely Planet books, not travel guides but what I might just christen envygenerators. One of them was a year of adventures, another was something like Places to See Before you Die and Walks to do Before You Die. I leafed through the Places to See one and the Year of Adventures and then realised that in a way, they were interesting in that I liked the idea behind them, but - and here was the problem - I didn’t necessarily agree with all, or even many of them.
I’ve toyed, on and off, with the unpaid leave idea over the past few years. One of the key points against it is that it’s not necessarily easy to come by where I work, plus, it costs money. But deep down, if I had the funds to do it, it’s something I would seriously consider. I’m just not sure where I’d go. When I was really stressing out over the holiday a few weeks ago I was thinking about all the things/places I wanted to see, do, whatever. As I searched through the options, interesting things popped up, that I might never have thought about. So while I was in the bookshop today I was thinking about that, plus, the Lonely Planet’s books about stuff you shouldn’t miss out on. It wrecked my head a little because one thing which stands out to me is that the opportunity to do all this stuff is so much More now than it was 100 years ago.
Take the Antarctic. I’d love to see it. I’m not in tune with the amount of money required, unfortunately because I have to be realistic about the things that do cost me money. But comparatively recently, it wasn’t a place you necessarily expected to come home alive from. Take China. My mother remembers the prayers for the conversion of China at Mass. I suppose they still sort of need to be converted from that particular point of view, but the key part was that it was effectively closed off. Now you can do three day tours of the place. 18 year old kids do gap years and travel the world and occasionally even see stuff. (I’ve read Don’t Tell Mum, okay?)
In addition to the Lonely Planet books that I mention, I’m pretty certain that the BBC have published similar books and I also believe the travel sections of various newspapers variously have lists of unmissable items. The world is full of them, however.
What has space got over Planet Earth?
Anyway, although this is not an exhaustive list, and it is not prioritised in any way, here is an overview of some of the places I wouldn’t mind going, some of the things I wouldn’t mind doing, specialist holidays where applicable. I don’t expect to get them all in, and a lot of them for practical reasons will never happen. But I won’t be tempted to buy a book about them either. Anyone is welcome to suggest other stuff in the comments.
- Photographic tour of the Antarctic. I came across this in looking for stuff to do in May. It costs money I don’t have
- New Zealand - kitesurfing and photography.
- Lofoten Islands
- Drive the coast of France from north to south visiting as many lighthouses as I can.
- Landmark Properties in Ireland have a couple of lighthouses set up as selfcatering. I would like to stay in one or two of them.
- Grand Canyon
- Yosemite National Park
- Yellowstone National Park
- Colorado
- Kitesurfing in Brazil, some islands four hours west of Perth that I’ve forgotten the name of
- Surfing in Mauritius, Hawaii (but not really big)
- Photography in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland
- Monaco Grand Prix before the sport becomes even more utterly meaningless.
- Top of the Eiffel Tower (again)
- Gorges du Verdon in Provence (again)
- Avignon, again
- Barcelona
- Kitesurfing in Tarifa because you have to
- Naples and Pompeii.
- Skiing in the Alps.
- Neuschwanstein.
- Vancouver
- Macchu Piccu
- Nazco lines
- Cashel
- Newgrange
- Gibralter
- Great Wall of China
- Terracotta Army
- Piano tuition in a remote part of France
- Nazca lines
- Mosaic holiday somewhere anywhere it’s not raining.
- surfing in Fuerteventura
- Surfing in Cork and Kerry
- Photographic trip west Cork and south Kerry.
- Glenveagh National Park, Donegal
- Seven days in Munich
- Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg.
- Tampere, Finland
- Fjords, Norway.
- Legoland
- Photography course, south of France
- Surf photography course, Hawaii
- Celtic Connections Music Festival, Glasgow
- Tonder Folk Festival, Denmark
- Train journey from Cologne to Luxembourg (I think - it’s years since I did it).
- Greek Islands
- Taj Mahal
- Western Australia (surfing and kitesurfing)
- Polynesia.
- Alaska (per Matt)
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