Silly how easily it began. Someone took a photograph. They mounted their cycles, and pedalled off. Not far up the unpaved road, they dismounted and walked to the top of the hill where they paused, and waved. Then, for anyone watching, they disappeared.
Hilary Hughes and Margaret Taylor had planned their departure for weeks, dreaming of the moment they would slip free, alone and unaided.
The photo shows two optimistic young women with rugged bikes. Margaret leans against her bike while Hilary stands astride hers. They smile for the camera. Their bikes, with step through frames, new, maybe bought for the journey, are robust enough to have been investments in the future.
They beam with pleasure, ready for adventure, ready to fulfil ambitions of independence and exploration. Two sixteen years olds, dressed for cycling and hot weather, in shorts that came almost to their knees, blouses, short white socks, and sensible-looking, sturdy shoes.
Nothing special
They were travelling light, everything packed in panniers, each one weighing about six pounds, which they thought they could manage. Their clothes were ordinary, nothing special for cycling. Their only concessions to cycling equipment were waterproof capes.
They had no cycling shoes, no cleats. They carried no electronics. No chargers, no cables, no plugs. No helmets. No sunglasses. They had one change of clothing. No wicking shirts, no leg warmers, no beanie hats. No base layers. No water. No phones. A map. They carried a paper map.
They would stay in places along the way, and be gone for six days, every inch of the way pedalled on their bikes or walked, as they pushed the bikes up hills.
Margaret carried a note book in which to write her story with an eye already to the future. She carried a camera, a small black box, to take photos, records for the future too. Hers was going to be an adventure, travelling super light. They would have to do their own cooking but Hilary was confident. She was a Girl Guide and Margaret “knew lots of cooking”[2].
Romance. Fantasy. Fiction.
Two sixteen year olds, without mobile phones, without any way of calling home, going off on bicycles, heading straight to a busy main road, with only a map and a change of clothes. You’d have to be mad to do that! And if you’re a parent telling that to your friends you’d be damned as doubly mad.
Few sixteen year olds would cycle to the New Forest and Winchester from Widley on the outskirts of Portsmouth. But this was 1936. Journeys like those have gone, lost under the easy nature of modern travel. Today, you’d get the bus, the train or beg a lift, from a parent or a friend with a car. Gone, under burdens, lost in a maze of roads unsuitable for cycling, under a weight of cars, under a weight of clothes, property and gadgets.
Travel is a barrier to be overcome and a puzzle of choices. Where to go? When? How to fit within a crowded world where diaries and calendars rule our lives. And what to take from so many possessions? Checking the weather, checking luggage restrictions, throwing out items to make everything fit.
Not here, please
After that, further burdens: jammed roads, delayed trains, cancelled flights. When we arrive, the places we visit are hostile. We have to pay taxes just to stay at a hotel in Manchester, or Paris, and Bhutan has long taxed visitors by the day. Amsterdam has banned cruise ships as it tries to shift tourism from its crowded centre.
Not wanted here, they might as well say. Tourism is under threat. Even the staid old Financial Times recently ran an article considering that it was time to tell tourists to stay away. All this before we reference inequalities of tourism, the glaring gaps in wealth between visitors and residents, the gap between those who can afford to travel and those who can’t but are surrounded by images of places to go and things to do from which they are excluded, and which can’t help but create bitterness.
Covid and lockdowns made things very much worse. Those events highlighted the importance of nature to us, stuck in our homes in towns and cities, feeding a hunger to be out and away. The outdoors, nature and travel sounded a call to which we responded as soon as we could. When lockdown ended whoever could headed for the nearest green space.
Off the beaten track
In Derbyshire where we lived at the time, mountain bikers and walkers with dogs appeared in places we had never met them before. Some, lost, were asking for places we had never heard of because someone had posted an image of a cascade on Instagram that looked like a waterfall, a hollow that looked magic for swimming.
As many as could headed for national parks, including people who could suddenly work remotely. They parked cars wherever they could, and blocked roads when they could find nowhere to park. They camped on roadsides and in beauty spots, and left litter. They walked, swam and paddle boarded, revelling in space and sunshine. They lit fires and left litter, offended locals and ignored rules.
In 2022, national park authorities in the Lake District wrote a list of the problems tourism was bringing. The list included higher prices in shops because tourists have more spending money; shops catering for tourist requirements not those of local people; large numbers of tourists damaging the environment; more pollution; more litter; more traffic and more parking problems.[https://www.lakedistrict.gov.uk/learning/factstourism/impactsoftourism]
More people, more cars
90% of visitors come to the Lake District by car, to enjoy clear air and unspoiled views. Ironically, because more people potentially kill the vision of national parks protecting and preserving special places. More people bring more cars, bring more pollution. More cars need more places to park, and more places to park create more tarmac. Tarmac causes more run off, and run off washes out habitats and wildlife. More lights disturb bats. And emissions kill lichens.
National park officials could have added to their list of problems if they had gone to other destinations. They might have included the draining of resources on which locals depend, like water, and the way big companies, dominating tourism, drive down wages, and create poor value work.
The problems we make through our travels have multiplied. Travelling, the way we move, the places where we stay and eat, are part of a world wide threat to biodiversity. Globally, biodiversity is imperilled. And travel spreads disease and always has. It’s probably no coincidence that Covid spread from Wuhan, a well connected city, from which flights circling the globe fanned the disease’s spread. Something new is needed or this may end badly.