No wings, thanks!

Su Johnston describes two journeys taking the ‘road less travelled’ – by foot, train and boat

The road less travelled... | Photo: Photo: Alejandra Arce / flickr CC.

My passion is for holidays on a particular sailing boat, a ‘clipper’. This is a really big ship, with four masts, lots of food and fun; but, no, I do not climb masts and pull ropes! It’s a holiday, for goodness sake.

The question is, however, how to get to the port where the holiday starts? Some five years ago I decided that flying is no longer for me. When I started, in 1953, going to a job in Southern Rhodesia, as it was then, it was a comparatively civilised proceeding. We flew out of Blackbush, dressed in our best, in an old Hermes aeroplane, with our backs to the engine, and the cold lunch came in a cardboard box. Each evening, at about six o’clock, we were taken to a hotel for dinner and a lovely sleep. All right, we had to get up at five in the morning to continue, but we had had a good rest overnight. On that trip we stopped for three nights: at Malta, El Adem and Entebbe. That was then.

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