Ruminations on Travel and Place crossingthethreshold.net
@crossingthethreshold Back in whenever it was, ummm 1980s?, I travelled extensively by train through Europe and nearby countries. I watched a huge amount of landscape go by. After that travelling was over I cycled from London to Edinburgh where I stopped (I don't know why). You say: "how does being able to experience so much in such a short time affect our experience and interaction with land and place?" The two travel modes were utterly different. By train I watched the world go by. Being on my bike I experienced the landscape rather than watched it. Those 'flat' roads were actually hills. I could smell the environment. I was out in a thunderstorm one day desperately trying to recall if going under a tree was a good idea or a bad one. The world was very 'real'.
@Miraz That was quite a bike ride. Your experience that you speak to is exactly what I was thinking. I don’t doubt that if you live in a place, traveling the same route regularly, you will know it better than the occasional visitor, but at the same time you are not experiencing it.
@crossingthethreshold I spent 4 weeks on that bike ride. 😀 Stayed with NZ friends in York for a week, especially occasioned by an eye injury — the ER doc thought a sliver of metal had gone in my eye and come out again. I wore an eye patch for a week — I imagined a sexy black pirate patch. In fact it was a big wad of white gauze. 😆
@Miraz I’m imagining you walking around York with a black patch and a parrot on your shoulder 😄 Too bad the doctor only had white gauze.