From Sun-Seeker To Backpacker.

The late Harry and Glynis were customers who became good friends during the 1990s and through into the 2010s, as I was the only Window Cleaner whom they had trusted and relied on after they were let down by my predecessors. As retired pensioners themselves with just one unmarried son, a company executive who had spent time working in Germany before being posted at various locations across the UK by the same employer, these two seemed content to have me sit outside in their back garden as I was offered a cup of traditional English tea and a plate of cheese sandwiches.

It was not long after returning home from Los Angeles, after being away for ten weeks backpacking the globe, calling at Singapore, Australia and California, - the Travel Triathlon, as I affectionately call it, the conversation about sun-seekers began as I relaxed for a short break from working, sipping the refreshing tea. 

This was some time after Harry had shared with me of his travel adventures as a student during the 60's, backpacking across Germany, and staying at their Jugendherberge with their traditional morning duties, that I realised that the greater strictness and regimental atmosphere of Youth Hosteling was already a thing of the past by the time I headed for the airport in the 90s. Nowadays, we don't call them Youth Hostels anymore, but Backpackers Hostels, or simply Backpackers, with no morning duties, lest they all went out of business due to the resulting market decline. With Australian hostels still in the process of reform during 1997, at one provincial hostel, I was given a choice of "Dollar or Duty". I chose to pay the extra dollar for each night I spent there. After all, I wasn't one of the poorer city-slum kids who was "to learn about the countryside" for which hosteling was originally intended and often used by overnight school trips. We have come a long way since Harry's student days.

Typical Youth Hostel dormitory. Stock photo.

Our conversation turned towards sun-seekers, which he assumed I was one. I reminded them that there is a big difference between a sun-seeker and a backpacker. I went on to explain tongue-in-cheek that many a sun-seeker fly out to the Spanish Costa, and to spend the afternoon sunbathing on the beach, then its the bar, where he spends much of the night talking about football, football, football, and more football, until he drags his way back to the hotel at three in the morning, perhaps unable to avoid regurgitating his alcohol-drenched vomit on the sidewalk kerb, before slumping on his bed with uninterrupted sleep, only to wake up at twelve midday to head back to the beach to repeat the process all over again. The sun-seeker makes sure that the bar he visits is actually an English-style pub which accepts the Pound Stirling after thinking that the Peseta is Spanish for potato.  

The conversation was light-hearted but I knew that Harry and Glynis had both got the hint, as an experienced backpacker himself, Harry could not dispute.

And it's that time of the year again when in the past, the High Street travel agents would have been crowded, busy booking these Summer breaks to escape the dismal August when the kids are off from school while the wind and rain sweep across the UK. Nowadays anyone can book their annual holiday via the internet. But psychologically speaking, to look forward to the Summer after the Christmas break is over and yet to face a bleak Winter ahead is a great panacea. But I wonder, with the uncertainty of Brexit looming, how many are confident enough to fly to the Spanish Costa without any border-control bureaucracy at the airports hampering their journeys - to discover that they cannot enter a European country without a visa, and neither have one. Or to fall ill abroad and discover that the much-valid European Health Insurance Card is now completely useless, and therefore facing an unexpected hospital bill totalling thousands of pounds.

It goes to show how well God has blessed me by keeping me as a singleton for so many years - I was already 47 years old when I finally married. At present, with all this talk about climate change, the carbon footprint, the diminishing of the rainforests, and the extinction of species, along with the resounding echo of 9/11, it's a far cry from the carefree days of long-haul travel. As I write, Australia is literally on fire, with the authorities fighting a losing battle to contain the forest flames. And the sense of guilt if I board a long-haul flight, my selfish desires versus conscience as the idea of leaving another carbon footprint will be disturbing as I add that bit of extra stress to the natural environment. Indeed, I thank God dearly for allowing me to fly out to Australia when the times were good and tourism there, still in its fledgeling stage, was relatively cheap.

If only Alex and I were in good health! With train travel, there is not such a big footprint, although there will always be that ultra-political correct guru who will insist that trains are powered by coal-fired power stations, thus leaving a carbon footprint after all. But how could I forget those magnificent train journeys across Europe, from London to Sicily through France, and other trips through Belgium to Germany and Holland? The Calais-Milan route via Lille and Basel took me through some of the most splendid Alpine scenery with mountains and lakes making the train journey a dream come true. With the Folkstone-Calais ferry crossing to complete the route from London, travel of the early 1980s was indeed a real adventure. And how I long to do it all over again. 

Swiss Railways, I travelled by train through here in 1981 & 1982.

How is it that a typical English August is usually wet and windy rather than hot and sunny? Being an island just off the north coast of mainland Europe, it faces the moisture-laden Atlantic winds on one side and the North Sea on the other. And with the Jet Stream having a preference to drift south of the UK during that month, the resulting lousy British Summers gave rise to the package holiday culture, once the preserve for the rich and for the Chosen Few, to be the second-largest UK industry after Defence, even if tourism does not have the flavour of proper industry.

When I was single, after 1972, I never gave the package holiday another look. That was after my very first trip abroad without my parents. I was nineteen at the time and it was before I became a Christian believer. Although what I said to Harry that day was meant to be tongue-in-cheek, actually there was a lot of truth in what I said to him.

When my college mate and I flew to the Costa Brava just south of the Pyrenees, this was my first ever trip out of the UK without my parents. It was also my first flight ever and I felt nervous over it, as my parents had never seen the inside of an aeroplane. Each day we sunbathed on the beach. Then the nightlife when I got completely drunk with the cheap wine they sold there. As I crept back to the hotel, alone, with my mate already there waiting for me, one morning I found myself waking up after sleeping in the bathtub in alcohol-induced vomit. It was not long before I became a byword of the hotel staff, whilst my college mate, who has a much stronger character than I did, and stayed incredibly calm. He was able to contain my behaviour and to hold me steady until I sobered up, ready for another day on the beach. Such as the case of my mate marrying not long after whilst I was dumped by my girlfriend just four months earlier.

What a difference a conversion to Jesus as Saviour, just a few months after that Spanish incident, has made! My perception of travel changed completely from sun-seeking to backpacking. It was just a year later when I found myself walking alone through the ruins of Pompeii, followed by a hike to the summit of Mt. Vesuvio, and looking inside the deep dormant crater. This was a far more exciting adventure than any seaside package holiday, which involved learning ancient history and volcanism, as well as in this, and in years to come, train and bus travel from town to town and experiencing off-the-street room requests at a hotel whichever town I arrived at, as hosteling didn't become part of me until 1985. 

I once read a saying that the full beauty of Creation cannot be perceived with Christless eyes. I believe there's an element of truth in that saying. During the Spring of 1973, alone in the house while thunder was rolling outside, just by reading the first three chapters of Genesis became a revelation from God, as if he was standing right there in front of me and offering a choice - to believe in his Word or to believe in Evolution. There was no "halfway house" (that is, Theistic Evolution.) I had to belive either one or the other. I suddenly knew which side I was on!

To believe in a literal six-day Creation has opened my eyes to the beauty of this world, the recognition of the Almighty power of God in everything he has made. This may affect each individual differently, but for me, there is an intricate link between realising the reality of Divine Creation and backpacking. One primary example of this is when I stood on the rim of Vesuvio's crater and recognising this as a tool for God's judgement on such wicked towns like Pompeii and Herculaneum nearly two millennia previously. Such thoughts and ideas would never have come to mind just a year earlier in 1972 whilst drunk in the bathtub of a Spanish hotel.

It's through the eyes of Jesus Christ from which I can see and appreciate the beauty of tropical vegetation which cannot thrive here in the UK (except under glass). Thus, to look at a row of Traveller's Palms of Singapore brought a spring to my step, as the coconut palms so abundant at Miami Beach, or the unique palms thriving on the roadside of San Diego, the Mangroves of Queensland and NSW, as well as the ground-shaking thundering of Niagara Falls, the rocky shapes at Blue Mountains National Park, and not to mention the dramatic glory of the Grand Canyon. And last but certainly not least, I stood on the rim of an active Mt Etna volcano in 1982, feeling the black basalt ground shaking beneath me as the steam exploded from the vents inside the crater. With God's help and direction, I have seen and experienced all these things which involve backpacking travel.

At the rim of the crater, Mt Etna, taken 1982. 

As I lay in my own vomit inside that bathtub, how could I possibly imagine that within four years, in 1976, I would be standing on the summit of the Mount of Olives, looking down at the wonderful panorama of Jerusalem Old City with its golden Dome of the Rock directly in front, and the New City seen in the background? Would I ever imagine walking through both the ancient and medieval streets of the Old City? Or wade through the confines of a tunnel dug around 701 BC? Or to kneel in front of the 14-prong star marking the site of Christ's birth? Or gaze across the Sea of Galilee? Or float on the waters of the Dead Sea? Such is the exciting adventures of backpacking along with the social side found in many hostels. 

Yet that is the difference between looking at our natural world with Christless eyes and seeing the beauty of this world through the eyes of Jesus Christ.