Frank's Christian Thoughts: Travel Biography Photo Extravaganza

Saturday, 11 January 2025

Travel Biography Photo Extravaganza - Part 4.

Work and Income Determined Travel.

Where I could travel to and how far was determined by my occupation and its related income. I left school with no qualifications in 1968 at age 15 and began my working life sweeping the floor in a family-owned cabinet-making factory. My annual income back then was £208. That means my weekly pay was just £4. Out of that, £2 was given to my parents for daily food and upkeep, £1 went into a savings account, and the final £1 was pocket money. Yet, while working in that factory in 1972, I had my first overseas trip to Spain without my parents. It was also the first time ever I saw the inside of an aeroplane.

Then again, £1 in 1968 equals £18 in 2024/5. The gross weekly income at that cabinet-making factory would now be just over £72 a week, or £3,744 a year in today's currency. This compares with the Government's Minimum wage of £17,888 a year for someone between 18 and 20—the age bracket I was in in 1972.

In 1972, after flying home from Spain, I joined the Reading Life-Saving Club and trained to be a poolside lifeguard. Alongside developing in-water towing skills, the course also involved an expansion in knowledge of human anatomy, especially the blood circulatory system and respiration. I qualified in December of that year and in 1973, I was a full-time lifeguard. This was the year I took my first solo backpacking trip to Italy, setting the course for a life of independent travel.

After four months in 1973 as a summertime pool lifeguard, I entered the world of precision engineering. It was during this phase of my life that I set foot in the Holy Land in 1976, my first trip to America in 1977, and again in 1978. After that, I was made redundant in 1979, followed by a year of unsuccessful job-seeking until launching out as a self-employed window cleaner in 1980, which I held until I retired due to health issues in 2015, on my 63rd birthday. It was during my 35 years as my own boss that not only had I returned to Israel and America in 1993 and 1995 respectively, but backpacked around the world in 1997. This Photo Extravaganza should cover all this in the weeks to come.

This goes to show that, as an unmarried working-class individual, who has never seen the inside of a university or an office environment - where the salary tended to be considerably higher - in the sphere of Travel, I did very well! However, throughout the eighties, that decade was spent building up the business, and it was when Travel was more restricted to Western Europe, including Italy in 1981 and again in 1982, France during the mid-eighties, and within the UK into the start of the nineties.

This week, I will feature Italy in 1981, covering the northern area. This includes a stop in Turin where I spent a couple of hours at my maternal grandparents (Nonni) before boarding a train to Loano, on the Ligurian coast. The main reason why I didn't stay any longer was the language barrier. Neither spoke a word of English and in 1981, my Italian was very limited. Hence our communication, or lack of it, spurred me to continue with my journey to Loano without any misgivings. They understood.

After Loano, I then travelled to Pisa, then Florence before settling at Viareggio to hike part of the Cinque Terre, just north along the coast past the busy port of La Spezia. Pausing in Geneva to change trains, I finally arrived in Milan to visit a friend from our church living in Italy on a temporary contract.

The main town on the Cinque Terre is Monterosso, where from Viareggio, I had to change trains at La Spezia, else I would have sped through Monterosso Station on the mainline route to Geneva. However, a hiking trail links the five cities, offering some of the most spectacular mountainous views of the coast.

Whilst I was in Pisa, especially in Florence too, some dirt interfered with the shutter, causing some of the exposure to fog. For the more severe cases, I couldn't post here, but I managed to post a couple of mildly affected pics on this week's blog. That was one of several problems with the old shutter camera and a roll of film - fogginess, camera shake, out-of-focus, over- or under-exposure, and even double or overlapping exposure. Nevertheless, traditional photography with all its setbacks made it a challenging hobby.

After the 110 Instamatic letdown at the Grand Canyon in 1978, a friend gave me a fully manual 35mm camera, and still sticking with the idea of a slide show, again I used the slide film to take these travel pics, and each photo made its way to this laptop via the slide viewfinder, pictured in last week's post.

I hope you'll find enjoyment in browsing through these pics. Again, there have been some changes between 1981 and the present, especially in Monterosso. The drabness of the town represents real Italy before the surge of tourism was the motivation behind sprucing up the town's appearance.

Italy 1981 - Starting at Dover, UK.