My love affair with travel began with a broken heart

The first time I got on an aeroplane I was 18 years old. I have absolutely no memory of that flight which, as someone who loves everything about flying (particularly the holidays at the end of most flights), is a little disappointing. What I do remember is that I was miserable.

It was towards the end of the summer of the year I should have taken my A-Levels. Instead I was recovering from a severe bout of nephritis which had left me facing another year at home, preparing to go to a local college to take my A-Levels 12 months after my friends passed theirs and rewriting the script for the next stage of my life. I was also heartbroken, and I was going on a family holiday.

I don’t think I wrote a diary on that holiday, and I don’t think I’d want to read it now if I had, but I do think that trip to Corfu opened my eyes to the power and joy of travel. It took me out of my ordinary and into something breathtakingly different and I’m pretty sure I’ve taken a bit of that feeling with me on every flight since.

Now I write diaries on every trip. In fact, it wouldn’t be a stretch to say that most of my writing is done on journeys. Journals from all the trips I’ve taken since Corfu nestle together guarding their secrets well (and taking them to the grave because they have a special clause in my will) and I have marked every Monday morning train commute with a handwritten diary entry for the last few years.

“Journeys are the midwives of thought. Few places are more conducive to internal conversations than moving planes, ships or trains”.
Alain de Botton, The Art of Travel

Just a couple of years after that first flight, I jumped on aeroplanes by myself to Barcelona - to teach English to Catalan children for a summer - and I flew transatlantic for the first time to study in the US for a year. I look back on the journey (pun intended) that 18 year old me went on with awe. From the miserable, heartbroken teenager who climbed the steps of that Airtours flight to Corfu to a 21 year old who was grabbing the world with both hands, seeking (and finding) adventure and lifelong friends.

I’d love to go back to 1990 just to hug miserable, heartbroken me and tell her that walking up the steps to an aeroplane will soon fill her heart with joy every single time. I’d whisper in her ear that everything happens for a reason and reassure her that she will end up so happy that her life took the turn it did that summer. And I’d thank her for taking the time to write about her travels so that older me can dive back into those memories with every turn of a page.