Road Trips

Before first travelling in North America in 2006 I do not recall the phrase 'road trip' so I have always associated it with that continent of vast panoramas and awe-inspiring distances, which big vehicles like this Ford Explorer - hired to take us from Edmonton Alberta to Seattle - simply ate up. I learned to love sitting in pampered comfort and stopping for the night to explore the small towns upon the way, places like Buffalo Run, MacBride, Penticton and Valemont; and breaking the journey to watch the wildlife, walk and picnic in the many parks, and....

....overcoming some of the challenges of the way, like the onset of winter conditions in the Cascades.

This sort of travel was a far cry from the 'road trips' of our youth when we stood by the roadside and hung out a thumb in the hope of a lift. In some ways that form of travel was more exciting - not least because it was so unpredictable - and it certainly meant that one learnt a great deal from the driver about the country through which one was hitching. It might also be considered the 'greenest' form of travel since all we were doing was occupying otherwise empty seats.

One of the pleasures of those North American road trips was that the roads were superb and, at the time of year when we travelled them, remarkably empty. Today, we live on a road, the A9, which is part of one of Britain's attempts to create a 'road trip'. The North Coast 500, so-called because it passes through 500 miles of the north of Scotland, is along cramped, crowded roads - some single-track - so the visitors are unpopular in the villages through which it passes. There is inadequate accommodation, the roads are potholed, and too many of the participants turn the route into a race-track: recently a visitor was caught by the police doing 110mph.

I greatly enjoyed my North American road trips but, very sadly, I cannot see me doing one again. At least I did them, and have the memories to savour through my later years.