Lessons from travel around the UK & Europe

Since I have been small, I have always enjoyed travelling around the UK for day trips and holidays. Over the last decade, I have travelled to many countries in Europe and places in the UK, these experiences have given me many different ideas about who we are as humans.

I don’t remember the first time I flew but remember where I was going to the Scottish capital Edinburgh. I know that for some reason I believed flying was dangerous, but I fell in love with flying across land and sea. It started me having a year or two where I became obsessed with air travel, collecting planes, books, video/DVDs.

I first travelled aboard in late 2006, I went to Disneyland with my mum, brother, Alison and her son. Again my memory of that isn’t great, but what I do remember is Space Mountain, that made mum so ill she abandoned us with Alison and went back to the hotel.

But the other story I can recall is mum setting off the security alarm at Paris Charles de Gaulle. That whole experience was made more dramatic because the airline insisted on giving us support and not allowing me to board like other passengers like I had done heading out. Bundled into a lift it was odd.

I returned to France three years later with a youth club, this time we had got a ferry across from Portsmouth to St Malo. This was a ten hour overnight ride, I remember lying in my bunk bopping around for ten hours. That was one of my worst nights travelling.

I arrived in France on a Sunday morning in August was strange, I remember having breakfast in a supermarket car park. Nowhere was open all day, I would recall that in Norway three years later. I remember driving across rural France being something of ideas, flat fields no hedgerows or fences like you would see in England.

A place I have regularly travelled to in London, I tend to go at least once every five years. But the tube I love it but it can be a nightmare in a wheelchair, on the only overnight trip I was trying to get from Westminster back to Hanger Lane (I think).

This turned into a drama, we boarded one line then for some reason we had to stop somewhere and change to another line. But I remember not a lot about that trip. My next visit to the capital was during the poppy display at The Tower of London.

I remember it being so busy we walked away and returned in the evening, where we were able to see everything we wanted to. I think that was a great decision, and on our return, we managed to get everything in we wanted to see.

I travelled to Norway in February 2012, this was my first time on a winter break seeing real snow. I think we left Bath for Gatwick on the earliest possible GWR service to Reading then onto the Gatwick Express. As always, we were early.

I needed a break; college work I was struggling with and had to catch up. But that week in Trondheim I remember, it wasn’t cold you could feel unless the wind blew. I remember the landing over Trondheim Fjord being something of a roller-coaster as we landed.

On the Sunday of that week, we headed into the mountains, the first of two trips. Skiing turned into something you might see on a comedy show, I struggled even more with my balance, Alison could only ski backwards and naturally, it was a good laugh.

I also remember walking around part of a Fjord, my crutch sunk into a bank of snow and naturally, I fell over breaking the top of my stick of which then went into my back ripping my coat. I then had one crutch to get back to England.

A few weeks later, I was off on a day trip to Auschwitz, but that trip changed my life because I work hard to keep the Holocaust in memory. I remember standing at the end of train tracks, not like the photos which have recently started on Instagram, looking at the scale of it when it hit me how industrial the murder was.

My next lesson took me to Berlin little over a year later, I remember me, my brothers and sister all taking up the front row on the Bath-Bristol Air Decker. Berlin was a lovely modern European city, a million miles away from Auschwitz created by the Nazi’s from this city.

Berlin has played a massive part in the Holocaust, but that wasn’t the reason I travelled to the German capital. The few days began in rather odd circumstances, bundled in a car to another flat and the fear of being kidnapped by a strange man.

Food was rather cheap, we used the trams for free because we didn’t understand how to pay. I remember the food mostly hot dogs and pancakes mainly from the market. Obviously visited the Brandenburg Gate, The Bundestag, but it was outside the British Embassy were suspicion raised.

That was the end of foreign travel for a few years, my next trip was to Sunny Beach in Bulgaria. Before you think that, it was not a lads holiday, in fact, that is one thing I hope to do but I need to build real friends. I was surprised given my experiences at Auschwitz and in Berlin to find Nazi memorabilia being openly sold.

Throughout all my travels across Europe, I have learnt people want to help. Also, we Brits are quite lazy when it comes to learning other languages. But also, common sense has been very useful, most of the signage I have been able to figure out.

However, if I were to head to places like China, Japan or Korea I doubt that would be as effective. Places in the far east I think will be a massive culture shock, but these places from photos and TV look amazing. It’s a from what you see and read about.

We need another foreign adventure, but where? I would like to go to Asia, Canada and the US. But the place I want to see is Barbados because of a ‘family’ link, I dream of being on a Caribbean island with my husband one day seeing where I dream of seeing Speightstown.

Every time I have been away, it has taught me that it is not about the politics of the country or what you read. People want to, on the whole, be helpful, love their city or town, kind and most of all want you to have a good experience