The roots of this post go back a long way. It's a few years since I discovered the fun one can have with the little figure on Google Maps. Drag it and drop it and it will take you just about anywhere, from the streets of Paris to the Pacific Coast of of America. For a while, until the novelty wore off, I found myself taking random trips all over the globe every time I turned on the laptop. What struck me was that it instilled in me not a desire to travel but a realisation that most places, wherever they are, are very much alike. A residential street in Portland, Oregon looked very like... residential streets I knew in the UK. OK, the mailboxes were different and there were more wooden houses but otherwise the similarities outweighed the differences. It is the case that -with or without the pandemic- I'm not in a position to visit other parts of the world at the moment. Nevertheless, even if I were, I don't think I'd have much of an urge to.
This year, like most people's, my world has shrunk. I can't travel to the Lake District, to Wales, or to the South Coast. I could resort to Google Maps but there's no need: I have an imagination installed on the hard drive in my head that works just as well if not better. It can take me anywhere. After all, even when you travel in the real world, the world you experience when you reach your destination only exists in your head!
If I close my eyes, I can take a wander round the harbour at Borth y Gest in Wales, sit in Virginia Woolf's garden in Rodmell, or swim in Conison Water - all things I've done in recent years. I still like the thought of going places and will go again but, much as they say your other senses tend to become more acute when you lose one, it seems to me that an inability to travel intensifies the imagination.
I usually have no trouble going to sleep. However, if I do, I've taken to going on imaginary camping trips. In the dark you might be anywhere. Instead of lying in bed at home I might just as easily be laid in my sleeping bag, wild camping on the flanks of Snowdon or somewhere on the Northumbrian coast. It has advantages over the real thing, too: you don't have to fill up with petrol, you don't have to imagine the cold and the ground can be as hard and soft as you like.
One of the places I hoped to visit in 2020. It'll still be there next year!
I love traveling the world with the little man on Google Maps. Like you, when I first discovered it I went somewhere different everyday. I doubt I will ever actually go to other countries but with Google I have visited well known and little known places across the globe. Then I discovered something else it could do. It could take me to my past. Growing up we moved every two or three years so I never had a steady home. But I could visit all the previous places I had lived. Most importantly I could visit my Grandmother's house which was the closest thing to a steady home I ever knew. Her home has been gone for years now but I still go to that spot on Google.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed the video. It is very relaxing.
Thanks for that. I've paid virtual visits to the place I grew up, in Lincolnshire. That did inspire me to go back there, when I got the chance.
DeleteIt is such a work of art that video. I travel on my new tablet. Mostly up to Shetland and Orkney, there are a host of people to take me there - sadly. For slowly the world unfolds and gets smaller and the grind of commercialism comes in.
ReplyDeleteIf I want to get away from commercialism up here, I head to Swaledale. Yes, there's the grouse moors and a bit of tourist industry (but not a lot). But it's so steep-sided and difficult to travel round it's hard to exploit otherwise - which makes it a great place to wander round.
DeleteI often go off nn a ramble if I can't get to sleep but I rarely, if ever, get to my destination.
ReplyDeleteIt is better to journey than to arrive.
ReplyDeleteI just wish that little Google man could stray away from the roads and take to the footpaths across the fields, mountains and beaches. I wonder what's going to happen when we're free to travel again; will we all catch planes to foreign parts, explore other parts of this country, or will we all be "institutionalised" like released prisoners and fear to venture where there are crowds?
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