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!
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