“Not Worth Going To See..” : A Guest Post By Tim Richards!

Today, dear readers, I invite you to enjoy a guest post by travel writer Tim Richards! It’s very different from the children’s writing I do, and needs vastly different skills.

Like, maybe, going on a whale watching tour and settling for seals when the whales don’t turn up? I have had this happen to me in New Zealand, except it was dolphins, and the whales did turn up, but only briefly, in the distance... I happily settled for the dolphins, which clowned and frolicked in the waters by the boat, but I don’t know if I could do this for a living. 

Tim lives with his writer wife Narrelle Harris in the Melbourne CBD. They go for walks regularly to favourite spots, and report on it on Twitter. Once a travel writer...

Enjoy the post, in which Tim gives us an idea of his preferred type of environment! It was first published on his website(see below)

Boswell: “Is not the Giant's Causeway worth seeing?”

Johnson: “Worth seeing, yes; but not worth going to see.”

I was thinking about Samuel Johnson’s world-class diss of the famous basalt formations off the coast of Northern Ireland one afternoon, as I sat in a Zodiac boat in the waters off Victoria, Canada.

I had plenty of time to mull it over, because it was a three-hour whale-watching tour in the waters off Vancouver Island in which we saw nothing.

Well, no whales. We saw seals. A lot of seals. Mind-boggling numbers of seals.

“Seals, glorious seals!” by Tim Richards

(Really, I never needed to see any seals again after that. And yet, like brewery tours, I’ve reached my limit but have still endured more.)

Off in the far distance, we spotted a US nuclear submarine making its way along the Pacific coast. But it was too far off to be really gripping. When we limped back into port, everyone crestfallen, the guide in charge of our vessel made a laboured job of listing all the things we did see (including seals!), and offering a freebie for anyone fool enough to submit themselves to this activity again.

You might think the absence of whales means Johnson’s pithy quote is not applicable; that there was nothing to mildly sneer at as “not worth going to see.” But to that, I give you: nature.

There, I’ve said it. I’m a fan of urban environments. Pop me down in a foreign city, point me vaguely in the direction of some interesting neighbourhoods, and I’m happy. I can spend any amount of time exploring built-up areas. 

To me cities are the greatest achievement of humanity. To overcome our natural instinct to cluster in small bands of people we know personally, to instead create vast conglomerates of districts and dwellings to the point that – in the larger cities – every possible shade of taste and community is represented in quantity – is near-miraculous.

When cities go wrong, of course (did anyone mention a virus?), they can be hellholes. But interesting, fascinating, colourful hellholes nonetheless. And they’re easy to reach – flights, after all, generally land at cities. One Uber ride later and you’re in the midst of it.

But nature is often far away, nature is unpredictable, nature is often uncomfortable. And hard to navigate on your own, barring the hiring of appropriate vehicles or mountain bikes or other specialised gear, or undertaking heroic hikes.

I get why people like that. I’ve visited national parks and found them beautiful. Even better, I’ve sat in the bar car of transcontinental trains – think Australia or Canada – and admired striking scenery bereft of humans, while sipping an excellent cocktail. (Trains to me count as urban attractions, because they’re basically long thin towns travelling through the countryside. The most civilised towns that exist, IMO. Go on, fight me.)

Bar Car of The Indian Pacific train. By Tim Richards

Getting to nature is hard work, and then sometimes it doesn’t show up to the party. I’ve sat in uncomfortable boats for three hours waiting for bears who preferred to be elsewhere, and bobbed around for three hours in a Zodiac not looking at whales. Why are these sessions always three hours, by the way, when two would be sufficient?

Other tours involve being driven for hours in a minibus for a fleeting encounter with nature. Many tourists spend many, many hours on a bus to see the Great Ocean Road from Melbourne in one day. Just no. It’s never worth spending that long on a bus. Buses are the devil’s transport, possibly even worse than planes. Yes, it’s to do with the tiny seat width and immobility, on both of them.

Give me a city any day, it’s like a puzzle I have to solve, a code I have to crack, a treasure box I have to prise open. Don’t get me wrong – the best parts of a city are not the obvious tourist traps; no matter how good the attraction, there’s nothing more soul-deadening than joining shuffling tourist crowds to see it.

When I first visited New York City I had a quick look around MoMA and a cruise past the Statue of Liberty – then I hit the streets of Bushwick, a long-time Hispanic neighbourhood east of cool Williamsburg that was gradually becoming gentrified, with incursions by hipster food and street art, but with the existing culture still standing strong. I loved seeing a ‘hood in transition, meeting locals, eating tacos at a factory where tortillas were manufactured.

Food place in Bushwick. By Tim Richards

Beyond hanging in neighbourhoods, meeting people is the highlight when I travel. I love making connections on the road, often meeting in real life people I know from social media. Getting together for a drink with locals (not seals) is what brings a place alive for me. Spending a day in the tourist-free St Roch district of Quebec City was brilliant like that, eating and wandering and chatting to locals, interviewing the guy who runs the fish shop (I mean poissonnerie) on the main street.

Another time I met a German man who was once the president of an ABBA fan club, at a specialist beer bar in Stockholm. While I interviewed him we drank beer, and for one round I ordered a Norwegian craft beer from the list on the big board above the bar. It wasn’t until we were both quite drunk, talking nonsense about ABBA too loudly for a Swedish audience, that I realised the beer was 10% alcohol. That was the best night, and the best interview. And the best memory. What there is of it.

So keep your whales (really seals) and your bears and your collection of interlocking basalt columns. If I happen to be passing, I’ll certainly take a look and admire them. Just don’t expect me to go out of my way.

Freelance travel writer Tim Richards has launched his own Patreon site, at which he writes regularly about travel-related topics. Tim promises to keep readers entertained with three posts per week featuring lively travel-related writing and images; patronage starts at US$3 per month and you can cancel anytime. Visit patreon.com/timrichards to sign up and read more of his travel writing, and in the meantime he hopes you have enjoyed the free sample!