"Never look back" wabat's Profile

Completed
Australia
-Adelaide
-Sydney
-South Africa
-St Helena
-Ascension Island
-United Kingdom
-Ireland

Anticipated

Watching the Moon

At six o'clock in the evening on July 23, 1914 the parishes of Fermanagh and Tyrone faded back into the mists and squalls of Ireland, and a strange light began to fall upon the map of Europe. With the onset of World War I the problems of Ireland paled into insignificance for the foreseeable future.

To this day, long after World War I and World War II, Fermanagh (and indeed Tyrone) remains in the mists and squalls of Ireland. It was thus always with great excitement when on the rare occasions the mist lifted long enough and my bedtime hadn’t passed that at a tender age I would go outside, stand by the dairy wall, and look across the valley at the moon - Sammy’s moon - as it came up from behind the distant hill.

Sammy used to come down from his moon once a year and visit us – bearing gifts of chocolates and bringing with him his wind-up gramophone and collection of 78s. I rarely saw, and even more rarely received, chocolates as a child and only the man in the moon had a gramophone which played, my then favorite tune, – Paddy McGinty’s Goat. I promised myself that some day I would visit Sammy, the man in the moon.

We didn’t just receive visitors from the moon. Two aunts of my father (my grand aunts) used to visit us every year too - aunties May and Mona… our very own Dame Hilda Bracket and Dr Evadne Hinge who came from, I know not where. I will always remember the stir it caused in the village when the village’s only taxi driver picked them up from the Enniskillen bus depot some 15km away, for without doubt his biggest fare of the year. Again they brought me chocolates but alas, no gramophone accompanied them. If I wanted to see a gramophone I needed to go the moon.

It transpired that my aunts came all the way from Bangor, County Down – just outside Belfast and some 130 kms away, much further away than to moon. The moon, of course, I could see from home. After I had been to the moon I would go to Bangor.

It came as a great shock to me one day when Father announced that we would be going to Bangor that summer. I was probably around 7 or 8 at the time and Father announced that the trip would be somewhat longer than the 130kms as we had to avoid Belfast - the infamous ‘Troubles” had started a year or two earlier.

Much preparation ensued – Father, who fancied himself as a mechanic, took the car apart and rebuilt it. It was off the road for weeks but he finally got it together again. The night before the big day Mother made sandwiches for the trip and packed the hamper. We were so excited. It took the whole of the next day to get to Bangor (preparations did not include getting a map!) though we finally got there. I felt sure that my upcoming trip to the moon would be a swifter affair – I would plan it myself.

My grand aunts, getting older, stopped coming to visit us so our trips to Bangor, to see them, increased and we got much better at it. Eventually the car just needed refueling and sandwiches were no longer required. We were getting good at this traveling thing. Trips were added including to the seaside at Portrush and we eventually became brave enough to visit Belfast. “International” trips to Bundoran, Co Donegal and Dublin followed. There was no stopping me now.

It was time to go overseas. Of course, living in Northern Ireland that included the British Isles. As luck would have it, out of nowhere appeared an aunt and uncle who lived in London. The big issue in those days was the cost of getting there – this was pre Ryanair and similar low cost carriers – so when we (my brother and I – naturally I wasn’t allowed to go alone) finally persuaded Mother to let us go it was boat and train. I was to become quite at home on the Dun Laoghaire to Holyhead to Euston, London route over the next 4-5 years as many schools holidays were spent in London (purely to see my dear beloved aunt, don’t you know? The trips into the city were just an aside, of course!). So began a custom – maintained to today - that I never pass through London without calling in.

My aunt lives close to Heathrow and one of my favourite activities in London was to visit Heathrow airport. I always headed for terminal 3. Those into political correctness avert your eyes now and go to the next paragraph . Terminal 3 – in those days – had a monopoly of flights coming in from all sorts of exotic places – I would sit there for days and hours on end ogling at black people, brown people, yellow people, people dressed in what looked like curtains, table clothes and all sorts of other things and wearing headdresses I had never seen the like of. Television hadn’t arrived in the Wabat family home at this stage so this was all very novel to me and very, very exciting. While I enjoyed visiting the other terminals too they didn’t hold the excitement of terminal 3. My visits to Heathrow over a period of 5-6 year were, I’m sure, what got me really interested in travel. I needed to fly but for now I had to be content looking at the planes on the ground or at the vapour trails as they crossed Northern Ireland en route the US.

While I don’t go to airports any more, especially Heathrow, for sightseeing purposes, wandering around airports remains a favourite thing. While I like airports and don’t mind flying my preferred method of travel is by train. No doubt, those who know the London Underground – the Tube – will think me mad when I say I developed my love for train travel through travelling on the Tube. There is no other subway system like the Tube – that can be taken any way you like!

Notwithstanding that we went sightseeing, etc alone in London I was still under the supervision of family .. any misbehavior would be reported back to Ireland. I needed some independent travel. Thus arrived time for a prelude to the Naughty Years.

While some adolescents run away from home to get away from family, my running away was done with the full intention of coming back and for what is now called a weekend city break though mine was a midweek experience. One day my brother and I were home alone. It was about 9am and we decided (with no planning or pre-thought at all) we needed a holiday – off course had VT been around we would have sought advice. Bags (including tent) were packed and a note prepared and left on the kitchen table. It read “Gone to Scotland – back soon”!

The plan was to hitch to Larne and take the boat to Stranraer. After that we had no plan – but that was tomorrow’s problem. As we left the house a quick revision was made to the plan - we took a bus to Enniskillen - didn’t want the neighbours catching us and bringing us home! How embarrassing would that have been? All went remarkably smoothly and we ended up in a camp site in Edinburgh before dark where guilt over took us and we rang home. It would be a major understatement to say that Mother was “displeased” and, off course, I being the eldest got the full blame. Apologies were proffered and serious grovelling ensued. A truce was negotiated and we were given 72hrs to get home – this was more than we had anticipated. Perhaps, after all, mother was secretly proud of our planning and organisational abilities and our courage and resourcefulness. However, I wasn’t going to test this theory, – we were home by the appointed hour.

The World Heritage List includes 962 properties (Dec 2012) forming part of the cultural and natural heritage which the World Heritage Committee considers as having outstanding universal value. I had never thought about visiting places just because they were UNESCO World Heritage listed until I recently bought a book of such sites. A long way to go yet to mark off all 962!

I have been to :-

Argentina
• Jesuit Missions of the Guaranis : Ruins of the Jesuit reduction San Ignacio Mini, Misiones Province
• Iguazu National Park
Australia
• Great Barrier Reef
• Kakadu National Park
• Tasmanian Wilderness
• Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park
• Wet Tropics of Queensland
• Fraser Island
• Greater Blue Mountains Area
• Royal Exhibition Building and Carlton Gardens
• Sydney Opera House
• Australian Convict Sites – Port Arthur, Tasmania
Austria
• Palace and Gardens of Schönbrunn
• Historic Centre of Vienna
Belize
• Belize Barrier Reef Reserve System
Bolivia (Plurinational State of)
• City of Potosí
• Historic City of Sucre
• Tiwanaku: Spiritual and Political Centre of the Tiwanaku Culture
Brazil
• Historic Town of Ouro Preto
• Historic Centre of the Town of Olinda
• Historic Centre of Salvador de Bahia
• Iguaçu National Park
• Central Amazon Conservation Complex
• Rio de Janeiro: Carioca Landscapes between the Mountain and the Sea
Cambodia
• Angkor
Chile
• Historic Quarter of the Seaport City of Valparaíso
China
• Imperial Palaces of the Ming and Qing Dynasties in Beijing – Forbidden City
• Mausoleum of the First Qin Emperor - Xian
• The Great Wall
• Ancient City of Ping Yao
• Classical Gardens of Suzhou
• Old Town of Lijiang
• Summer Palace, an Imperial Garden in Beijing
• Temple of Heaven: an Imperial Sacrificial Altar in Beijing
• Historic Centre of Macao
• South China Karst
Cyprus
• Paphos
Czech Republic
• Historic Centre of Prague
• Kutná Hora: Historical Town Centre with the Church of St Barbara and the Cathedral of Our Lady at Sedlec
France
• Palace and Park of Versailles
• Paris, Banks of the Seine
Germany
• Palaces and Parks of Potsdam and Berlin
Holy See
• Historic Centre of Rome, the Properties of the Holy See in that City Enjoying Extraterritorial Rights and San Paolo Fuori le Mura
• Vatican City
Hungary
• Budapest, including the Banks of the Danube, the Buda Castle Quarter and Andrássy Avenue
India
• Agra Fort
• Ajanta Caves
• Ellora Caves
• Taj Mahal
• Group of Monuments at Mahabalipuram
• Fatehpur Sikri
• Khajuraho Group of Monuments
• Elephanta Caves
• Humayun's Tomb, Delhi
• Qutb Minar and its Monuments, Delhi
• Mountain Railways of India - Nilgiri Mountain Railway,
• Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (formerly Victoria Terminus)
• Red Fort Complex
• The Jantar Mantar, Jaipur
Indonesia
• Borobudur Temple Compounds
• Prambanan Temple Compounds
Italy
• Historic Centre of Rome
• Piazza del Duomo, Pisa
Kiribati
• Phoenix Islands Protected Area

Malaysia
• Kinabalu Park
• Melaka and George Town, Historic Cities of the Straits of Malacca
Mexico
• Historic Centre of Mexico City and Xochimilco
• Historic Centre of Oaxaca and Archaeological Site of Monte Albán
• Pre-Hispanic City and National Park of Palenque
• Pre-Hispanic City of Teotihuacan
• Pre-Hispanic City of Chichen-Itza
• Pre-Hispanic Town of Uxmal
Netherlands
• Seventeenth-century canal ring area of Amsterdam inside the Singelgracht
New Zealand
• Te Wahipounamu – South West New Zealand
Paraguay
• Jesuit Missions of La Santísima Trinidad de Paraná and Jesús de Tavarangue
Peru
• City of Cuzco
• Historic Sanctuary of Machu Picchu
• Historic Centre of Lima
Romania
• Villages with Fortified Churches in Transylvania
• Historic Centre of Sighişoara
Russian Federation
• Historic Centre of Saint Petersburg and Related Groups of Monuments
• Kremlin and Red Square, Moscow
Thailand
• Historic City of Ayutthaya
Turkey
• Historic Areas of Istanbul
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
• Giant's Causeway and Causeway Coast
• Westminster Palace, Westminster Abbey and Saint Margaret's Church
• Tower of London
• Edinburgh
• Maritime Greenwich
• Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
United States of America
• Independence Hall
• Statue of Liberty
Uruguay
• Historic Quarter of the City of Colonia del Sacramento
Viet Nam
• Complex of Hué Monuments
• Ha Long Bay
• Hoi An Ancient Town
• My Son Sanctuary
• Central Sector of the Imperial Citadel of Thang Long - Hanoi

Train has always been my preferred way of travel. I'm told I can say that as I never had to rely on one for commuting.

I have been on some fantastic trains and some downright awful ones, ones that arrived on time and ones that didn't but never on one where I have got off and said never again. Train travel is not (with a few exceptions) a simple means of getting from A to B - it is part of the journey. Step onto a train, sit down and don't worry when you'll get there ... it doesn't matter.

Below are quite a few of the trips I have taken by train. I have not listed underground systems (which I love), local commuter trains ( which I care less for) and localised "puffing billy" type things that take you a few hundred metres along a pier and the like (these I avoid). International trips are listed under the country of origin.

Argentina
• Buenos Aires – Bahia Blanca
• Bahia Blanca – Viedma – San Carlos de Bariloche
Australia
• Adelaide – Alice Springs
• Cairns – Kurunda (both ways)
• Canberra – Sydney (both ways)
• Perth – Adelaide
• Sydney – Katoomba (both ways)
Austria
• Vienna – Bratislava
• Vienna – Budapest
Chile
• Calama – Uyuni (Bolivia)
China
• Beijing – Pingyao
• Guilin - Kunming
• Kunming – Dali
• Pingyao – Xian
• Shanghai – Suzhou (both ways)
• Yongshou – Guilin
Czech Republic
• Prague - Kutna Hora (both ways)
• Prague – Vienna
France
• Paris – Amsterdam
• Paris – Versailles (both ways)
Germany
• Berlin – Prague
• Frankfurt – Berlin
• Frankfurt – Hanover (both ways)
• Frankfurt – Heidelberg (both ways)
Hungary
• Budapest – Sighisoara
India
• Agra – Jaipur
• Chennai – Thanjavur
• Ernakulam –Coimbatore
• Jaipur - Bikaner
• Jaiselmer –Jodhpur
• Jalgaon - Satna
• Jodhpur – New Delhi
• Mahoba – Agra
• Mettupalaiyam – Udagamandalam (Ooty)
• Mumbai – Aurangabad
• Mysore – Bangalore
• Tiruchchirapalli – Madurai
Indonesia
• Jakarta – Bogor (both ways)
Ireland
• Dublin – Dun Laoghaire
Malaysia
• Khota Bharu - Gemas
• Kuala Lumpur - Singapore
Netherlands
• Amsterdam – Berlin
New Zealand
• Christchurch - Greymouth
Paraguay
• Asuncion – Ypacarai (steam no longer running)
Peru
• Cusco – Machu Pichu (both ways)
• Lima – Huancayo
• Ollantaytambo – Machu Pichu (both ways)
• Puno – Cusco
Romania
• Brazov - Bucharest
• Sighosoara – Brazov
Slovakia
• Bratislava - Vienna
Singapore
• Singapore – Kuala Lumpur
Thailand
• Bangkok – Kanchanaburi (both ways)
South Africa
• Johannesburg - Cape Town
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
• Belfast – Dublin (both way)
• Belfast – Londonderry (both ways)
• Coleraine – Portrush (both ways)
• Holyhead – London (both ways)
• London – Paris
• Oxford - London
Viet Nam
• Hanoi – Hue
• Hanoi – Lao Cai
• Hue – Da Nang
• Hue – Saigon (HCMC)