NCN 1 Dover to the Shetland Isles
Daniel Defoe on writing a Travelogue
‘write whatever is curious and with observation.’
Preface to the Tour of Great Britain
I am of the generation that has grown up with cheap travel to all corners of the globe. For us, there have been no cold summer holidays on the wet beaches of Scarborough or other such seaside resorts - our holidays have been filled with souvlaki, kebabs, curries and paellas. We don’t do England. We are enticed by adverts in magazines, newspapers, social media and giant posters in cities to dream of ‘abroad’, with those impossibly blue skies and sun-kissed beaches. For the last few decades, flights out of Great Britain have been cheap and plentiful. Then the COVID-19 pandemic shut the door to the world, flights were grounded and the government banned all foreign travel. Suddenly we were confronted by our own country and we found it a “strangely alien place”. (AA Gill).
Defoe refers to Great Britain as the “most flourishing and opulent country in the world”. Three hundred years later, Great Britain has peaked as a world power, and since the end of the Second World War, it has been in slow decline. It remains to be seen just how much further Brexit takes the decline, if indeed it does. What is still as true today as it was in Defoe’s time, is that the country is filled with “a flowering variety of materials; all the particulars are fruitful of instructing and diverting objects”.
I set out to compare and contrast Great Britain today with how Defoe saw in 300 years ago. In some cases, very little had changed, in others as you might expect, the changes were enormous. As a travelling companion, Defoe was brilliant; funny, always curious, and full of opinions.
These rides were begun during the Covid-19 pandemic, when it was permitted to travel within the UK. There were times when I had to return home, as the pandemic began to take a fearsome hold on the country again, but as the project developed other challenges appeared - notably the shortage of hotel accommodation and full campsites.
Neither Defoe nor I made one continuous journey. He made 13 separate ‘circuits’ as he called them (although they were rarely actually circular), over a three year period. I too, intend taking three years and making several journeys, and like Defoe, my trips are not circular.
To read more about Daniel Defoe, click here
To go to the start of the journey, click here