Time disappears as you move around, nothing really going on except for the exercise of travelling. Sat on a train that traverses the country, from bottom to top and back again. You aren’t really doing anything except for being stationary whilst an element of transport moves you around. It can be possible to read or catch up on work. Stare out of the window marvelling at the grey skies shrouding any kind of view, which veers from countryside to outskirts of towns, ugly regions designed cheaply and ineffectively. Blue covered seats, thick and padded, still retaining the stench of fag smoke, from a previous era. Compartments where you peered in, slid back the door and met you new companions. Time to watch the world streak by. To watch and engage with people too. On the train you get occasional moments of excitement as you pull into cities you have never visited, places resonating with history and stature. Glimpses caught of dramatic buildings, bridges over rivers, people waiting on the platform, eager to find a forward-facing seat, building up adrenalin as they prepare for the scramble onboard. Sometimes you might be keen to talk, a new neighbour arriving with their own history to tell. Other times the needs of work or your own for solitude mean that you will other passengers to take alternative seats, squashing together like equally smelly sardines in a tin. Driving takes your mind into an alternative state. One of concentration but extreme familiarity, manoeuvring a vehicle through windy roads and wide-open motorways. Talking to your partner, listening to the latest news, sport or music, whiling away the hours as you move from one place to another. Time lost. Although it is an opportunity for Zen like behaviour, turn everything off and let the mind wander and focus. Ideas or concepts floating around and seeping into the brain. A time to think, connect the rushing lines, plan the future whilst remembering the past. You should be able to reclaim those hours spent travelling. Static but in motion. Complete a claim form to send off to the ministry. I would love to be cycling rather than driving, being active, fit, healthy and alive. Still able to pontificate but out on the path, moving from city centre, urban sprawl, the sound of the suburbs, the air gradually lightening and freshening. You can breathe more deeply now. In through the nose, out of the mouth. Travelling with a purpose rather than just existing to get somewhere else. It does get you to where you need to be, meeting with family and friends, attending a conference, going on holiday. So much time spent travelling whilst on holiday. Moving from place to place. Just stay still and enjoy the moments. Have days where you exist in your locale. The covid pandemic provided this life, a time where you weren’t allowed to travel. You had to exist in your own space, which would be a nightmare except for the privileged who had the room to feel comfortable. Finishing a journey after driving for hours can feel mesmeric, as though time didn’t move. Time apparently lost but possibly invaluable. Exhaustion gradually taking over. Arriving home but without true knowledge of the journey that got you there. I should stop flying. The planet really needs us all to do this if we are serious about attempting to reverse climate change. But we aren’t. Not until it is slap bang in front of our face, peeling away, melting, burning, flooding, collapsing. Driving an electric car whilst it would be better just to stay in your own locale. A boring world where we don’t move around but the world survives, cools down, quietens itself and lets nature come back to life. Back to reality.
Bristol to Bath cycle track
