Travelogger

We wander for distraction, but we travel for fulfillment.

Travellers: Peter Mayle

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When I want to do some seriously relaxing armchair travelling I turn to Peter Mayle, who has written some of the best books on what life is really like in the Provence region of France, as well as its wonderful food and drink!

Born in 1939 in Brighton, England, Mayle spent 15 years of his career in the cut-throat world of advertising before becoming a writer in the mid-seventies. He started off writing educational books for children on useful topics such as sex education.

In 1989 his most famous book, “A Year In Provence” detailing his life in Provence was published and became an international bestseller. More books followed, as well as contributions to numerous magazines and newspapers around the world.

According to sources, Mr.Mayle and his wife left the home in Provence he so aptly described in “A Year..” to return to the New York rat race. However, after 4 years, he and his wife Jennie have since returned to Provence, where they keep their location a secret.

Most recently, Mr.Mayle’s work has gotten the attention of Hollywood, where a film staring Russel Crowe and directed by Ridley Scott was created, apparently based on Mayle’s work – about a British expatriate who settles in the village of Monerbes.

Travellers: David Livingstones

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Born in 1813, David Livingstone was a Scottish explorer and missionary and doctor who walked across Africa from coast to coast before there were any roads, bridges, hospitals or shops. He survived fevers and infections, attacks by wild animals and Muslim slave traders.

Livingstone was the first person to bring medicine and Christian gospels to many remote regions of Central Africa. His travels covered one-third of the continent, from the Cape to near the Equator, and from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean.

Livingstone was raised in poverty; the family of nine lived in a single room in a Lanarkshire cotton mill tenement. In 1838 he went to London to offer his services as a medical missionary to the London Missionary Society (LMS), which he chose because of its nonsectarian character. Livingstone was a devote evangelical Christian; his own conversion came when he realized that faith and science were compatible.

In 1840 he received his medical license, was ordained, and set sail for Cape Town. His first assignment was in Bachuanaland (now Botswana), where he was to found a mission station north of Moffat’s. Here he began what was to become his standard practice. He traveled into the interior and stayed with the local people until he learned their languages, preaching and studying the botany and natural history of the area. In 1844 he was badly mauled by a lion, so that he was forced afterward to fire his rifle from his left shoulder.

Livingstone embarked on a series of long explorations that were unprecedented at the time and that would take up the rest of his life. His determination was clear: “I shall open up a path into the interior or perish,” he said. Livingstone was convinced that Christianity, commerce, and civilization would deliver Africa from slavery and barbarism. In 1856 he returned to England and was awarded by Queen Victoria as a a national hero, but died in Zambia in 1873 where his heart is buried under a tree near Chitambo’s village.

Travellers: Sir Edmund Hillary

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“My God! We’ve climbed the thing! We’ve done it!” ~ Edmund Hillary

Between 1920 and 1952, seven major expeditions had failed to reach the summit of Mount Everest. In 1924, the famous mountaineer George Leigh-Mallory had perished in the attempt. In 1952, a team of Swiss climbers had been forced to turn back after reaching the south peak, only 1000 feet from the summit.

Edmund Hillary joined in Everest reconnaissance expeditions in 1951 and again in 1952. These exploits brought Hillary to the attention of Sir John Hunt, leader of an expedition sponsored by the Joint Himalayan Committee of the Alpine Club of Great Britain and the Royal Geographic Society to make the assault on Everest in 1953.

The expedition reached the South Peak on May, but all but two of the climbers who had come this far were forced to turn back by exhaustion at the high altitude. At last, Hillary and Tenzing Norgay, a native Nepalese climber who had participated in five previous Everest trips, were the only members of the party able to make the final assault on the summit.

At 11:30 on the morning of May 29, 1953, Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay reached the summit, 29,028 feet above sea level, the highest spot on earth. Edmund Hillary returned to Britain with the other climbers and was knighted by the Queen.

Now world famous, Sir Edmund Hillary turned to Antarctic exploration and led the New Zealand section of the Trans-Antarctic expedition from 1955 to 1958. In 1958 he participated in the first mechanized expedition to the South Pole.

Hillary went on to organize further mountain-climbing expeditions but, as the years passed, he became more and more concerned with the welfare of the Nepalese people. In the 1960s, he returned to Nepal, to aid in the development of the society, building clinics, hospitals and 17 schools.

Hillary was born in 1919 and grew up in Auckland, New Zealand. It was in New Zealand that he became interested in mountain climbing. Although he made his living as a beekeeper, he climbed mountains in New Zealand, then in the Alps, and finally in the Himalayas, where he made his mark in history.

Travellers: Ferdinand Magellan

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Ferdinand Magellan, (1480?-1521) the Portuguese-born Spanish explorer and navigator, leader of the first expedition to circumnavigate, or sail completely around the world. He was born in northern Portugal and is perhaps the most famous explorer of all tim, proving that the world was indeed, round.
Portuguese sea captain Ferdinand Magellan and his crew were the first Europeans to sail around the world, proving that the world was round. From 1519 to 1521 Magellan, with five ships and a Spanish crew of about 250 men, searched for a western route to the Moluccas, or Spice Islands. He was killed on April 27, 1521 when he interfered in a dispute between indigenous people in the Philippines.

Only two of his ships continued to the Spice Islands. The two ships then made separate return voyages, and only one, commanded by Juan Sebastian del Cano, completed the trip back to Spain.

Magellan set out to reach the East Indies by sailing westward from Europe, which no one was sure could be done. He intended to return by the same route, but after his death his crews found that the prevailing winds required them to keep sailing west, around the world.