That Summer: our series of escapes to long ago and far away
Joy and anger, triumph and disaster, passion and tears: a typical day on the travel desk of The Independent, perhaps, but also the range of emotions that travelling generates.
In the now-distant summer of 1994, the-then Weekend Editor, Stephen Wood, conceived a series called simply, That Summer. It became a collection of voyages of discovery for the soul.
Memories are distorted by time and distance, and prone to fading. But I bet you have taken at least one journey where your mental snapshots and soundbites remain strangely vivid even many summers later.
Each of us has experienced a holiday more intense, probably more daunting than all the others: when you first tasted freedom, when you discovered a passion for travel and quite possibly a fellow traveller, when the world changed your world for good.
“The past is a foreign country,” wrote LP Hartley in The Go-Between. “They do things differently there.”
At a time when travellers find themselves in the most reduced of circumstances, make your escape to long ago and far away.
Read the first pieces of the series here.
That Summer: Falling in love under the blue Madonna in Sicily in 1987
That Summer: Braving the borders of a new Siberia in 1995
