To all those that like to travel vicariously with Bridget and myself I apologise for the above heading, but it is unavoidable. The might of the united Russian Armed Forces, spreading terror and oppression, have caused such restrictions on free travel as to precipitate the cancelling of our tour. A minor inconvenience compared to the problems and suffering Putins’ war is raining down on the people of Ukraine.
To fully understand my reasons for cancelling the tour you really need to understand my motivation for travelling in the first place. In a word, Freedom. It is the capacity to be able to decide for myself in which direction I am going to travel, when I decide to travel, and in whatever manner I decide to travel. Not to have any person, or organisation, coercing me to go somewhere I have no wish to go, or preventing me from going where I desire. It is these parameters that provoked me on my first tour around the World and to a lesser extent on the African tour. It is the reason for not, generally, wanting to travel with other people, because their mere presence demends attention to their choices.
I had already made some choices of locations that I was to visit, as some mention has been made in previous posts. They included Balaclava in the Crimea, the Gobi desert in Mongolia and Vladavostok, in the far east of Russia.
As Bridget has been prepared for a decent run and I am mentally atuned to the idea, I shall still depart my home town in June and spend three months running around the backyard (Europe). There are still a number of un-explored countries there for us and I will record the experiences here at some stage.
Although I am not delivering on the world tour, I would still, perhaps for even greater reason, urge everyone that can afford to do so, to donate whatever you can to my Save the Children appeal. It is an excellent cause and the need for their services has been exacerbated by Putins’ war, with a reported 2.5 million children displaced and in need of help. The Just Giving page in the sidebar will accept any currency. Thank You.