The Epic Journey of 1973;, part one

The Epic Journey of 1973;
 a very personal journey.
Part one
from Portsmouth to Instanbul

First I need to apologise for the very poor quality of these photos, they have been collecting dust since 1973 and in 1973, much as I already loved my camera, I wasn’t particularly good at photography. I’ve scanned them but at the moment I don’t even have photoshop, so like I said, my apologies for the state of the photos.

The story starts early in the year, about January time, I was already living in Portsmouth, by the sea, a couple of hundred miles from my parents. One cold day in January, I took myself away on the train to visit my parents. I had a very old fur coat, something I wouldn’t be seen dead in now but at the time I loved it, I lived in it. It was one of my favourite possessions, I found it lying in a second hand shop, picked it up, put it on and hence forth, was rarely seen without it! It took me a bus, then a train, then the underground train through London, then another train and then another bus before I reached my parents house. That left a lot of time for thinking and I found myself thinking about the pleasures of a travelling. I always planned to travel and by the time I returned home to my little flat in Portsmouth, my epic journey was virtually mapped out in my head. In 1973 things seemed so much easier and a lot less complicated than they are now, I asked a couple of friends if they wanted to travel, I took a couple of jobs waitressing to earn extra cash, I lived of beans on toast and soup for a few months and scraped enough money together to………well to just go.

My very best friend came to see me in Portsmouth before I left and we arranged to travel some of the way together. Her name was (is) Sarah but I always called her Sally, I can’t remember the last time I saw her, probably 30 years ago. This is a photograph of Sally and I sitting on the wall outside my flat in Portsmouth, she is the one in the foreground, on the left. It was taken on Saturday 10/03/73, If this lady happens to be your friend, your sister, your wife, your mother or even your granny, please point this out to her because I have no idea where she is now.
We sailed from Portsmouth on the ferry on 25/05/73 and arrived at la Havre the following day. We met some French students and spent the first night away from home in rooms, on the top floor of the Halls of Residence of a French University. We watched a magnificent thunderstorm. I can’t even remember which university it was.

We travelled South through France and stopped for a couple of days at a very dilapidated French farm house, it was a wonderful place, no facilities and surrounded by unadulterated nature at its best. It was somewhere near to Lyon I think. This is me with one of my travelling companions

Our journey took us through Orleans, Toulouse and Grenoble and then on to Switzerland. I remember sitting and watching the huge fountain on Lake Genève, I had never seen any thing like it, I must have sat for an hour or so mesmerised by it and then later I remember walking along the rivers edge and watching eagles swoop down into the water from the trees far above. This is a photo of me sitting on the grass in Genève.

From Genève we headed south toward Italy, we decided to travel through the Mont Blanc Tunnel, no one warned me it would be so cold, I think I arrived in sandals and almost got frost bite in my toes. First opportunity I had I changed into coat and winter wear. This is a picture of me at the entrance of the tunnel; I think it’s the Italian side.


I last saw Sally in France, at the farmhouse and I had arranged to meet her in Florence so I was quite anxious to get there. We travelled down through Turin, Genoa and then on to Florence.

This is a picture of me meeting Sally in Florence, and the other two are pictures of me in Florence. We arranged to meet on the Ponte Vecchio after which we wandered around drinking in the sights and smells and pleasures of Florence.


I spent a while soaking up the sights of Florence before heading off toward Brindisi where we boarded another ferry to Corfu.
 And there we were in Greece. We didn’t do the normal tourist thing, instead of heading south to Rome or Athens, we headed north. That was a fascinating journey, if I hadn’t been so young and stupid I would have been terrified. We travelled in a lorry driven by a kind but reckless local man. He drove his lorry along tiny winding roads that spiralled around mountains, teetered around corners, struggled with the climb and swung out perilously close to the edge; close to the edge of a road which dropped away into a great endless abyss. There were shrines all along that mountain road and every so often you could peer down the mountain and see cars that didn’t quite make the last corner. These photos are from that journey. They don’t even come close to showing what a perilous journey it was.


Once we reached the north of Greece the road and the terrain settled down. We passed Thessalonica and got a lift from a very kind family who were travelling in a camper van. The couple had decided to sell up and take the kids around Europe, so they sold their house, bought a camper van, packed the bare essentials, packed the kids and set off. We spent a week on a Greek Island with them, Thasos I believe, but there was no tourism there at the time, just miles of golden sand, crystal clear water permanently heated to the temperature of a warm bath and shoals of little fishes that darted every where as you waded in. By eleven in the morning it was too hot and you needed to nap under a tree or get burnt in the sun. There were no facilities on that expanse of beach, these people just parked up and camped. What a great week that was.



When we left them we headed east toward Istanbul, Gateway to the East. Crossing that bridge for the first time was one of the most memorable moments of my live. It truly was like a giant crossroads between one world and another. That bridge is where East meets West, it has nothing to do with political boundaries, Turkey started a while before we reached the bridge and the subtle changes began before we had left Greece, but the real change, the boundary between east and west, happen on that bridge. I loved Istanbul, it was exotic and exciting. I’ve never been back there but one day I will.

Tommorow, part two,
from Istanbul to Kandahar

I don't usually do this but;
 due to the personl nature of this blog,
consider all of it covered by copywright,
THIS IS MINE