Solo Travel – my first adventure, aged 5

I guess my passion for travel was started at a very early age – and I cannot offer thanks to anyone for helping me with my first solo voyage. Apologies in fact, may be more appropriate, to my parents for worrying them beyond despair, and to the Nottinghamshire Police Constabulary for wasting their time.

(For this journey I did not think to take a camera and pictures, such is the lack of planning when travelling at such a tender age. So here is an image I found that closely resembles my chosen mode of transport; environmentally friendly it certainly was!)

I did give fair warning of my intended plans, in my defence. The trouble was that no-one took any notice of a little boy who said he was going to visit his aunt, 12 miles away and across one of Britain’s biggest cities. I set off, and having been a child who observed my father’s driving very closely from an early age, there was never any question of me getting lost.

I do remember after a mile or so, realising how far from home I was and all alone, I sat down and started to cry. But then after 10 minutes or so, when I had got my fear out of my system, I pushed on, across busy roads, roundabouts, dual carriageways, onwards to my destination: my cake-baking aunt, who would surely have passed out in shock to see me on her doorstep.

Meanwhile my parents had noticed me missing, and had searched around the neighbourhood. When a visit to all the friends’ houses yielded nothing, they had no option but to call the police, who then extended the search to my school friends and the surrounding areas. It was only after an hour and a half that my elder brother mentioned that I had said something about to my aunt’s. Thinking it ridiculous but deciding it was worth checking anyway, my parents set off in the car to track the route.

And so I was intercepted, around 10 miles from home and very near to my destination. Unaware of the panic I had caused, my first words to my parents (“but I was nearly there”) and my look of disappointment stayed with them and I was often reminded of it as I grew up. As for me, I guess it set the tone for my later years. The scooter is now long gone, but the drive to get up without warning and head off into the unknown is as strong as ever. Thankfully I have a wife who shares that passion, and so she never needs to report me missing to the police!

(Oct 1974)