Far from shrinking the world, the aeroplane allows the modern traveller to appreciate just how big and diverse planet Earth really is.

To get around the world, see all the continents, and poke your nose into the emerging nations, needs a lot of time, and plenty of malaria tablets. Money helps, but more importantly, it takes persistence, and a deep desire to delve into different domains.

Travel has to have departures and arrivals, and often returns. There are plenty of tried and tested A to B gimmicks and novel ideas, each a movement on the surface. If the world is taken as a fruit, then it is perhaps best appreciated by peeling back the skin, and tasting it in segments.

The luckless Monsieur Passepartout was forced to rush around the world, with his master, in only eighty days. No sooner had they landed in Bombay, than they were boarding a train to Calcutta. Hitch-hiking can seem a little like that at times; as you get out of one car, and hardly move from the put-down spot before you stick out your thumb and try again.

For youngsters fresh from further education, or tentatively testing the temperature of full-time employment, money is often tight. From the vantage point of an island in the North Sea, Europe has so much to offer. Once the boat passage has been paid for, travel on the continent is free; all you need is a little courage, and a lot of patience.

The free spirit, not always alone, thrives in the knowledge that the decision to go and do is made against all the equations of normality. Many may regard this as madness, if they lack the courage to stick out a thumb and escape the restricting shackles of society's sentiment, before it is too late. Then it's time to read about those who did and utter all combinations of if onlys and but; yet if you let the spirit be free..... it is never too late!

If a bus is missed, another is sure to come along, or else there is the train, a mule, or even one's sturdy feet. To take the chance and not expect too much, is the spirit of freedom, and as Hans Christian Anderson was quoted:

"To Travel is to Live...."