We called 2009 “our gap year” and we were determined to make up for the fact that when we left University, we never had the opportunity to take the travelling gap year which is fairly common these days.
During 2009, we spent just over half the year outside England. Paul visited all seven continents and Pat visited six (missing out Africa which was a diving visit).
We flew at least 58,000 miles (all distances calculated as great circle distances - the shortest and therefore not the actual):
| 5863 mi | ||
| 1070 mi | ||
| 1460 mi | ||
| Rio Gallegos | 228 mi | |
| Rio Gallegos | 1277 mi | |
| 1070 mi | ||
| 5863 mi | ||
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| 2404 mi | ||
| 2404 mi | ||
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| 1034 mi | ||
| 1034 mi | ||
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| 2543 mi | ||
| 2543 mi | ||
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| 6765 mi | ||
| 2074 mi | ||
| 1042 mi | ||
| 808 mi | ||
| 2074 mi | ||
| 6765 mi | ||
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| 1180 mi | ||
| 1180 mi | ||
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| 3677 mi | ||
| 3465 mi | ||
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| Total: |
| 57822 mi |
We also drove over 12,000 miles (mainly in Australia) and sailed about 4000 miles (Antarctica and the Red Sea) and we would be the first to admit that as a result, our carbon footprint was high.
We had an absolutely wonderful time; made lots of new friends, saw places and had experiences which we will always remember. When we muse over some of the things we did, we cannot really believe some of them and nor can our family and friends.
We originally started the blog just to enable friends and family to keep track of where we were and what we were doing. However, the number of hits on the blog exceeded 12,000 by the end of the year and when we added an automatic map to the blog showing where readers lived, we were astonished to see the wide geographical spread of readers and followers.
It was a wonderful year and we are very grateful for having had the good fortune and opportunity to take a year out.
We have some draft plans for travelling in 2010 – you can be sure that they will feature in this blog as and when they happen.
Pat and Paul Harvey
December 31st 2009
