Post 19/2024 Goshen Indiana USA. Travel can be worrisome, wearying, but worth it all. For the latter sentiment I quote Shakespeare in Antony and Cleopatra: “O sir! you had then left unseen a wonderful piece of work which not to have been blessed withal would have discredited your travel.”

In other words, don’t sell the benefits of travel short.

I’m still catching up with my body clock after arriving home this week from Cornwall UK. Travel to our hotel in London took more than twice as long than if we had been able to go by train. Planned industrial action (a train strike) took place on our day of travel. Alternate plan: coach. Steve graciously dropped us off at St Erth multimodal hub at about 8am and we arrived at our hotel at 10:30pm. Travel disruptions on the roads extended our time on the coach.

Marty and I got the last seats on the coach, but not side by side. That proved a silver lining. Marty had a nice chat with a soon-to-be flight attendant for British Air who had been in Cornwall to visit her boyfriend. I had a nice chat with a traveler from Texas who is and has visited ancient sites in Cornwall and elsewhere in England.

The flight home on Thursday went as planned. No hitches. Heathrow Airport was busy but manageable. Detroit Airport was quiet, almost empty, since we were the only international flight arriving at that time. We had a long wait for the flight to South Bend, again, as scheduled, and used that time to walk, eat and read. Gwen and Becky met us at South Bend and caught us up on some of local doings on the final leg home.

Rather than try to summarize anything of our almost three-month-long stay in the UK, I’m opting for some additional quotes on travel, selected from my trusty Third Edition volume, The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (1979, 1980).

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894): “To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive, and the true success is to labour.”

Stevenson, from a book I’ve enjoyed a lot, Travels with a Donkey, 1879: : “For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move.” If you want an adventure, go on an extended walk with a donkey. For me, the book was all I needed to wander along.

Laurence Sterne (1713-1768): “I pity the man who can travel from Dan to Beersheba, and cry, ’tis all barren.'” In the Street. The reference to Dan and Beersheba is found in I Samuel 3:20; the walking distance is 186 miles or 300 kilometers.

Jonathan Swift (1667-1745): I always love to begin a journey on Sundays, because I shall have the prayers of the church, to preserve all that travel by land, or by water.”

At the end of the Fellowship Walk last Sunday at St Agnes on the Atlantic coast, Rev Etienne led a prayer for God’s protection and guidance for safe and smooth travel. The prayer evoked the words of Psalm 121:8: “The Lord will keep your going out and your coming in from this time on and forevermore.” Leaving Carbis Bay, arriving home in Goshen is an enduring promise embracing both a physical and spiritual journey.

Finally, this quote from the Prayer Book 1662:

Travel well, whether on the road, around the block, or with a book.

-John