Timeless Travels: An interview with... Simon Calder

What is your favourite book that you have written?

I can’t remember what I have written! They were really, really important at the time and then when they’re done, they’re done! You always have to keep moving forward and think what is happening next. What do you like to read when you travel? I read the travel trade gazette, rail news, other competitor travel sections. I pile them up and then when I have a trip I read them then, as travelling is a great time to read.

Do you have a favourite archaeological site?

Without a shadow of a doubt - two really. Lewis, close to Stornoway is one of the greatest and Orkney, the Ring of Brodgar. And more particularly the very exciting archaeological work that is being conducted on the other islands of Orkney, where they are realising that this place was so significant as a human community and there is probably more interesting study going on there than in the rest of Britain put together. I’m not an archaeologist but they are my favourite sites. You are known as the ‘man who pays his own way’.

Was there a reason, a situation that started this? Is there a reason why you stay an independent traveller?

I’d like to say that my art is much more important than squalid financial matters, but all that happened is that I was an engineer and I was doing bits of freelancing. The Independent started and I did some freelancing for them and they had a rigid Stalinist, no freebies, policy at the time, but it didn’t matter as I paid for stuff anyway and wouldn’t really know how to ask people for things. Then that policy changed in about 2000 when the travel section expanded to such a scale that you couldn’t possibly do it on a no freebies policy, and I thought I’ll just carry on in my own little eccentric way. And all that has happened since then is the cost of travelling has fallen, fallen and fallen thanks to the low-cost airlines.

Was it scary being on Mastermind?

Yes, quite scary, but it all depends - it was scary being on Aconcagua when you arrived at the top! It’s a funny thing, your brain does desert you and for a while I’d wake up in the middle of the night thinking ‘how on earth did I not remember that Manchester City played at the Etihad Stadium?’, which is ludicrous, but it has a profound effect.

I know that you hold the record for the longest hitch hike…

No, that is long gone now...

...Do any other hitch hiking journeys stand out in your mind?

Hitch hiking is such a benign thing to do. I think the world is safer than it has probably ever been, and it is largely the results of road accident rates falling in a lot of places. So hitch hiking is safer, and it is such a lovely way to connect with people you wouldn’t normally meet. It is utterly random. You have a self selecting bunch of very nice people, generally nice guys with nice cars with good stories to tell and you get chauffeur driven through wonderful places - what could be wrong with that? I still can’t find a downside to hitch hiking.

With all that is currently going on in the world, many places are becoming difficult to visit. Can you identify which are going to be the new places we are going to visit?

Oh, the new places will be the old places! Travel doesn’t change very much. I’m profoundly saddened by the way that the great destinations in North Africa and the Middle East are off limits, and indeed by the way that Russia has decided against tourism with its tougher visa rules, which is depressing. But people love going on holiday to Spain, to France, Italy and the US and those are the main places that people go on holiday. I’m not seeing any dramatic changes. I guess the most dramatic change we saw was probably in the last decade with strong moves to Turkey and Egypt, and they are now changing due to the political problems. But not much changes.

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