December 04, 2002
A Compass Rose
59° North: StockholmOn our first arrival to Sweden, August 31st 2000, my wife and I drove in our hire-car, somewhat unsure of the way, a short distance north of Stockholm’s Arlanda airport, when we had meant to head south.
In August ’74 I went with my family on a Mediterranean cruise – this the only time I travelled outside the UK as a child. My father had suffered several broken bones after a workplace fall, and the compensation for these injuries funded our trip, at whose easternmost extreme lay Istanbul.
The third time I went to Newfoundland, at the end of June ’99, I travelled out alone, a week or so after my love, who had some business to conclude there. It turned out that I travelled the return leg to London alone as well, after her mother fell ill during the Canada Day festivities. This particular journey went via Halifax, and my two-hour stopover there remains my one & only time on the North-American mainland.
See East above. The SS Oriana passed twice through the Straits of Gibraltar during our cruise, which occasions I take to mark the southermost extreme of my travels. I glimpsed the rock of Gibraltar again last year: on clear days one could catch a distant sight of it from vantage points near the hillside villa where we stayed.
Such is the compass rose which, whilst it does not enfold the world within its petals, nevertheless encompasses a continent, an ocean, and my life.
Compass Roses from Portuguese nautical charts taken from this site.
Posted by misteraitch at December 4, 2002 08:29 AM