Footloose Scot Read Free Page B

in Naples, I opened a pizza restaurant in Oxford which turned out to be very popular.Thirty years later, mindful of my experience in Naples, I opened a pizza restaurant in Oxford which turned out to be very popular.
    Heading north up the Mediterranean coast of Italy towards Florence I stopped in Piombino and took a short ferry ride to Elba, where Napoleon was exiled in 1814. I like small islands; they give a nice feeling of separateness. On Elba I planned to visit the villa, now a museum, where Napoleon spent 300 days. I had a fanciful plan to remain in the museum after closing and sleep in his bed. But it was out of season and I was all too visible among a handful of visitors. The guardian ushered us all out at closing time. I wandered on and found a cafe in a seafront village, and ate a bowl of pasta. The question now was: where to sleep?
    Leaving the village I noticed a dirt road leading to a farmhouse, now showing lights as it grew dark. More promisingly, on one side of this track was a pile of loose hay, thrown down from a haystack adjacent and meant for the next day's meal for the farmer's cow. Delighted, I burrowed under the hay so I was completely covered, except for an air passage. I prepared for a sound and safe sleep.
    I had hardly nodded off when I heard voice approaching, a man and a woman. Then they stopped, right next to the pile of hay. Next, a large weight landed on top of me, waking me from my half sleep. I pushed upwards against some smooth material covering a flabby mass. From above I heard a shriek, and saw the terrified face of a woman and realized I had grabbed a buttock. She scrambled off the hay pile, and I stood up. Two shocked faces, a young man standing behind the now upright woman, told me I had interrupted something private and spoiled their tryst. They didn't say anything, I didn't say anything. They moved off down the lane. I settled back into the hay but it was a long time until I fell asleep.
    After five months of travel around nine countries, I'd had enough. The novelty had worn off, and each day no longer seemed special. I'd enjoyed the sights and sounds, the art treasures, the different foods and the changing countryside. Getting a ride seemed to take longer now. Previously I had loved the carefree, vagabond type of travel. Now my funds were depleted, and I was getting tired of the constant economy. I was likewise getting bored of hostellers boasting how little they had spent, and how far they could travel without regard to sights unseen and meals uneaten.
    I turned tracks towards England, and enjoyed the novelty of spending a night in a French country jail—at my own request. It was getting dark and the weather was cold and wet. I was in a small town near Amiens in northern France which had no hostel. I thought to ask the local gendarmerie if I could spend the night in an empty cell. The elderly gendarme on duty though nothing of it, and tossed an extra blanket onto the bunk. "Mais pas de petit dejeuner," ("No breakfast here,") he warned me with a wink.I was mightily pleased as well as grateful, and somewhat surprised. And I had saved an overnight hostel fee. This was an unexpected gesture in an unlikely place and a good note on which to end my first foreign travel adventure.
    Little did I know as I hitch-hiked and youth hostelled around Europe that international tourism was about to explode. Pre World War II, Americans going to Europe or Brits visiting Africa tended to be well-heeled travelers, some scholarly and literary, others simply adventurous. The explorer Wilfrid Thesiger
(Saudi Arabia's Empty Quarter
1933), writer Freya Stark
(Baghdad Sketches
1930) and adventurer Peter Fleming
(China1937)
are examples. Many of them took notes and left a record. Paul Fussell's
British Travel Writers between the Wars
details some of the British travel writers.
    Once Europe had rebuilt, and increased wages allowed for foreign travel, it was simply a matter of waiting for the tourism and