Travel Ideas

If you want to commune with the elements and not see a scrap of concrete, plastic or empty coke bottles for a 1000 miles, where do you go?

The good news is that despite the factories churning out carbon dioxide, the proliferation of radioactive nuclear plants and the third world populations succumbing to the disease of consumerism, the world is still a big place, full of enormous tracts of land and sea where next to no one lives. It’s just up to you to get out there and see if the midges drive you home on day one.

Naturally, if you want to head out into the great open then you’d better be prepared. Make sure you have enough supplies – good bedding, plenty of food, water, a medical kit, maps and maybe even a cell phone in case of emergencies – but leave it turned off, isn’t that why you’re leaving civilisation behind?

So where to go?

Apparently, the entire world’s population could all be squeezed onto the Isle of Wight, a little island just off the UK mainland which can be driven across in about 20 minutes. It would be laughable except that humans really do tend to live together in incredibly dense populations – take Bombay, for example, where a million people can be found in a square mile in some neighbourhoods.

So striking out into nature needn’t be that hard though in smaller countries the tarmacked roads seem to have gotten everywhere and humans have done their best to leave their mark behind whenever possible. The secret would seem to be to go places where no one else has any interest in going or which is simply too vast and seemingly inhospitable to attract the picnic crowd.

Check out a few suggestions on the menu to the left and then go live the spirit of Henry Thoreau who couldn’t imagine a nobler life than to leave the pollution of society behind.

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