By Heather Clements
I love to travel - I love the sights and sounds of a new destination - I love the smells of a different culture and watching nature at its best. I don't care where I go - as long as I am planning a trip to somewhere I am happy! It is what keeps me focused, makes me do my treatments and go to the gym and keeps me well - the thought of going away on my next adventure.
I love to travel so much I have even managed to get it into my job and having been a Head of Geography and a geography teacher for 10 years, I moved role to be in charge of Travel and Tourism. I get to talk about holidays even when I am not on one!
I only began travelling in 1999, when I started going out with my current partner. I had always thought I wasn't well enough to travel any distance and had only been to Paris and Amsterdam for long weekends. I hadn't travelled much as a child as my parents couldn't afford expensive holidays (there were 5 of us - my parents and my two siblings) and we had spent a week away in a caravan in Yorkshire or Hampshire. I didn't like those holidays at the time - largely as we were all shut in together in a small space - although I do have fond memories of a camping trip to the Black Forest in Germany when I was 8 despite the huge moths in the toilet blocks!
It was only really at the end of my first year of teaching that I began to think about seeing the world. My first big trip was to San Francisco. We went for a fortnight, which was as well as the jet-lag nearly killed me for the first week! We stayed in the Queen Anne Hotel - a lovely old quaint place with friendly staff and afternoon tea served at 4pm! We visited Alcatraz and went on a visit to Yosemite National Park in a tiny plane and took a tour of the Wine Country. After 2 weeks of sightseeing and taking in the culture I was hooked - I wanted to travel some more!
In the following years we visited Washington DC - where I nearly got admitted to hospital after going hypo in Arlington Cemetery - New York a month before 9/11 then
Toronto and Niagara Falls. We decided following 9/11 not to fly in 2002 and took a cruise of the Norwegian Fjords - it was fantastic waking up in a different port each day - real ‘no-effort' travelling.
By 2003 we decided we wanted to do something silly - and took off for 3 weeks in New Zealand - we saw volcanoes and glaciers, geysers and thermal pools. We watched cultural shows in the Maori village, took the Trans-Alpine Express over the Southern Alps and ate dinner in the revolving restaurant at the top of the Sky Tower. If I ever leave Britain it will be to live in New Zealand - I love the place!
Rather tired of air travel in the following year we went on a Baltic Capitals cruise - same ship as we had been to Norway on, in a balcony suite - to visit St Petersburg, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Oslo, Gdansk and traverse the Kiel Canal. After a bomb scare in Stockholm we were stuck on the ship but liked the little we had seen so we returned in 2008 for a city break. I took my first hot-air balloon ride while we were there - it was awesome!
In 2005 I realised one of my dreams and visited Iceland - I stood on Haeimaey and it was still warm from the eruption 20 years ago! Bathing in the Blue Lagoon is still one of my happiest memories.By 2006 we decided we would do another silly holiday and took off for Australia via LA. We arrived in Sydney in the cold and rain and wondered what we had let ourselves in for! After a few days we moved into the red centre and toured Alice Springs, and Uluru. We watched the sun set and rise over Uluru and had dinner under the stars in the middle of the desert - it was truly magical! We moved on to Cairns and I went sightseeing by helicopter over the Great Barrier Reef. We then flew to Perth and took the Indian Pacific train back to Sydney - it was an interesting journey but not an enjoyable one! Our last 3 nights in Sydney were in the Intercontinental Hotel - with a harbour facing room - our view was of Sydney Harbour Bridge - it was stunning.
Up until this point we had always been quite reserved in our choice of destination. This was all about to change as we decided we fancied visiting Northern Norway - in winter! We stayed a night in an ice hotel (-5C) and watched the Northern Lights dance over our heads at midnight. We went dog-sledding and one of the funniest memories was my partner falling off the sled into a snow drift about 10 seconds after setting off. We had no idea we would be driving the dogs - we had thought we would be passengers but the Norwegians don't see it that way! It was the most amazing week of my life and I was hungry for more.
We started saving for the trip of a lifetime - Antarctica! I have always wanted to see Antarctica but thought with CF I never would - the nearest hospital is in a different continent so I thought Dr H and the team would say ‘no' but they didn't and we went! We waited so the dates fitted the Christmas holidays and on the day we broke up we set off to meet the ship in Ushuaia. We departed from Birmingham Airport and flew to Paris then on to Buenos Aires - a temperature difference of about 25C. We then took a connecting flight to Ushuaia - gateway to Antarctica. Ushuaia at this stage felt like a small town at the edge of the world. The holiday company had made us stay 24 hours in Ushuaia, for which we saw no good reason until we found out that Air Argentina lost more luggage than they returned to customers on this route - we were lucky - a good job as I would have struggled for medicines if they had lost our bags!
We boarded the ship on Christmas Eve - the weather was calm but cool - and the mood optimistic. I introduced myself to the ship's doctor who tried to take everything in her stride but looked like she was surprised to see a CF patient on board. We all went to bed and woke at about 4am on Christmas morning to the boat lurching and swaying - we were in a storm (force 11) on the Drake Passage - the waves were higher than the boat and the boat was just being tossed around like a cork. Luckily I had taken sea-sickness tablets early - but we were pretty much alone in that. Only 8 out of 47 passengers and crew ate on Christmas day and I am proud to say I was one of them! Boxing Day saw an improvement in weather to force 7and people started to recover a little. On 27th December after 40 hours of sailing we saw land and we went ashore on Half-Moon island. We saw our first penguins - a colony of chin-straps - who put on a real show for the cameras. Over the next 5 days we visited volcanic islands and old whaling stations, as well as doing a little shopping in the British outpost on Wiencke Island! It was light for 22 hours a day and even when the sun set it wasn't dark. We spent time in the zodiacs looking at icebergs and wildlife. We saw penguin chicks too. On our last evening we climbed a steep hill and then slid down on our backs - it was better than any rollercoaster I have ever been on. By the time New Year came we were heading back to Ushuaia. By this time Ushuaia felt like a huge city full of opportunities after so many days of ice and sea. We were soon on a plane to Buenos Aires again. We had decided to spend 2 nights here and see a little of the city - the temperature was 30C+ and after the sub-zero temperatures of Antarctica it felt very hot! We spent the next day on a city tour taking in everything from Evita's grave to shanty towns. When we finally got into the taxi back to the airport the warm wind on our faces felt fantastic as we drove along the motorway. Landing back in Paris, then Birmingham was a shock to the system as the days were dark and cold - a far cry from the time in the Antarctic.
Since then I have been to Stockholm, Vancouver and the Canadian Rockies and Girona in Spain. My next trip - if I am well enough is to Chicago and then later in the year Dubrovnik, Croatia. I still want to visit Africa and Asia, in particular, Japan. I also want to climb Kili and go on a safari - who knows what the next 10 years will bring?.....
