Manifesto

Traveling in the developed countries has never been this easy. The same baby boomers that some decades  ago saved for a train ride to leave the provincial life and head to the city, currently have to listen to their descendants talking naturally about 12-hour-flights and gap years in faraway places.

It is often said that the lifestyle in the West has changed more in the last forty years than in the previous four hundred. I just wonder if our lives are really that different. After all, the tradition of taking a year to travel the world began with the Grand Tour four hundred years ago. The classic Grand Tour itinerary had its starting point in Dover, where the wealthy young Englishmen left Britain setting a course to Europe through the Channel. Many with unlimited funds travelled for months, sometimes even years, in the name of curiosity and learning and accompanied by a so-called bear-leader, who played the role of tutor.

Richard Milles while in Rome during his Grand Tour at the National Gallery

Is not that the ultimate definition of the oh-so-cool-now-gap-year experience? The excuses for such an enriching tour were arguably, even before the facebook era, the same: the search of art, culture and the roots of the Western civilization.

Journalist and traveler Kapuscinski once mentioned that after years on the road, he realized that what made him keep going was an addiction to wonderment. Like him, there have always been people who feel attraction for the unknown, who enjoy the thrill of the unexpected, who like the challenge of questioning their realities, who need to see it with their own eyes.

Fortunately, nowadays there is no need to be a rich kid to travel. This first issue of So Many Roads is a tribute to the country in which the Grand Tour first started and to those who travel proudly within their means. It is a deep journey through many events and traditions of Britain, with interviews to some insiders who make life in the Great Island more pleasant through their work. Ultimately, So Many Roads is, above all, a gift for those who are able to enjoy a big trip as much as an unexpected quick train’s ride to an uncertain destination.

I still don’t know how many roads a man must walk down, before you call him a man, but I do know that, as Stevenson once said, the great affair is simply to move.