News & Blog

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Marchetti’s Constant and Travel Time Budgets: One hour’s travel a day?

June 2018 The location of villages in Greece, the average daily commute, and the size of cities – what do these seemingly unrelated things have in common? According to the Italian systems analyst Cesare Marchetti (who turned 90 last year), they can all be related to the finding that humans spend on average one hour […]

Loneliness and Travel

May 2018 Loneliness has been declared “the public health challenge of our age,” and is claimed by the Royal College of GPs to be as damaging to our health as long-term illness or smoking 15 cigarettes a day.[1] A recent study by The Co-op and the British Red Cross found that in the UK more […]

In the hands of the gods: Deities, saints and spirits of travel

April 2018 In Japan, before embarking on a journey travellers may purchase, or be given by a loved one, a ‘bujikaeru,’ a small model or plush toy of a green frog, to carry with them to bring safety on their travels.[1] In Catholic countries people may be more likely to carry a silver Saint Christopher […]

‘Border’ wins Stanford Dolman Travel Book of the Year

March 2018 The Stanford Dolman Travel Book of the Year prize for 2018 was awarded recently to Kapka Kassabova for her book Border: A journey to the edge of Europe (Granta). The prize is one of those offered in the annual Edward Stanford Travel Writing Awards, which includes prizes for adventure travel books as well […]

Educational Travel Today: Study Abroad, Road Schooling and Self Improvement

February 2018 “Travel is the best education”: so say a plethora of inspirational travel blogs and articles, encouraging the reader to see the world and learn new things. As we examined in our last blogpost, the idea of the educational value of travel is far from new, although according to some academics this link has […]

Travel as Education in 16th- 19th Century Europe: From ‘Grand Tours’ to ‘Working Men’s Excursions’

January 2018 The idea of travel as education has a long history.[1] Euripides, a Greek playwright of the 5th century BC said: “Experience, travel—these are as education in themselves”; and this idea remains popular today. But what exactly is it that travel teaches us? In this blogpost, we look at the evolution of educational travel […]