MAGBAZTRAVELS.COM LIVES ON!

Or

All Good Things Come to an End - but the Road Goes Ever On

Barry and Margaret Williamson
Locked Down in the Fylde
March 2021
 
Rebecca and Kevin (aka Bec & Kev) built the MagBazTravels website during the summer of 2005 while we two motorhomed from Perth to Brisbane via Tasmania, including a week at their home high in the tropical rainforest inland from Cairns in Northern Queensland. They used Mambo's open-source content management system (CMS) to create the website which has an ever-expanding 3-tier menu structure based on Sections, Categories and Articles.

The website was designed for use by existing and aspiring long-term, long-distance travellers by motorhome and/or bicycle. The powerful search engine can find answers among over a thousand articles and travel logs we have written based on travel in 60 countries. There are also contributions from 78 Fellow Travellers; over 800 Readers' Comments; countless photographs; a myriad of links within and beyond the confines of the site; poetry; humour; 312 quotations;  book lists; reflections; campsite reviews and quiet corners such as that dedicated to the life and travels of world cyclist Ian Hibell (tragically killed by a hit-and-run driver in Athens in August 2008).

We wrote 'ever-expanding' although nothing is for ever and it has been said that one computer-year is equivalent to 15 or 20 human years, such is the speed of change. This makes the website between 240 and 320 years old! Bec and Kev (now living on a croft in the Isle of Skye) report that for some time the Mambo-based site has been on life support and liable to operate unpredictably. Rather than risk losing it altogether, they are willing and capable of giving it a dignified end by turning it into a static site.

This means that all its features will continue to operate as now (and perhaps run even more speedily), fully available for reference with all its features working, but we won't be able to add new material. The website will remain a tribute to all those many people it features, remembered and available all day and every day around the world.

We are beyond grateful to Bec and Kev for all the work they have put into the development and maintenance of the software over the years. The transition to a static read-only site now relies on their high level of unfailing skills and dedication. We first met them in Alexandroupoli near the Greek/Turkish border on Tuesday 2nd September 1997. They had driven their VW Kombi down from Bulgaria into Greece; we were about to start a 2-month motorhome tour of Turkey. This illustrates the very best of life as travellers: just one evening together was enough to form a friendship (and ultimately a website), both of which have lasted to this day with a future still waiting to be lived.

RECENT ARTICLES ON MAGBAZTRAVELS

19 Reaches 25

Back in March 2019 we wrote an article listing nineteen new regulations and restrictions that might apply to any British-registered vehicle driving in mainland Europe. All this added up to a considerable loss of freedom to travel and to roam on the roads of our own Continent.

Returning to the subject after Brexit was initiated on 1st January 2021, we found that the number of rules had grown to twenty-five! The confidence trick of Brexit was that we would be freed from the EU's regulations. The reality is that we were free of them only by dint of being members; as a non-member, as foreigners, they begin to fully operate.

So many others are discovering the same thing to their cost: fishermen, truck drivers, exporters and importers. Even sending a parcel to Northern Ireland is suddenly fraught with bureaucracy. Brexit = Freedom? Taking Back Control? Once upon a time, Brexiters absurdly called Remainers 'Losers'. Now we are all on the losing side!

A Little Theatricality

Both of us have now been Pfizered in the local Little Theatre, within walking distance of our lock-down home. Given the setting, we couldn't resist seeing the whole thing as a theatrical production, with our selves in a small but important walk-on part. It must be a successful production because it is still attracting an audience that seems to be getting younger every day!

Ourselves as Other See Us

Inevitably starting with a quotation from Scotland's National Poet, Robert Burns, and using information from a Guardian article, here are about 30 comments on Brexit which are typical of those being expressed in mainland Europe. There is sadness, humour, anger and regret that the English were deceived and lied to, misled by much of the media “constantly trampling on fairness and facts, leaving Britain captured by gambling liars, frivolous clowns and their paid cheerleaders.”

Brexit: It's Only Just Begun

As Brexit began, the EU Commission published its account of what the UK was about to lose; things we had taken for granted for over 47 years. Under headings such as Trade in Goods, Services, Digital and Procurement; Energy and Climate; Mobility; Aviation; Transport; Fisheries; Security and EU Programmes, they showed just how much had been jettisoned in the rush to make a hard deal at the very last moment. And there is still no agreement on the future status of services which make up 80% of the UK's economy.

A Recent Article on MagBazPictures

The Pendle Bike Rack
http://www.magbazpictures.com/the-pendle-bike-rack.html

This is the illustrated story of the three Pendle Bike Racks which served us well for over thirty years of travel: by car (until retirement), then by motorhome and now by car again. Built by engineers in Nelson in Lancashire, the rack fits on a vehicle's towbar and has its own lighting board. It is easily adjusted to take any kind of bicycle and in 1997, in Corinth, a triumvirate of entrepreneurial Greek workmen even converted our Pendle rack to carry a 100cc, 100kg motorbike behind the motorhome!

A second rack was fitted to our second motorhome in 2010, to be replaced by a 'garage' on our next motorhome which was made in Germany. Now locked down, unable to use the motorhome and keen to extend the range of our cycling, we have bought our third  Pendle rack to fit behind our car. The rack's design, quality and usefulness have not changed over these thirty years, which itself is the true measure of excellence.

OUR WEBSITES

MagBazTravels
http://www.magbaztravels.com/

This is the website that is being preserved.

Holly Bank
http://www.hollybank.magbaztravels.com/

Attached to MagBazTravels, this website is a memorial to the college in Huddersfield where Barry spent much of what he calls his working life, which included work in India, Malawi and Iraq, as well as all of the college's 30 extramural centres in England. It is actually where we met and it is also the source of a very welcome pension. In other words, it is quite important to us and to the many thousands of mature students who have passed through its portals. Starting life as a College of Education (Technical) in 1947, it merged with the local Polytechnic in 1974 and transmogrified into a University in 1992. Barry got away soon afterwards!

MagBazPictures
http://www.magbazpictures.com/

We have used this Weebly platform for a number of years as a collecting ground for an unremitting output of photographs.

Murdoch MacKenzie
http://www.murdochmackenzieofargyll.com/

Barry first met Murdoch in Madras/Chennai in 1973. On a year's secondment, Barry was improving the Physics curriculum for Polytechnics in South India; Murdoch was the Minister of St Andrew's Kirk in the city, along with Anne and their three children (two of whom were born in India). A fluent Tamil speaker, Murdoch was to spend 12 years tirelessly supporting the poorest of the poor in the city's slum areas and subsistence peasants in surrounding villages.

We met again in Scotland in July 2012 and worked together to create this Weebly website for his many papers, articles, reviews, radio broadcasts and sermons. Parents and children each have their account of the family's return to Scotland in 1978 – overland by public transport. Quite early in the journey their bus broke down in the Khyber Pass and was sold to a passing tribesman for a thousand dollars!

Following Murdoch's untimely death in February 2015, the website became a memorial to his life and to his work.

MagBazWords
www.magbazwords.com

Still under development, this website will continue narratives of travel, as well as ranging more broadly on inter-linked subjects such as the pandemic; the climate emergency; post-Brexit traumas; the crisis of capitalism; the ruinous state of the education system; commodification; the absurdities of English suburban life and, overall and perhaps underlying all this, the sad state of what passes for democracy in our country.