Spotlight on the traveller: Individual experiences of routine journeys

Colin Pooley

doi:10.1177/00225266211063771

Abstract

All travel generates a range of feelings, responses and emotions that can be stimulated by many factors but recovering such responses to everyday travel in the past is difficult. Few conventional sources provide information on the travellers’ experiences of movement and, not surprisingly, most transport histories focus mainly on matters of infrastructure, usage, and technological change. In contrast, contemporary mobilities studies that can talk directly to those who travel do explore the lived experiences of mobility in some detail. This paper shows how, by using a range of life writing drawn from the nineteenth- and twentieth-century Britain, it is possible to begin to recover at least some of the feelings and responses that past travellers experienced. I argue that such an approach provides an important additional perspective to research in transport history.

Highlights

All travel, be it local or global, generates a range of feelings and emotions in the traveller
It does not attempt to chart changes in mobility over time or between social groups and regions, and it does not provide more than outline pen-pictures of the ten diarists cited
To demonstrate that by using life writing such as that contained in personal diaries, it is possible to recover at least some of the feelings and responses generated by everyday travel at different times in the past

Summary

Introduction

Be it local or global, generates a range of feelings and emotions in the traveller. Some of these varied experiences of travel are explored in this paper using life writing in the form of personal diaries written by women and men who lived in Britain during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Not all diaries are equal and while some can be very detailed with discursive writing about the diarist’s feelings, others may consist of little more than a series of brief factual statements relating to the day’s events Few diarists reveal their inner-most emotions, but most do give some details of everyday practices and responses to travel. Themes identified are designed to illustrate the ways in which selected experiences of mobility were structured and varied in different places and for different people

The impact of weather

Accidents while travelling

Inconveniences of travelling

Travelling companions

Conclusions