Speedy Boarding with Eleanor Anstruther
Svalbard, the Northern Lights and tweezers with Eleanor Anstruther
Welcome back to Speedy Boarding, a bi-weekly series on Not That You Asked that is great news for those of you who are getting sick of me. That’s because it’s a series where I ask some of my favourite writers on Substack eight quick-ish questions about travel. So, the vast majority of the words you’re about to read weren’t written by me but by someone else.
This week the questions are being answered by
. She was born in London, educated at Westminster and distracted from finishing her degree at Manchester University by a trip to India. She travelled for the next decade until finally settling down enough to write her first novel. She’d written her whole life, making scribbles in pink notebooks before she knew how to form sentences, writing stories only she could hear, but it wasn’t until that book got a hold of her that she realised writing was my profession as well as my life.Eleanor is an incredibly interesting writer with a really varied Substack - I’m so excited to have her join us this week.
Okay, let’s get to the questions.
Where is the best place you’ve ever been and why?
I’ve travelled to many places in my life, but Svalbard is the one that stands out. I’ve written about it in The Recovery Diaries. It's number 72. My marriage was failing, my children were young, I was crazed with exhaustion and sadness. And I wanted to see the northern lights. Travel research is not my thing at the best of times, I tend to pick up a credit card, and go, and those being some of the worst of times meant I set off knowing nothing of what I would find except, if I was lucky, the aurora borealis and a break from the torment at home.Â
A rattling, fat-boned plane took me from Tromsø to Longyearbyen, in terrible weather we landed at night, I was driven off into the white dark hoping to Christ that the man behind the wheel really was a taxi driver and not some arctic nutter planning another kill in his wasteland killing.Â
Wasteland turned out to be the wrong word, as did, arctic nutter. Svalbard, that frozen desert, was anything but deserted, and its community, made up of four hundred different nationalities, was genial to a fault. The international seed bank is there, as well as a university. If you’re heading for the north pole, it’s where you buckle on your crampons and wave goodbye to your toes. The landscape right-sizes the ego, the environment puts all in their place. It thrums with a ghost-like energy, its vast silence fills the soul, its beauty is haunted by the lives that have risen and fallen beneath its dreamscape skies. I fell in love with its quiet. In much of the somatic work I’ve done, I find a place inside of me like Svalbard, where earth and sky are one, a place humming with translucent energy and overflowing in possibility. I drove a skidoo across the frozen ocean, I wandered out beneath the stars alone, being told only when I returned what a fantastically stupid idea that was, I spotted a Dutch schooner frozen into the ice and was told of abandoned soviet towns echoing with fractured glass. I want to go back. Yes, it gave me peace. No, I didn’t see the northern lights.
Where is the place you most want to visit?
I still want to see the lights and did try again in Iceland the year after but found I’d mistakenly booked myself on a coach tour, and got high with a hotelier, and hallucinated that the aurora borealis were coming in through the door which wasn’t quite the same thing. So, Finland is on the list. I’m off to ride in Mongolia this summer, a place I’ve long dreamed of going, and I’ve been discussing Mount Kailash for ages with a friend who lost his son a few years back, we want to do the pilgrimage together. Transylvania has also long been on my mind mostly because of my vampire blood.
Who's your dream travel companion?
I’m pretty sure I’m supposed to come up with someone famous and thrilling but I’ve got to say it’s Andy, my manperson. Ours has not been the world’s most straightforward love affair, but by god we travel well together. He’s as seasoned as I am, we like the same places, go at the same pace, have a similar sense of timing in terms of catching trains and planes, same kind of luggage quantities, he’s game for adventure and not shy of a challenge, he’s also hilarious company and makes me feel safe. Ideal. Having said all that, I also love to travel alone and have been my own travel companion for much of my life. There are some places I would prefer to have him by my side, and others where I relish the thought of going solo.
Great news! I'm going to buy you a hat. The catch is that you have to wear this hat on every future travel trip at all times. What kind of hat would you like?
At all times, huh? I see. I travelled for well over a decade when I first left home, then mostly paused while I brought up my children, and now I’m entering the next decade of free roaming, much of it centred on riding horses in far off places. With that in mind, I’d need a hat I could ride in, so I’ll have an Australian bushman, that’s the tough, bashed up leather kind that would keep the weather out and the sun off.Â
Where is the place you never want to go back to?
Zimbabwe, because when I was there I was young and idiotic and got myself in all sorts of trouble, and Bali because it was sailing from one island to another that we got caught in a tempest and were very nearly shipwrecked. Also, more importantly, a very dear friend was murdered there, and I can’t forget it.
You've been given a million pounds to live your best life in one destination for a year. The problem is - you're trapped there and can't leave for the year. Where would you go?
I will go to Rajasthan. When I dropped out of university, I went with my boyfriend to track down his mother in India from whom he’d been kidnapped when he was four years old. We found her, (you can read the story in my memoir ) stayed for a few months in her old colonial jungle home, bought a Royal Enfield bullet motorbike and set off for Manali in the Himalayas. It was a tough journey, but Rajasthan, with its desert and mountains, and wide open skies, its cities of sand and shimmering lakes, its holy noise and sacred quiet, was the best of it. So, with my million pounds I’ll find a rose palace. I’ll find horses, and friends and silence, a place to write, eat wonderful food, sleep in the mystery and wake to the cry of eagles, gallop over sand, lie in the cool of shaded courtyard afternoons and lose myself in heat.
How do you decide where to visit next?
When it sounds romantic in my head, I make plans to go there. Everywhere I’ve been has had that essence. They haven’t all necessarily lived up to it, but each was born of a story I told myself, an imaginary being in that place. My wanderlust was born of a cousin who lived with us. She would disappear for months at a time and return with stories of swimming in snake infested lakes and off-roading through jungle. She seemed the happiest of people to me, far more than anyone I knew, and the impression she made on me was deep. The moment I could get out the door, I went. From the very first time I travelled alone I’ve felt safe, and completely at home in the freedom of the road. If the thought makes me happy, I go. Lately, it's become all about travelling on horseback, so there’s that, too. Last year we rode in Patagonia, this year it’s Mongolia and next year I’d love it to be Transylvania.
And finally, what's the one thing you never leave home without when travelling?
Tweezers. Nuff said.
A huge thanks to Eleanor for agreeing to be part of Speedy Boarding. If you liked this post please do consider becoming a free or paid subscriber to Not That You Asked. Paid subscribers get two free travel guides a month for just £4.99, which is way cheaper than Netflix. If £4.99 is a bit steep in this economy there’s a 50% off forever sale on at the moment to celebrate two years of Not That You Asked.
The next Speedy Boarding will drop on the 27th of June!
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Those photos are hilarious.
Eleanor - what a ride you've been on thus far. Answers teeming with personality.
Oh Eleanor, that was quite a read. A varied mix of travel experiences. I want to know more. As you know, Tom has travelled alone many times. I always envy his confidence and independence. I also love to travel but with my husband, family or friends.