A Bolder 2025 to all

..and some travel suggestions.

Photo by yousef alfuhigi on Unsplash

Happy 2025 everybody and apologies for having gone missing recently. Call it the festive season or maybe just catching up on French end of year/beginning of year bureaucracy..the latter is a never ending task and somehow contributes to the mountain of debt that France continually has to climb along with the almost 6 million government employees. Coupled with this is a lame duck government being steered by President Macron and his latest prime minister. The French political scene seems to be in a vacuum awaiting the far right or the far left to fire their different shots. All we need is for Elon Musk to wade in but he seems to be focussing his efforts on the far right candidates in the UK and Germany.

In about 2 weeks time we will see the inauguration of Donald Trump into his second and hopefully last term as the most powerful person in the world and yet the worlds eyes will be focussed on the owner of X and his precise place on the podium. As VP of Cost Cutting in the new Trump administration he could perhaps take a look at the swollen public costs in the French public sector. Bernard Arnault ( also a very rich person and the richest man in France) doesn’t seem to have any interest in taking on the public sector from his penthouse office in the Louis Vuitton building on the banks of the Seine. Maybe he is still miffed at being about 15 pews back during the re-opening ceremony of Notre Dame where the seating plan must have employed quite a chunk of the French civil service head count. Trump seated between Mr and Mrs Macron and Mrs Biden and daughter next. Then PM Michel Barnier was on the opposite front pew having already been forced to resign.

Meanwhile down under in Australia the year has started with a remarkable rant about who actually owns the beach, mate. The PM has waded in to quite rightly say that everyone owns the beach, mate, and there is no room for Dubai style beach clubs on hallowed sandy strips like Bondi Beach. Ozzie beaches are indeed spiritual places - they are part of the Ozzie life style and create a particular form of community. I recall spending an entire day on a beach south of Melbourne discussing the size and quality of the surf - well, I didn’t play too active a part in the discussion but it enlightened me as to the sheer complexity of the sea. January is a wonderful time in Oz with the arrival in a few days of one of the worlds great sporting events - the Australian Tennis Open in Melbourne. Accessible, fun, supremely well organised and affordable across two terrific weeks of sporting action in a sports mad city. If you haven’t been then try and put it on your list.

The sporting year ahead in Oz sees the British and Irish Lions rugby team arriving in June for the first time in 12 years and it is a fabulous tour to follow - in person or on TV! I was there on the last 2 tours - 2001 and 2013 - and both series went down to the last of the 3 test matches. In 2001 the Lions supporters were all singing about 3 Ozzie dollars to the pound but now it’s 2 to the pound so the cold beers are a little more pricey than they were 24 years ago. We stayed at the Victoria Golf Club in leafy suburban Melbourne on both occasions and I will always remember the first visit when we all had to stand up in the dining room and tell a joke, with all the staff listening in as the quality was obviously too good to miss. Then one of the head waitresses said ‘well I’ve got quite a good joke’ and I can still remember the joke today! More importantly I thought to myself, this would never happen in a stuffy British golf club. Vive la difference. The Ozzies take their sport seriously and they love the Lions Tour - partially because of its rarity value coming as it does only every 12 years. In 2013 I held a small (sort of) business drinks reception just before the last test in Sydney and asked my pal Eric Blondeau if he knew any famous Ozzie rugby player that could come along and tell some stories. After failing with one notable ex coach he suggested I contact Nick Farr Jones the former scrum half and an Ozzie great. Once again I got voice mail promising a call back. Then late that evening my daughter picked up the phone and shouted out to me in the bath that Nick Farr Jones was on the phone! What a gent. He came along and spoke for as long as he could (for nothing) prior to another well paid event across town. I suggested we give him 2 nights in a luxury hotel and he immediately asked me if it would be ok to donate them to a fellow church goer who never travelled. Lovely chap.

So apart from France and Australia where else to travel to in 2025? The aim of the Bolder Blog in 2025 will be to provide frequent Bolder Travel suggestions on a regular basis without the need to splash out €1000 a night on a hotel room and where possible to travel by train, electric car or motorbike. Sadly for us the VW id4 EV goes back to its maker this week at the end of its 3 year lease and 62,000kms later. How EV travel has changed in that time. Our first trip across France to the Alps in January 2022 was quite a challenge - especially the return trip without a card that worked with every charger and with only the occasional charging station on the motorway network. Now with the ChargeMap card and every single service station in France having a bank of around 20 chargers electric travel is way easier - even if a bit challenging if not on the motorway. After two aborted landing attempts at Bergerac airport recently we were diverted to Limoges so Kate came to pick me up from there. The 4 hour drive back in freezing fog and a desperate search for a charger brought back memories of 3 years ago - just to remind us. So for now it’s back to the old Renault Espace until we find an alternative solution.