Quiz Answer Key and Fun Facts
1. Fittingly, for this quiz, my very first memory is of sitting in a highchair in a hotel dining room looking out across the road to the sea beyond. Some years later, I discovered that I was eighteen months old and my parents had taken me on holiday to Worthing in Sussex, so the sea was the English Channel. It wasn't until many more years had passed that my mother discovered why her normally well-behaved little girl yelled at every meal - that highchair had a sharp edge, which hurt my legs as I was put into it! For the next few years I remember more family holidays in Sussex, playing on a pebbly beach and paddling in the cold sea, but never staying in a hotel - we rented a holiday home instead. By the time I was eleven years old, I was the eldest of four children, but I'd never even been out of England. All that was about to change - I was about to need a passport for the first time in my life.
A train from Victoria to Newhaven, a ferry to Dieppe, and then another train took my mother, brother and me to Paris. A couple of days seeing the Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame, and marvelling at how everybody spoke French all the time was followed by another train. This time it was a sleeper train, and when we woke up we were in a different part of France.
In which part of France did we see the cathedral at Quimper, the fishing port of Douarnenez, the walled town of Concarneau and the rocky crags of Pointe du Raz?
2. A few years later, my parents decided that the annual family holiday would take us a little further afield. Once again I travelled on a sleeper train, to wake up this time in a different part of Great Britain. Looking out of the window when I awoke I was somewhat dismayed to see the slag heaps at Wishaw, because I had been assured that we were going to a very beautiful place. A little while later the train reached Stirling. I was more impressed when, after visiting the castle, we drove past Callander and Crianlarich to Oban.
That year we spent three weeks in Oban. In future years we stayed in Ullapool, Gairloch and Durness. All those places were indeed surrounded by very beautiful scenery, but in which part of the British Isles?
3. Apart from a day out to see one of the big national museums in London, my school didn't take us on many trips. However it decided to join with another school, and a trip was arranged during one school holiday; it would be beneficial for our foreign language skills, as well as showing us something of a different culture. My little used passport was unearthed and bags packed for somewhere I was very unlikely to be able to visit except in an organised party.
We flew into Leningrad, and then took a train to Moscow before returning to Leningrad for the flight home. Which large country did I visit before it changed its name?
4. The summer I left school gave me another opportunity to travel. My mother had kept in touch with a Sudanese friend from her days at university. He was keen for his children to visit England, so they came to stay with us for a month before I went back with them for another month.
Their house was in Khartoum, the capital of the Sudan, which stands on one of the largest rivers in Africa. Which one?
5. Three years as a student didn't leave much money for travelling, although I did go on a few camping trips to the Lake District in northwest England and one to Snowdonia in north Wales. A more exciting trip meant taking a ferry from Weymouth to the Channel Islands.
I've never been a very good sailor, so I was very relieved when we finally reached the safety of dry land at St. Peter Port. Where had I arrived?
6. More years passed as I graduated and got married. Then we bought our first house, so money was tight and camping trips in the UK sufficed for holidays. I remember a week on Exmoor in Devon when it rained, but we found some delicious scones in a most unlikely looking teashop, so we had to go back another day for some more! Another year we went to Pembrokeshire in south Wales, and had practically continuous sunshine. Finally I persuaded my husband to venture abroad, so we took the tent to Brittany. Amazingly he wasn't put off foreign travel despite the rain and suffering a cold. Perhaps the Breton crepes and cider helped to convince him.
The following year we ventured a little further afield. After crossing the channel we drove through Belgium into Germany and camped at Cologne and Koblenz before reaching Mainz. Which river were we following?
7. Appetite for foreign travel whetted, we drove further south the following year. I had long wanted to visit the place which inspired Elinor M. Brent-Dyer to write her series of books about the Chalet School, so we camped by the side of the Achensee, one of the largest lakes in Austria.
While there, we also had a ride on the steam railway up the Zillertal to Mayrhofen and paid a visit to the capital city of the province - Innsbruck. In which part of Austria were we staying?
8. With two small children, we found it easier not to make such long journeys. We had made friends with the people camping next to us in Cologne, so we went to visit their country several times.
The children enjoyed seeing all the flowers at Keukenhof and were delighted by the miniature buildings at Madurodam in The Hague, so which country did we visit?
9. As the children grew older we continued to take holidays in England or Wales, or else travel to parts of northwest Europe. We stayed in a very nice little hotel in Kamp-Bornhofen just across the river from Boppard in the Rhine Valley, and also ventured as far south as the Black Forest - a land of cuckoo clocks, trees and lakes. In our limited experience the former is warmer and sunnier than the latter! With a group of friends from university, and their families, we went to Yorkshire a couple of times - firstly to Arncliffe, in the Dales, the second time we stayed in the old station buildings at Sleights, on the Moors.
While my husband and I were raising our family in England my brothers and sister were working all over the world, or so it seemed at times. Apart from visiting one brother in Mainz (Germany) and Grenoble (France), we just saw them when they came back to England occasionally, and our daughters often received exciting T-shirts or other presents.
Then, out of the blue, I had a telephone call from my other brother. Would we like to go and stay with him before he came home from Dar-es-Salaam? There was only one answer to that - 'yes'! But which country were we going to visit?
10. Our summer holiday later that year was a week staying at Yarmouth on the Isle of Wight. It doesn't sound very exciting, but it was actually quite different from our home in the hills of northern England. A long train journey, a quick ferry crossing and short walk took us to our holiday home. We spent the week exploring the island by bus, including seeing the old castle at Carisbrooke, the museum at the airfield, the model village at Godshill, the donkey sanctuary at Ventnor, Queen Victoria's home at Osborne House and the chalk Needles and multi-coloured sands at Alum Bay. A week certainly isn't long enough to see everything the island has to offer!
Summer was over. Winter was its usual cold grey dreary self. Then my sister invited us to visit her for Christmas. That might not sound very unusual, but she was working in eastern Asia. We spent one amazing day exploring the Grand Palace on the banks of the Chayo Phraya river, so which city did we visit?
Source: Author
Lottie1001
This quiz was reviewed by FunTrivia editor
Tizzabelle before going online.
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