Welcome to the seventeenth edition of VoiceMap’s newsletter, Senses of Direction, where we share stories from around the world that spark curiosity and stimulate your senses.
This month we travel to Tanzania, where the late Dr Jane Goodall changed lives. We also get a glimpse of how the legal rights of cats have shaped Zurich.
Lastly, in celebration of Halloween – and because our Kickstarter campaign only has six days to go – we’re sharing spooky stories from VoiceMap tours across the UK. It’s a tiny sample because when you sift through the almost 350 tours we have there, you come to understand that the British are peculiarly fascinated by ghouls and ghosts.
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For your sense of life | Jane Goodall the travel writer
The legendary scientist and conservation activist Jane Goodall, who passed away one month ago today, forever changed our understanding of animals’ consciousness. She’s not the first scientist to leave behind a wealth of luminous travel writing, too.
Charles Darwin’s travelogue The Voyage of the Beagle remains popular to this day, and John Muir’s descriptions of the Sierra Nevada and Alaska are credited with helping to establish the American conservation movement.
Goodall’s descriptions of Gombe Stream National Park – where she spent over 20 years studying chimpanzee behaviour – gleam with curiosity and a sense of wonder. In this passage from her fifth book, Through a Window, it’s as if we were right there with Goodall in the pre-dawn moonlight in the early 1960s, waiting to observe the species that became her life’s work.
“The faint light from the moon, shining on the dew-laden grass, enabled me to find my way without difficulty and presently I arrived at the place where, the evening before, I had watched eighteen chimpanzees settle down for the night. I sat to wait until they woke. All around, the trees were still shrouded with the last mysteries of the night’s dreaming. It was very quiet, utterly peaceful. The only sounds were the occasional chirp of a cricket, and the soft murmur where the lake caressed the shingle, way below. As I sat there I felt the expectant thrill that, for me, always precedes a day with the chimpanzees, a day roaming the forests and mountains of Gombe, a day for new discoveries, new insights.”
Travel ended up becoming central to Goodall’s work. She spent over 250 days a year rallying support for conservation and habitat protection, speaking to governments, businesses, and communities around the world – right into her nineties. But it was a far cry from the “glorious” days of travelling to Kenya by boat in 1957.
Nowadays, one has to contend with “security, the chaos of airports, and delayed flights, and people poking you to see if you’ve got concealed firearms or drugs,” she said in an interview. “What fun can there be in that?”
? Dip into Through a Window using Amazon’s ‘preview’ feature (UK or US), listen to The Travel Diaries’ wide-ranging podcast about Goodall’s life, and read Conde Nast Traveller’s interview here.
For your sense of freedom | Zurich’s cat ladders
It was Mahatma Gandhi who famously said “The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.” If that’s true, the Swiss will go down in history as champions of cat welfare.
This wonderful, feel-good Reel about Zurich’s ‘cat ladders’ says a lot about attitudes to our feline friends in Switzerland, where their freedom and quality of life is given serious consideration. Quite unlike countries like Australia and the US, “hunting or hunting games” are considered among cats’ basic needs. Even cats’ minimum living space has a place in Swiss law: seven square metres of floor space is required for every four cats in a household.
? Take a look at the comings and goings of Zurich’s freedom-living felines in this charming video.
For your sense of the macabre | Spooky tales from the UK
Today is Samhain, the Celtic festival from which Halloween originated. And it might be the Celts that are responsible for the British fascination with ghosts. Apparently the Anglo-Saxons didn’t see them. But “English authors have written 70% of all published ghost stories,” according to David Mitchell, “and a 2003 Ipsos poll found that 38% of Britons believe in ghosts. That’s the same as the percentage who, according to a Eurobarometer poll in 2005, believe in God.”
VoiceMap’s tours confirm this, in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, where “Ghosts And Hauntings” is a much more popular category than I expected it to be. I was looking through our UK tours because we’re in the final week of our Kickstarter campaign, and the volume of these stories helps to confirm that we’re on our way to building something special there – and across the world, eventually, because we’re working to make sure there are excellent VoiceMap tours available everywhere.
Here are a few of my favourites.
In Scotland, there’s the uncanny story of how a woman survived her execution in Katrina Milne’s tour, Harry Potter’s Edinburgh: From the Castle to Diagon Alley and Elephant House.
In Wales, you can listen to a tale about one of the capital’s “most sinister ghosts,” a faceless figure who’s frequently seen under a large Yew tree where several “strange and frightening incidents” have been reported. It’s from James Cowan’s tour, The Ghosts of Llandaff.
Hear about a benevolent spirit in Northern Ireland’s Derry, where you might feel the ‘Tugging Ghost’ pulling at your coat in St Columb’s Hall.
Meanwhile, in England, enjoy this captivating story about the spectres that remain where Exeter’s Royal Clarence Hotel once stood. Visitors who dare to head into the cellar often report a strange, very human-like “warmth” in the cold stone room. Listen to the story here, or browse Bobbie Ramond’s tour, Ghosts and Gothic Tales: Exeter’s Haunted History Audio Tour.
Lastly, get a sense of Chester’s ghoulish side with this popular new Instagram Reel about David Atkinson’s tour, Haunted Chester: A Spooky Stroll around the Roman-Walled City.
Until next time, thanks for travelling with us!
Best Wishes,
Claire van den Heever
Our crowdfunding campaign ends this week. So far, we’ve reached 83% of our goal – but Kickstarter is all or nothing, and unless we make it to 100%, the campaign will fail. If you back us, you’ll get credits you can use immediately, to download our 2,000 tours in over 600 destinations globally. There are rewards offering discounts on 1, 5, 12 and 24 tours. There’s even an option to commission your own VoiceMap tour.