Hong Kong’s Star Ferry makes it into Lonely Planet’s Amazing Boat Journeys book
- Crossing Victoria Harbour by boat must be the shortest, and certainly the cheapest journey featured in travel publisher’s new coffee-table book
- The 28 US cent trip features alongside Yangtze, Mekong and Nile river cruises and journeys around the Galapagos islands and to remote Pitcairn Island
Remembering Richarda Morrow-Tait, the first woman to fly around the world
Pilot Richarda Morrow-Tait and her friend and navigator Michael Townsend left England on August 18, 1948 with the aim of flying around the world. Sitting side by side in a small, single-engine Percival Proctor aircraft, they hoped to make the journey in six to eight weeks, which is what the 24-year-old former model told her husband and infant daughter before they waved her off. Nine eventful weeks later, after a seven-week delay in India, she arrived in Hong Kong. They spent the night “in a lovely little house high on the hills”, then flew to Japan and on to Alaska, where they crash-landed on November 21.
Townsend returned to university in England. Although low on funds, “the flying housewife” as she was now known, was determined to raise money to repair her plane and, when that proved impossible, buy another one. Over the next few months, she worked in Alaska and Canada as a nightclub singer, model and public speaker, stayed in the seediest of lodgings and often subsisted on a starvation diet.
Eventually, a dilapidated old plane was bought for her by sympathetic admirers and she continued to fly slowly across North America, frequently delayed by red tape and lack of money. She was reunited with Townsend in Montreal and the pair eventually landed in England, one year and a day after they had left.
The media by this time were critical of this “obstinate redhead” and more concerned that she had neglected her family than become the first woman to fly herself around the world. When she gave birth to a son eight months later, her husband divorced her and she very publicly lost custody of their daughter. The book she was writing was almost complete, but she withdrew from public life and left it unfinished. Morrow-Tait died in 1982, aged 59.
Townsend, whom she married, found her manuscript in their attic, completed it and published it in 2001, as Thursday’s Child: The Story of the First Flight Round the World by a Woman Pilot. Now out of print, copies can still be found on Amazon or eBay. It’s a vivid, inspiring read – sadly obscure, but perhaps all the more enjoyable for it – by one of the forgotten pioneers of air travel.
Cycle-touring company SpiceRoads launches new Japan Heritage excursion
Deal of the week – two nights in Shanghai, China
Lotus Tours’ two-night package to Shanghai starts from HK$1,630 per person (twin share) at the Meliá Hongqiao. Other budget options closer to the city centre include the Pentahotel, from HK$1,710. Further downtown and upmarket, Hyatt on the Bundstarts at HK$2,800 while the Mandarin Oriental Pudong costs from HK$3,270.
