Kate: I was following in their footsteps. So I was retracing their journeys just as they’d done them. And so it felt like I was kind of travelling with them.

Alex: Today,,, we’re hearing an adventure story. A tale of exotic places and treacherous journeys. And one woman’s realisation that travel is not always about escaping – - sometimes it’s about coming back to ourselves.

Kate: I'm a travel journalist and author living in London.

Alex: This is Kate Wills.

Kate: I grew up in the suburbs of London in a place called Surbiton, or Suburbitan as I like to call it. Which was, yeah, pretty boring and uninteresting. And I just couldn't wait to escape.

Alex: And to understand why Kate caught the travel bug, we have to go back - – to her childhood.

Kate: My dad was really the person who kind of inspired a love of reading and stories in me and he used to read me all kinds of things, even though you know, probably like a six year old girl didn't necessarily want to read like the complete works of Shakespeare, but you know, my dad was going through it at bedtime stories.One of my earliest memories actually is him dropping me off at nursery school on his bike and I had one of those little plastic seats on the back and we used to say hi to a rabbit that we went past on the way…I'm making Surbiton sound positively idyllic!

You know, I'm really thankful that I had a really loving relationship with my dad.

Alex: Sadly though, it wasn’t just an early interest in adventure that sparked Kate’s desire to escape. Because Kate’s relationship with her mum was more complicated than with her dad.

Kate: Her and my dad, you know, would fight a lot. And they actually split up when I was 11. My mom was very career focused, which in a way was quite, you know, inspirational to me. And for that time, as well, like the 80s was, I guess, a bit more unusual than it is now. So yeah, we were never especially close. And I'd say our relationship was always fractious.

Alex: It’s tricky for Kate to pinpoint many loving or positive memories of times with her mum.

Kate: And, yeah, it's difficult to kind of say that because you know that relationship is kind of what that's what you know, what teaches you what love is really is the relationship you have with your mother because it's the first relationship, it's the you know, it's the most important one it's so primal.

Alex: In fact Kate says that her mum wasn’t really interested in her and her sister.

Kate: and actually kind of like, bordering on neglectful.

Alex: She remembers one particular moment.

Kate: I was about nine years old. And I actually got into a bath that my mum had run whilst on the phone to someone and the bath was just hot water. So, you know, pretty much boiling hot water. And I had like, really bad burns that blistered up on my feet.

Alex: Kate was taken to the doctor and her feet healed eventually. But this painful incident reinforced a feeling of isolation.

Kate: For a lot of my childhood, I kind of felt like, you know, I should be doing these things on my own. I should be more independent because, you know, there was no one to help me or look after me

It was… it always kind of felt very out of control and, and chaotic really, my home life growing up.

Alex: Eventually Kate’s mum started seeing a new partner.

Kate: And that's when, you know, it really just felt like she kind of dropped out of my life altogether, really. And I remember, you know, one day I was I was 15 and I was coming home from school and I was like, kind of stressed about my GCSE’s which were coming up and I got to our house and I just saw a for sale sign outside. And I kind of realised in that moment that my mum was my mum was leaving and, and moving in with her new boyfriend and she hadn't even told me because we'd just been living these completely separate lives

Kate: I think I confronted her about it. And, you know, it was kind of clear by this point that our, our relationship just totally broken down. You know, we weren't like a mother and daughter, as you kind of might think of it, you know, we were kind of just two people sharing a house really.

Alex: During university, when she was 20, Kate studied abroad in California for a year.

Kate: which is what really ignited my passion for exploring and travelling the world.

Alex: It was there, in Santa Barbara, that Kate also met her future husband, and realised she wanted to turn her love of writing into a career.

Kate: It was it was amazing and really transformative for me; it really shaped the person that I that I became.

Alex: After university, Kate journeyed to far flung places – from Malawi to Mozambique, from Vancouver to Ecuador.

Kate: I think in my early 20s It was because I kind of felt like travel made me a little bit more interesting.

Alex: But as she got older, the travelling became about something else.

Kate: I suppose, as I went into my early 30s, and things in my personal life didn't feel quite right, you know, even though I had all the kind of outward trappings of success, you know, I had a quite high profile job and a boyfriend and I owned a flat and all these things that you know, you're told are supposed to make you happy. I just still felt like things weren't right. And so travel became a way of just escaping from my day to day life for a little bit.

Alex: After more than a decade of being together, Kate and her boyfriend decided to get married. But they divorced just a year later.

Kate: So, when you've been with someone for that long, you know, all our friends were the same friends, his family felt like my family. So the fact that we'd now broken up I really did feel like I was I was quite, you know, apart and, and cut off from that former life that I’d kind of spent the best part of my adult life creating really.

Kate: I guess I just felt so alone, because I also felt really, like I was doing something so different to what the rest of my friends and, and peers were doing. You know, I was, you know, I was going to so many weddings and hen dos and baby showers and actually, I was getting divorced and starting completely over again at at 34.

Alex: Pretty soon, Kate made a decision that would make her feel even more out of step… choosing to follow a very different path.

Kate: I just found out about this fourth century nun, who, who travelled around the holy lands, and she was really kind of one of the first travel writers in a way and you know, definitely the first female travel writer. I kind of was interested in retracing her footsteps and, and finding out more about her and so quite spontaneously, I booked a trip to Israel, to Tel Aviv.

Alex: From Tel Aviv, Kate had plans to travel on to Palestine - - a place she’d always been drawn to.

Kate: But a lot of people I met in Israel were kind of telling me like, you don't want to go into Palestine, let alone as a woman, and, you know, don't make that journey at night. And even though it's only like a 30 minute bus ride, you have to go through all these checkpoints to get to Palestine in it, and it feels like you're kind of entering another world.

Alex: Kate was worried by the people telling her not to go to Palestine. But she thought again of the fourth century nun, a pilgrim called Egeria – – and the many other pioneering female travellers throughout history.

Kate: Hearing about how they'd really gone against the grain and, you know, not not done what was expected of them, I kind of felt brave enough to push it a little bit and think, okay, like, I can go out of my comfort zone a bit. And, and actually, you know, maybe I will be fine. And, you know, it's not so scary. And so I kind of really had them as my inspiration.

Alex: So against all the advice she’d been given, Kate set off on her journey from Jerusalem to Palestine.

It was dark by the time she left her hotel and headed towards the bus.

Kate: And so I'm sitting at the bus stop, which is in Arabic and Hebrew, and I can't understand it. And I'm thinking, okay, like, maybe I should just not go, maybe I should go tomorrow when it's light, but I'm like, no, okay, I've, I've started now. And I'm like, you know, it's one bus, like, I can handle this, like, I'm from London. So I'm sat at the bus stop feeling pretty nervous, and a bus pulls up, and I get on it, and I sit down next to this guy. And, you know, I feel like everyone's kind of staring at me, because I'm basically the only woman on the bus and, like, you know, definitely the only tourist.

Alex: Kate and this man got chatting – he told her he makes this journey every day to sell wooden sculptures in Jerusalem. Kate was jittery, but the kind stranger helped guide her through the checkpoint.

Kate: which is pretty intimidating. You know, it's like Israeli soldiers with massive guns and it's almost like your cattle you kind of get penned into these different holding areas with all these gates and it's like, concrete and pretty brutalist and, and scary. It was night there weren't many lights on, there's this big, concrete wall with barbed wire and You know, bear in mind that normally in my travel journalism you know, I'm reviewing luxury spa hotels so this was very out of the comfort zone. And I was a bit like what the hell am I doing? You know, why didn't I just like accept that trip to the Maldives instead?

Alex: It was a moment where Kate recognised the privilege she holds.

Kate: As a white western woman, I feel like I was quite protected by my privilege, because, you know, the Israeli guards were, you know, very accommodating to me. So, you know, I'm obviously very lucky in that respect.

Alex: After Kate and the man were through safely, he asked her where she was staying.

Kate: He said, Look, my wife's come to pick me up and we'll give you a lift. And, you know, they were like inviting me back to their home for tea. And it was just like, such a lovely moment of friendship and, and, and just kindness really at this time when I was feeling pretty vulnerable and scared.

Alex: The time Kate spent in the middle east opened her eyes to the power of faith and spirituality – the reason so many visit that part of the world.

Kate: I guess I kind of as well was was really thinking about you know, what, what was important to me and and kind of getting right back to basics in that you know, normally when I travel I have everything organised for me and it's all you know, very comfortable and luxurious but this was the opposite of that and it was kind of refreshing for that.

Alex: Following in Egeria’s footsteps inspired Kate to write a book. It’s called A Trip of One’s Own. It traces Kate’s journey through heartbreak and solo adventuring, with intrepid female travellers from throughout history as her guides.

Kate: The proudest moment for me was probably seeing it in a bookshop, which wasn't an easy feat because it was mid-pandemic when it first came out. So book shops were closed, but seeing it in a bookshop in an airport, funnily enough was was a really nice moment.

Alex: Kate said the book has inspired plenty of people’s first steps into the unknown.

Kate: I absolutely love it when I hear that people have been inspired to take a solo trip by themselves after having read the book or listen to me speak because I know firsthand how powerful it can be to have that first experience on your own.

Alex: In 2020, Kate set off on a completely new adventure: becoming a mother.

Kate: I had my daughter, Blake, a year and a half ago, so…. Everyone says it's like the best shock in the world. And that's true. Like, it kind of upends your whole life and who you are and who you think you are, and what you think is a good time. What you think is a bad time. it's kind of all encompassing.

Alex: Travelling helped Kate not only begin to make sense of her complicated relationship with her own mother — – it’s helping to guide her as she takes her own first steps into motherhood.

Kate: I kind of had to learn how to be my own mother basically. I kind of became that role for myself, especially on these trips were I was on my own. And in having that separation from my mother I kind of created this space for what kind of mother I myself might want to be and it was only kind of through doing that really that I realised that I did I did want to have a baby and become a mother

Kate: You know we often talk about your your mother as kind of being your home really, you know, it's your first home, it’s where you where you live for nine months. Having these experiences away and just kind of finding out who I was and pushing the limits of myself and knowing that I could take care of myself in these situations and contexts was really kind of all I needed to to kind of realise who I was.

Alex: Kate believes that overcoming hardship early in life gives you grit and resilience.

Kate: I never wanted to let my difficult family relationship hold me back. And I think it's really easy to kind of blame a parent for the things that have gone wrong in your life or the things that you haven't done. But if you're gonna blame your parents for the things that have gone wrong, then you also have to give them credit for things that have gone right. And obviously, they're just one part of the story, of your story. You can't rewrite your childhood, but you can start the next chapter on your own terms.

Alex: Kate’s travels were once focused on places of luxury but it was escaping her comfort zone which truly allowed her to learn more about who she was. Looking for inspiration, she found it in the account of a female traveler who made her journey over 1,500 years ago. Now Kate has made a journey of her own and she has written her own account. As a result, she is able to act as an inspiration for others. Kate’s story shows us that, sometimes, we have to get away from our day-to-day experiences in order to come back to ourselves. Solo traveling has clearly helped Kate come to terms with her past and her upbringing. It has also helped to provide space for her to shape her own future.